Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: WOC 2015 & Scottish 6 days
 

Know now why I was so exhausted last night - sore throat has turned into minor cold and the thought of running a final tomorrow seems all a bit much, and the idea of 6 more days of racing in Scotland overwhelming. Achievement for today was washing Gothenburg marsh mud out of O-gear. Some pairs of socks needed rinsing no less than 6 times and the water was still Coke-coloured. Also Blair & I went for a drive up the coast to the next big island, Tjorn, which is reached by a big bridge (Tjornbron) and at the far end of which are more little villages nestled among the rocks and ferries to further islands (the baby one is called Tjornkalv - I guess it's the 'calf' of the big island). Despite the black cloud which dumped on us as we were driving home, the washing on the line was actually dry :)

C • :-( 1

Same assembly area as yesterday, not as much sogginess, although the first few controls were in the tiny-knolls-between-tiny-marshes section. Picked up the map and could hardly read the detail on the short leg to 1; in hindsight I'd have done better to deliberately aim for the track just beyond, which I bounced off anyway. Not sure what I should have done to 2, which was very junky and I dithered between cliffline and marsh when I should have focused on reading/following the knolls, because the Russian who started 2 minutes after me caught me here and the winner, having started 4 min after, ran through me on the way to 3. After this I saw no one who appeared to be on my course!

4-5 involved taking some steps down the cliffline (5 was obviously a transport control, for that reason) then to 6 was across a hillside which had previously been burned and so the rock patches were bare, the visibility good, and I dropped into the small gully I wanted at the end with no problems. Now into bigger pines; 7-8 was a transport leg across a bridge at the end of the lake but not totally easy - I didn't quite climb the cliff at the right point afterwards. Still wonder if I should have gone across the marsh 8-9 instead of around the end, but this gave me a good attack to 9. Next few controls were straightforward then on the 1km leg to 13 I decided to take the track and approach from the north, then climb the cliffs at the end. I still think this was a good route, and I went up from the correct boulder, but climbed a little too high and was above the cliff line I wanted, dropped to it but didn't go far enough south, panicked a little because I'd only identified 2 lines of cliffs when there were 3 on the map, and bailed back to above the boulder. This time I went far enough south and found the control, then got out of there as fast as I could with some respectable splits on the next couple of controls.

18th on the day, 6 min faster than yesterday despite that 3-4 min mistake (but the terrain was faster, although the winner was a couple min slower - maybe she decided not to try so hard) and with the times added together that makes me 20th in W40 and the top 30ish will run the A final. Clare was 7th today, 8th overall in qualifying. Pity Tash Key isn't here too but she's already back in Australia. And Jo Allison's 4th in W35. She has a *slightly* stronger field to compete against than Susanne did in 2011...

Everyone in our household seems a little shattered this evening after 2 tough days in the forest. Good thing there's a day off tomorrow. Backing up from Sat's final with 6 races in Scotland could be a bit much for some of us!

Oh boy, I hope I never have to do a rogaine in weather as wet as it was for the 3 hours before I ran today! Actually it had just stopped raining by the time I started but everything was awash - the tracks, the marshes, the tiny streams chanelling water from one marsh to the next. So it was good & sloshy, and there was tracking everywhere. I managed to get completely confused fairly early on the long north-easterly first leg - entirely my fault, but I crossed a marsh at a narrow point 90 degrees to where I'd intended to cross, climbed some cliffs without really reading what the contours beyond would do, and then when I found a random boulder panicked and thought I''d overshot the second north-running track when in fact I hadn't even reached it yet. So I turned back to the west, and sure enough I found a track, but there was a medium-sized lake below it! I'd come back to the first track...which would have been an ok route if I'd deliberately taken it from the beginning.

