Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

WMOC model event at Le Prevoux. This is supposed to be the model event which represents the 'hard Jura' (long qualifier 2 and final), as opposed to the 'fas Jura' (qualifier 1). It was still easier going, I think, than France (to some extent this was expected because of the higher altitude). Not as many sinkholes as there were in France, but lots of small features in sometimes vague country. As always, model event day is about seeing what the map interpretations are like, and my scoreboard is:

Green/yellow: excellent, and unusually for central Europe, mapped to summer standard so if it's yellow it really is yellow, not yellow with medium green stripe.
Tracks: some of them are small, and a lot of them are muddy. Wouldn't count on seeing them when crossing - old walls are better for that.
Brown dots: tiny!
Black dots: also very hard to see at times - most of the boulders aren't very big and a lot are covered with moss.

The one concern of the day is that the ground is soft and my Achilles wasn't particularly comfortable pushing uphill on it. Hopefully that's a function of most of the climbing being early on a day when the first few controls were the warm-up.

The racing starts tomorrow: sprint qualifying in the evening, then the final the following day. The town where qualifying is looks pretty bland and I suspect it will largely be a running race, which would be a worry if qualifying in M35 was as brutal as it is in say, M60 (six heats, 14 qualifiers from each).

The public transport system is, unsurprisingly, working pretty well. I'm staying in Biel because I left it too late to get anything reasonable in La Chaux-de-Fonds or Neuchatel, but the way the program has turned out, apart from not having a sprint day at "home", it's almost as convenient a location as either of those two.

C • It's official ..... 6

Travelled to Wengen in the Jungfrau region yesterday. The forecast was not particularly brilliant but it ended up not being too bad - the cloud base was around 3500m, hiding the summits but still allowing plenty of impressive views from the train at Kleine Scheidegg, not least various waterfalls and glaciers and the north wall of the Eiger. The heavy rain started almost as soon as I left town (and proceeded to comprehensively soak me in Zurich).

We were in this part of the world, on the Grindelwald side, in 1981. This was where I first attempted to ski but remember the visit more for two other reasons - the boy who was running around the campground with a broken ski pole making a nuisance of himself to all and sundry and being referred to as the 'Grindelwald terrorist' (terrorism, of the Irish Republican and Italian Red Brigade variety, was much in the news at the time), and Cassie, who was four, reacting rather strongly to what was presumably the wine content of some fondue and treating us to much merriment for the rest of the evening.

Speaking of Cassie, now that it's out there in certain quarters I can mention in public something I've been sitting on for a couple of weeks - I'll be an uncle early next year.

As expected I was pretty stiff this morning, but this eased quickly and it turned into a better run than I was expecting - certainly more strength on the hills than I was expecting (and more than yesterday), not that the hills were as long as yesterday's were.

Zermatt is a place where one could burn a lot of money at a very fast rate (I saw a chalet for sale for roughly A$20 million), but I got a stellar Matterhorn view out my window for $85 a night. It was particularly stunning early this morning, which was completely clear, with the mountain in sunlight and the valley still in shadow.

Really tough mountain runs are not in short supply at Zermatt. I wasn't looking for a really tough mountain run but simply heading up the valley was enough of a challenge, with about 300m climb in 2km once past the end of the village. Levelled off a bit after that. Struggled at times on the steeper parts of the climb, reasonable after that, but didn't have a lot left in the final flattish section in the village coming back. The scenery was as good as you would expect, although there was still a bit of cloud around, which I expected would clear (and it did).

Part of the way along there was a policemen and various other people in fluoro vests above the river - I don't know if that means someone went into the river (it's the sort of river where going in is usually a one-way journey; do I recall correctly that somebody died this way during the multi-day event up here a few years back?). The "mountains toll" seems to occupy a similar place in the Swiss media during the summer to that which the road toll occupies in Australia (and seems to tick over at a similar pace). Among those who have not been added to it over the years were the two Germans who turned up in running gear with the apparent intention of running up the Matterhorn (they ended up finishing their trip in a helicopter) and the Slovenian snowboarder who tried to snowboard down the side and somehow survived a 700-metre fall after parting company with his snowboard halfway down.

The run was really only the prelude for the day, the main activity being walking the Hohbalmen Hohenweg - which takes you up to 2750m (with 1000+m climb in the first 4km) and provides a truly spectacular view of all the mountains. Definitely well worth doing on a day which had just about perfect conditions; the only negative was that my discomfort with heights meant I didn't make the most of the panorama on the highest part of the traverse, looking mostly at the path in front of me and not off to the side. (It is a well-trodden hiking path, but it's only a single-track, across a 60-degree slope with 800 metres to the valley below...).

This ended up being a hard day, perhaps too hard for four days out from WMOC (1800m of climbing, and perhaps more relevantly 1800m of descending). Don't seem to have destroyed my quads (although tomorrow morning may tell me more), but definitely pretty knackered. Somewhat to my surprise, my toe caused me no significant grief, either running or walking.

C • Wow 1

Used this run to clear a minor logistical hurdle, starting it from dropping the hire car off and thus saving myself a 25-minute walk back to the hotel. Dropped down initially to the river and then an out-and-back along it, with the 'back' section taking in the stretch where the later part of Friday's course was. A few niggles, most notably that my about-to-fall-off-for-the-last-month toenail now has an edge which digs into the flesh occasionally on downhills (more so walking than running, which may be an annoyance tomorrow), but not moving too badly. Steady light rain through the run, but it didn't persist through the day as I thought it might.

