Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Travel day from London to Besancon - my first taste of the Channel Tunnel and associated high-speed trains. It was also my first experience on this trip of an obligatory experience on all my European trips, the tight connection (even with having to cross central Paris it shouldn't have been desperately tight, but in one of a few minor annoyances on the day I didn't have enough euro coins for the metro ticket machines, they wouldn't take my card and for a time all the ticket windows were shut). Made it with five minutes to spare (and without having to run the length of any platforms with full pack).

As noted yesterday I've spent the last couple of days mixing in generally more affluent company than is usually the case, which reached a slightly incongruous height yesterday in the form of being dropped back to the London Central YHA in a Porsche. (OK, so it was a second-hand Porsche picked up for a bargain price in the middle of the GFC - there were a lot of luxury cars going cheap in London circa November 2008).

First foray onto the orienteering scene in Europe tomorrow. It's a 3-day, town sprint tomorrow, Jura limestone terrain the next two days. Saw Eddie Wymer (whose home area this is) at registration.

Swapped sessions around between yesterday and today because I thought that the Lake District was more suited to a long run and central(ish) London to an intervals session. Regent's Park was the venue, being the one bit of greenery reasonably close to where I was staying, and I even found a bit of a slope (so half the reps were up and half down). A rather patchy session but had its moments.

Mega-cities aren't really my style so the principal purpose of my visit here is social, involving catching up with various people I haven't seen for between six months and 22 years. Last night was interesting on a number of levels, partly for its insight into possible alternative trajectories my life might have taken. My companion was a school friend who was the smartest person in the year two years below me. Like me, he did a PhD (physics in his case), and like me, he got offers from investment banks towards the end of it, and decided to go down that route. He's certainly making a success of that in the terms that success is defined there (i.e. he almost certainly makes more money per month than I do per year), and seems to have at least something resembling a life as well (unusual in that industry), but I still don't think I'd trade places; I doubt he would either. I do things that, perhaps, three other people in the world can do at the same level, and that kind of job satisfaction doesn't have a price.

My lunch company today was Jamie Potter, who is well settled in the law in London - I doubt we'll be seeing him back in Australia (except on short visits) any time soon. He's moved into public law (reviews of government decisions and the like) rather than commercial law, which seems much closer to what I thought he really wanted to be doing. I won't be surprised to see him end up as a judge.

C • Yep 2

Going to/from Regents Park, with fewer traffic interruptions than might have been expected - although this was partly because I did as London pedestrians (and cyclists) do and ignored all traffic lights.

It stopped raining briefly around dawn but had started again by the time I headed out, but only very lightly. The cloud base was a bit higher which was enough to encourage me onto a run which is apparently on a well-trodden Lake District runners' list (or at least that's what I read in Bilbo's Cafe yesterday), the crossing of Loughrigg Fell, before going north as far as Grasmere and returning along the ominously-named Coffin Track.

Loughrigg is a long way from being the highest fell in the Lake District and the track doesn't go particularly close to its top, but it was still a fairly solid 150 metres of climbing to get above the treeline. Looks like nice orienteering country when it doesn't have bracken, and nice running country too, which may explain why this was my best session since the Cairngorms. Lots of gate opening and closing which was a bit of an annoyance. The ground is quite hard underfoot so mud wasn't really a factor, but some tracks were almost streams and I had fairly wet feet by the end of it.

The rest of the day was spent travelling to London (the first sunny break appeared just as I was leaving). Now here for a couple of nights in pursuit of a hectic social calendar before moving on to France.

C • France 2

Today wasn't any more amenable to going up on the fells than yesterday was (in fact the cloud base was even lower - 250 metres or so - and the rain was hevier). This run stayed at low elevation and was sort of reasonable once early Achilles tightness (which has come back a little in the last couple of days) eased. The rain has obviously been very heavy at higher elevations and the rivers are running very strongly indeed, which at least meant it was a good day for looking at waterfalls, but not much else. (At least this meant I didn't feel bad about losing an hour of potential sightseeing time in the process of doing an international teleconference out of an Ambleside phone box).

The forecast for tomorrow morning is better which may provide a final opportunity to get up onto the lower fells, but I'll believe it when I see it. Off to London after that.

Original plan was to travel to the Lake District yesterday but I was having trouble finding accommodation there on a Saturday night, so instead headed for Penrith on its eastern edge. This run was a chance to check out Ullswater, within range on a long run. It was an earlier run than I would have liked, driven by bus and hotel breakfast times, but that may not have been a bad thing as some of the back roads I ran on would have been uncomfortable with any more traffic.