Probably didn't lose as much time on this leg as I'd first thought, because the person who started 2 minutes after me only caught me here (and only gained another 2 min on me for the rest of the couse, despite trying to hang on to Yvonne Gunell for all of leg 3-4). Tracks only got you halfway towards the control anyhow, and then I was oh-so-careful in picking off every little feature - mainly small knolls - on the way to the control. And I employed this approach on all of the other legs, with only a few small wobbles in control circles when I couldn't spot the boulder because it was hidden by greenery. Towards the end of the course some of the small knolls were marked as clearings, having granite underneath, and these were good to read if I kept a close eye on my compass. I couldn't really run through the famous Gothenburg marsh grass anyway, but at least I don't mind having my feet wet. Which is a good thing because in some parts of the finish chute I was up to my knees in mud, mud, glorious mud...

22nd, which is all right, but I'd like to creep inside the top 20. Good race by Clare Hawthorne to come 8th which I think she can improve upon with a cleaner run! I was surprised how hammered my legs (particularly knees) were afterwards and need to find a way of running more efficiently tomorrow and navigating proactively rather than reactively. Vanessa talked about channelling her inner gazelle; perhaps I could find my inner guanaco?

The sun came out in the afternoon so we detoured via the botanic gardens on the way home. Very nicely laid out, extending up a valley between (what else?) two granite ridges. So of course there is a rock garden section, with an artificial waterfall. Pity the rhododendrons have already bloomed, though.

C • inner guanaco 6

The morning was comparatively fine so we drove out to Marstrand, half of a village to the west of our accommodation, at the end of a chain of islands joined by bridges and then you need a ferry to get across 300m to the other half of the village which is overlooked by a 17th-century castle (positively modern, in these parts). All the islands are granite and it's surprising where a tiny red-and white house can be tucked away among bare rock (something like how I think Greenland must look).

This left the afternoon for getting rained on at the model event, around which Blair & I jogged together (an elderly gentleman we met thought one of us was coaching the other!) finding out that a cliff taller than a person can be not mapped at all, as can a decent-sized slab of slippery bare rock. So it's all in the reading of the contours...was nice terrain, with juniper, blueberries and small conifers on the ridgelines and taller greener forest in the not-always marshy valleys. Apparently the topography here is that all the hills run in parallel ridges, with lines of cliffs on their west side and sloping down more gently to the east. Should be fun tomorrow although my hill-fitness is sadly lacking.

C • Surrounds 2

Similar area to yesterday although some more actual route choice on legs, and a couple of big granite hills. The resident meteorologist told us that today was going to remain dry; therefore the heavy shower an hour or so before I ran must have been a figment of everyone's imagination even if it did make surfaces a wee bit slippery and my running extra-cautious. Also it turns out I ran a bit too fast yesterday, and therefore my legs were pretty tired today. The Swiss lady who started a minute after me looked as though she had something to prove and I wasn't surprised to see her coming up after me as I ran through the school, but she didn't actually get past me until after the first hill (somehow I managed 8th fastest split on the cross-country leg - because I actually took the track!) and then seemed not to be taking quite as efficient routes as me after the train line. I was lucky to be able to tail her, and a Belarussian woman, through the next hill section without really having to think, and although they had a better route than me for the next leg an got away from me on the longer leg around the harbour I think I was more efficient at the end and they didn't gain much.

Ended up 14th, to my great surprise. Looking at the splits, I'm still surprised, because I was often in the 20s on each leg, and on pure running speed I should have been 29th as evidenced by my finish split on both days. Surely I lost some time on some routes but maybe it didn't add up to any more than the 40 sec which 13th place was ahead of me. I asked Blair if my result was good enough for me to get some lollies and he said yes so we raided the excellent sweet shop next to the results stand before boarding the ferry with about 200 other orienteers. As with yesterday, I don't quite understand how we were away from our accommodation for about 9 hours in order to spend less than 20 minutes running a race!