The rest of the day was devoted to travel, five trains' worth of it (all connections functioned smoothly, as you'd expect given that three of the four connections were Swiss). Now in Zermatt; I don't exactly have the place to myself but then it's popular for a reason. The top of the Matterhorn is in cloud tonight, but the forecast for tomorrow is excellent.

Final day of the 3-day in France. An easier area physically than yesterday - not as many brambles or as much loose rock - and more limestone depressions on a basically flat plateau - an enjoyable area to orienteer in, although still a little on the green side. More errors than yesterday but with one exception they were small ones (the largest was 1.5 minutes at 17). Was struggling a bit for concentration towards the end, and having some difficulty holding a straight line in flat terrain at times (a problem that's afflicted me in Europe before). Probably a bit better than yesterday physically. Not quite as far down as yesterday, but still 7 minutes behind the lead.

The gaps on both sides of me grew so I ended up staying third - the first time I've placed in a European event of any description (apart from a couple of days placings once in a Norwegian multi-day) since winning M18 at the (British) November Classic in 1989. This meant my first exposure to the prizes on offer at European events. I'd heard rumours that a couple of kilos of cheese was involved which might have made things tricky, but it turned out to be a bag of items, all of which are either edible (biscuits), drinkable (mineral water) or potentially useful and not too heavy (car warning triangle and reflective vest, T-shirt and cap).

Even though the result wasn't my main priority here, it was still nice to get one - although if I'm to have any realistic chance of a top-10 result next week then a placing in this company is the minimum standard.

If I was chasing a result the start draw hasn't done me any favours this weekend: in the storm yesterday and early both today and tomorrow, which means no tracking, and this morning also meant fog (not something I'm used to seeing in Europe in July). This weekend, though, isn't really about the result (although I won't complain if I get one), so getting the chance to prepare for WMOC in the most difficult conditions possible is a plus rather than a minus.

Except for one control my fine navigation was functioning very well today. Unfortunately, that one control (#15) cost me a fair bit of time, probably 4-4.5 minutes. It was a textbook Continental terrain mistake - small boulder on a vague slope in green - and was all the more frustrating because I'd successfully made it through the limestone section (which I read reasonably well, but the rock underfoot was hard going). Only other time losses were route choices, most notably 1-2 where I probably cost myself a minute or two by trying to go straight across the slope rather than dropping to a track, not yet appreciating how slow the forest was. Not especially happy with my uphill strength in soft ground, but then I never am when I first arrive.

Two European orienteering features I haven't missed: charcoal burning grounds (the only way I recognised any of them was by the orange and white flags) and yellow that turns into green in summer.

I was surprised how slow this was - even on rock-free legs I wasn't getting much under 7-8 minutes/km. There was a fair bit of undergrowth which slowed things down, but at least I now have a better indication of just how wide it's worth going to use tracks here. (That said, at WMOC's altitude I don't think there will be as much undergrowth as there is here). When you finish with a kilometre rate not much into single figures you worry that you might be totally off the pace, but in fact I was fifth on the day and moved into third overall. There's a bit of space on either side of me so unless either I or someone in front of me screws up I should stay there. Glad I didn't run 21E - I would have been looking at 95-100 (and probably the same tomorrow) which wouldn't have done me any favours at this stage.

Unusually for Europe, I had to hire a car to get to the event areas, so took advantage of this mobility for some afternoon exploring. I was a bit sceptical when one of the main tourist attractions was labelled as the 'source of the Loue' (the local river) - I'm not used to river sources being exciting, but this one was a full-blown river emerging from a cave (limestone country). There were also a few other interesting features, including a narrow-slit gorge of a kind I've previously only seen in Karijini. A few of the features of this landscape (especially the underground rivers) featured fairly prominently in the fantasy worlds I was creating when I was ten, probably influenced fairly significantly by what I was reading at that stage.

I'm planning to be in Zermatt Tuesday/Wednesday. Anyone got good advice for the best runs to do there whilst not destroying myself a few days out from the World Masters? (Runs done with the police in hot pursuit don't count).

First race of this trip, a sprint-style event (but longer) in Besancon - starting in the citadel then moving down into the old town before an easier finish through riverside parks. There was a fair bit of rust early on, both physically and mentally (although I don't think the multi-level 1, where I lost a bit of time, was really mappable); also missed a little at 8 going up a ramp I didn't need to, and was rather tentative on wet steps and pavement, in a run which coincided neatly with a thunderstorm (it wasn't ultimately a race which counted for that much, after all, and I have a somewhat unfortunate history with sprints in the wet). This manifested itself most on the leg down the city wall staircase at 15. Started to stretch out better in the second half and got back the people who'd gone through me from 1 and 3 minutes behind. (I'm running 35s here, but the 21Es had the same course tonight).

Fastest time up when I left was 31, although that was done in the dry which might count for a minute or two. Didn't see what Olivier Coupat (eligible for 35s but running 21s) did. As always with European old town orienteering, it was a lot of fun even if I wasn't especially hapy with my performance.

On another subject, my last reflection from London is on how difficult it is to get a profile in a small sport. One of the people I saw there was an old school friend I hadn't seen since then (in other words 22 years). I knew he'd been active in fencing at a junior level at school, but it turned out he'd had an elite career probably on a par with, say, Shep (captain of Australia, in the world top 50 for a time, narrowly missed out on making the top-32-of-rankings cut for the 2000 and 2004 Olympics) - something I had absolutely no idea of.