The run was pretty dismal for the first 20 minutes and only gradually improved, with climbing always a bit of a struggle, but developed into something reasonable from about 45 minutes onwards. The views of Ullswater weren't as imposing as I'd hoped, partly because of trees, partly because of cloud (which was to turn into rain for much of the rest of the day). This shore was also lined by campgrounds, most of which I wouldn't have been welcome at because they were signposted 'families and couples only', which was slightly jarring even though I had no intention of staying there; middle-class white males don't have a lot of experience of being on the receiving end of discrimination.

After spending a damp day, largely on buses, I felt somewhat inadequate at the Ambleside YHA, because many of the others there are coming off a 24-peaks-in-24-hours challenge. It's getting harder to find crappy food in Britain than it once was, but the (otherwise excellent) Ambleside YHA has managed it; I think I'll self-cater tomorrow.

Finally got around to taking on Arthurs Seat proper on my last day in Edinburgh, now that its summit is actually below the cloud base. As one might expect this involves some reasonably steep climbing (especially as I went up both major summits), which seemed to go OK. Lacked confidence, however, descending on damp grass, and the flat last 20 minutes were rather lacking in inspiration. I'm still not 100% well, although getting a little closer to it each day (and did manage to get through my talk without my voice giving out, just).

As noted earlier there have been a few throwbacks on this trip to my last visit to these parts in 1989 (in particular one of the conference rooms could have been a classroom at Winchester), so it was fitting that the place I went for dinner last night was playing what was fairly obviously a best-of-1989 CD (most of it songs that never got to the Southern Hemisphere). Some things have changed since then, though, because one of the forthcoming events of the (Protestant) church next to where I've been staying is afternoon tea with their 'friends' from a local Catholic church - in 1989 the big news story was that one of the Scottish churches had expelled one of its senior elders (also, if I recall correctly, either a judge or a government minister) for going to a Catholic funeral - or maybe those attitudes only exist in Glasgow. (I've heard it said that Rangers supporters are not going to stop shouting 'F**k the Pope' at Celtic matches just because they no longer believe in God).

And geographically clueless tourist of the day goes to the person at Edinburgh Castle who thought the small island in the Firth of Forth off Leith was the Isle of Skye. I leave guessing the nationality as an exercise for the reader.

Was hoping to get out into the lower part of the Pentlands but they were a bit too far away, and in the end I decided it wasn't worth crossing the main bypass road for the sake of a kilometre or two, instead looping through the suburbs (must have come very close to the Godders residence) to get the distance I wanted. At its nicest in a 10-minute stretch along a forested valley south of the Royal Observatory (and a European evergreen forest on a grey day can be a very dark place indeed). It rained for quite a lot of this run (on top of 35mm in the last 48 hours) and mud was much in evidence on the unsurfaced patches.

The run itself was a bit more consistent with what I would have expected with post-illness recovery, lacking a bit of energy, especially on uphill sections in the last 30 minutes. At least I've got a voice back now though (just in time for my talk).

Very Edinburgh: standing on one of the bridges yesterday evening waiting for a bus, with the sound of an open-air Rod Stewart concert drifting across from outside Edinburgh Castle.

And I found out the reason why I saw so many police near Holyrood Palace on my run yesterday: the Queen's in town. I didn't see her, but some of the other conference attendees did, and so did Lilian (who's in town too).

C • Bombers 7

I've got a bit more of a voice today (although by no means a full one) and was feeling a bit better otherwise so decided to venture out on a scenic exploration of Edinburgh, which would have been a more scenic exploration of Edinburgh had the city not been swathed in dense fog - into town initially from where I'm staying (about 3km south of the city), down the Royal Mile, then a circuit of Arthurs Seat (or rather where I was guessing Arthurs Seat was). Pleasantly surprised with how well the run went - it was rather slow but felt quite strong, especially on the solid climb around the back of Arthurs Seat (I didn't go to the top - will save that for a day when I can actually see something once I get there - but still got a bit of uphill).

Quite a bit of extracurricular excitement at the conference yesterday afternoon - in the space of 90 minutes we had two fire alarms (in different buildings) and an epileptic seizure.

Having a Rod Stewart concert on the embankment outside Edinburgh Castle was a nice idea but the elements didn't exactly cooperate ('Do Ya Think I'm Soaking?' was the 'Scotsman's take on it).