C • Lollies 11

Event: WMOC 2015
 

A fairly flat area of smallish newish waterfrontish apartment buildings with courtyards between them, on the other side of the river in Gothenburg. Not a vast amount of route choice but it did help to be able to count; as in: number of buildings passed by. Nearly overshot my 2nd control because of not counting properly but then settled in to a routine of planning exit directions and the leg ahead even before punching - none of the legs were particularly complicated, plus the controls weren't hidden at all. Probably this was done to avoid collisions but I still managed to round a corner and even after looking for traffic, collide with a guy who was running faster than I had expected. Mind you, I was running faster than expected too, and managed to qualify in 13th place (only one heat in W40 and so the top 30-ish go through to the A final).

Gothenburg looks to be a nice city with a working port, and ferries across the river, and historic buildings/gardens etc. But it was a grey rainy day so I got cold and wet when we were walking around town, and was alternately (under my breath) muttering imprecations about the weather and humming songs from last night's concert. Decided the model event and opening ceremony were non-essential and instead headed for the pleasant warm & dry 'summer-house' which Kirsten had booked and which 7 of us will be sharing for the next week.

Chasing start at 15 sec intervals certainly made me run faster than I otherwise might have, but my brain needed to be faster as well. Headed off up the track towards the first control thinking I'd turn left at the 3rd water drop, but somehow I did it at the 2nd...worked it out when getting to the powerline took longer than expected, but this didn't really change my approach to the control. Saw the person who'd started in front of me here, and at 2, 3 & 4 but on 5 & 7 I did some silly things. 2 was straight across a small marsh, 3 I took the track and then had the big grunt up the cliff at the end. Dropped straight down the cliff again after, only to regain that climb on the track towards 4 - should have contoured? Track route to 5 but stupidly I didn't see the control on a cliff (hidden behind a tree) and overshot it, then overshot it again because I was too high and looking for E not W cliff (something I am a bit dyslexic about is east/west on control descriptions) so that was a couple min lost.

7 was the classic downhill danger leg on a steep hillside (which we'd climbed up to get to the start) and which was reminiscent of Hungary. I had no good attack and was very uncertain of my bearing, so stopped to check everything I came across - but was actually on an ok line except that I read an open area of daylight in front of me as the mapped clearing and thought I was too high so turned and went back the other way instead of staying on my line. 4-5 min wasted? After that it was just a downhill slide to the road, with people going past me like I was standing still, then a run-in of about 500m across a specially-made bridge over the river and up a ramp so that we could finish in the middle of the sport stadium. So that was kind of cool, but I ended up 44th on the day and somehow in 38th overall.

Definitely preferred the days where the navigation was more complex, i.e. 1st, 3rd, 4th - which doesn't explain how/why most of my mistakes were elementary ones like a poorly-thought-out route choice or not having a proper attack point. Was a good O-Ringen experience but didn't feel particularly iconic, just like a very large very well organised event. Pity the results display screens failed on the last day. And no, I never did get to see what it's like inside the shower enclosures!

Rather more iconic, in my mind, was the Roxette concert in Gothenburg on Friday night. A really good live show, totally worth waiting about 20 years for, and about 15 000 other people thought so too. A perfect evening for an outdoor concert, and it was even possible to walk back to the hostel afterwards because I just happened to have booked somewhere only about 3km from the stadium.

Finally starting to enjoy myself and today was a middle distance race, so it was almost over too soon. Everything in the forest is green - the ground, the trees, the rocks, the marshes - and it's a bit like being in a green room for a film, where you have to look twice to see anything in 3-D, because it's meant to be invisible. I wouldn't say my run was clean, but I did remain in control (and had been given a tip beforehand about the uncrossable stream between 2 & 3 so took the track). There was a lot of up & over small knolls so it often wasn't possible to take a direct line, and I probably wombled more than I should have. But the only wombling I'm certain of having done was on the shortest leg 5-6 where I found 2 other controls before the one I wanted. And on the way to 13 I suddenly found myself voluntarily going through a swamp which only a few seconds beforehand I'd been intending to avoid. It was a heavily-traversed swamp and one leg sank to well below my knee but I'd tied my shoes extra-tight before the start :) even so, I probably lost a minute or two on that route choice.

34th today which is a bit better although I'm still concerned that it would mean not making the top half of the field for an A final at WMOC. For O-Ringen it means currently 39th overall but anything could happen in the chasing start tomorrow which is at 15-second intervals once you get more than 90 min behind the winner over the past 4 days, which I am well and truly behind. Starting just before the West Yorkshire women, though (my current score is 13/16 the way I see it). Carbo-loaded well tonight at the restaurant at O-Ringen village with the Radfords, who are camping there. I was impressed to see the furniture which various campers have created out of the bits of wood and nails made available to them by the organisers. The sun-lounge may have been a bit optimistic though.

C • Warnings 1

10am start today was much more civilised, especially as the arena was only 45 minutes' walk from the centre of town. Lovely soft forest with rocks the same colour as the moss, and I was feeling quite a lot better today. My compass work still seemed a little random - it's impossible to simultaneously watch map, compass, where I'm putting my feet, and the ground ahead. I wonder which is most important...

It's possible that I may have fluked 1 and 4, it's certain that I did something weird when leaving the track on the way to 2 but worked it out before a 90-degree error had the chance to take proper effect. Was slightly off on the approaches to 3 and 5 but no harm done. Happy with the route chosen on long leg to 6. Misread some yellow and started looking too soon on the way to 9. All of these were small things, but they do add up - not, however, to as much time as was lost on the way to the second-last control by taking the wrong track; I warned myself when I left 10 that I had to be careful which track I popped out on to and was so sure I was past the junction, but no. A quick look at my compass anywhere along that track would have prevented me from going around the wrong hill and looking in the wrong gully. Guess I was getting too excited about being near the end without having made any serious errors - oops. Without that 4-minute blip I would almost have been under 60 and a bit higher up than 43rd today.

I had time afterwards to watch a constant stream of people running across the bridge and to the last control - it was almost hypnotic, like perpetual motion. And there were some really small kids running, in O tops which came down to their knees. (I even saw a dog wearing a customised O top around the arena; a poodle, unsurprisingly.) Tiny kids were incredibly well catered for on the string course, with not only a specially made bridge across the stream but at the end a floating styrofoam pontoon on ropes to ferry them across approx 5m of water; they were even made to wear life jackets for the trip!

In the evening I convinced my accomplices to accompany me to a pizza restaurant which I'd been eyeing off (every suburban group of shops here seems to have a pizza/kebab takeaway, but I don't know when I last saw a fish 'n chips or roast chicken shop). The menu was highly inventive and the food satisfying but none of us saw fit to try the pizza with banana, pineapple, peanuts and curry. I think even Geoff would balk at that one :)

Definitely needed a day off, was feeling a bit flat with nasty cold sore among other things. And anyway, it was raining. Slept in as much as I could decently achieve, and then decided to go for a walk to a small lake which the Uppills had mentioned last night - apparently it's a great place for swimming in summer. Got there and it was still raining and there was no shelter under which to eat my picnic lunch. Maybe it's nicer there in summer? Oh wait, it is summer. By the time of the elite sprint race around the city of Boras (nothing particularly special about this place, it's just a town about the size of Bendigo) in the evening, the clouds had cleared and the pavement dried and the race was quite fun to watch, especially around the park and river, although it would have been good to have a copy of the map in order to know where athletes were coming from and going to.

C • Did you have a swim? 1

Before yesterday Susanne had warned me that, as a late starter, if I didn't see any elephant tracks, then I was probably going the wrong way. Today I was meant to be the one making the tracks but I did a pretty poor job of it.

For a 9am start, it was necessary to get up at 5:30, because of catching the local bus 5km to the O-Ringen village, from which the event buses (people are even allowed to take their dogs on these) leaving in convoys, and I just missed one, headed almost straight back past the centre of town again; 45 min to the event then 15 min walk to the arena, leaving me just enough time to tape ankles before running 2.3km to the start. The (damp, wet) forest was described as being fast running in the white, but I beg to dispute that, because of all the brashings underfoot and small logging tracks which were really just muddy gouges from caterpillar tracks. Not as many rocks today, and generally simpler navigation, but I ballsed up both the longer legs partly through poor compass work - and on 3 overshooting the control ever so slightly and standing on a small spur which was under the control circle instead of the one with the control on it, then going further away and coming back about 5 min later. On the long leg to 10 (great big marsh in the middle of the leg so going left or right seemed to be the choices) I took the track to the right and was running with another woman I'd been seeing since 5, but when I left the track I somehow went north rather than west and so instead of skirting the edges of the marsh, took tracks a few hundred metres further away. Which might not have been too awful except that then at the end of the leg the darker green turned out to be thick regrowth and I skirted it, all the way up the hill and back down again. Feel like my time loss on that leg was 5-10 min; I need to get better at disaster prevention rather than mitigation.

A bit horrified to take twice as long as the winners (obviously some people found it perfectly runnable, but I felt the need to walk much of the forest and my legs will be glad of a day off racing tomorrow) and in 48th place. Not sure why I've bothered doing all this holiday running if it doesn't make me capable of getting through the forest any quicker. Maybe this week will become the terrain running 'boot camp', before WMOC.

C • Money's worth 1

Event: O-Ringen 2015
 

It felt a bit like cheating to get a lift to such an iconic event in a car, but it was with the Radfords, who were reminiscing about all of the O-Ringens they've been to, including some in the '70s*, so this little O-Ringen virgin listened as hard as she could. But in the end it was just another race, although some of the cliches held true, such as people coming up to you in the forest demanding to know where they were (about 500m away from where they thought they were, heh heh heh). Possibly because I had one of the latest starts, after 1pm, the arena didn't seem that busy - not sure what the official numbers are but it seemed to me like *only* a few thousand people - and although it was cool to run down the finish chute in the lane matching the sponsor on my chest number, hardly anyone else was finishing at the same time so it seemed a bit of an anticlimax after having heard so much about O-Ringen for so many years.

Today's terrain was described as having a "distinct wilderness feeling" and although I probably wouldn't have wanted to rogaine around it for 24 hrs, I thought it was lovely forest, not unlike Rocky Paddock in parts, with such soft moss that I didn't have to fear doing an ankle, and subtle contours with occasional big rocks. Oh, and marshes. Possibly I was too tentative because of all that I've heard about people losing their shoes therein, but I took the long way around wherever possible, and in hindsight I think that by going more directly I could have saved between 5 and 10 min.

Something important which I learned today is that most of what is mapped as marsh is in fact in white, i.e. still under tree cover, and is generally not that bad to get through. And I'd already figured that today was primarily about working out how to do it better over the next 4 days. Towards the end I was getting super-hungry and a bit vague and made a daft error where I misread a line of cliffs and got excited about seeing a control, charged towards it saying "that cliff's way bigger than the 1.5m on the control descriptions". Of course it was, it was the wrong bloody cliff, and I took a few minutes to work out that I was too high not too low.

Without that I'd have been closer to 80 mins and closer to my preliminary goal of being halfway down the field (40th is more like 2/3 of the way down; would hate to be in a class with 150+ people). A really good run for me, if I could manage to be aggressive with the forest, might hypothetically be not much over 70; only the top 3 W40s broke 10-minute km today. My secondary goal is now to see whether I can manage to remain ahead of all 4 of the women from West Yorkshire!

*edit: apparently Tony Radford attended his first O-Ringen in 1969!

C • First timer 4

Bridget got me thinking: could I make a map of Gamla stan to go orienteering with? I have the tourist map of course, but it has all the street names on it, and sometimes the names take up more space on the map than the actual street does. So I painstakingly traced the map over on to a not-quite-seethrough paper bag, trying not to let the tiny laneways blur into each other, then set myself a course (acknowledging that not all the fun features like courtyards and fountains would be marked). Running this actually worked pretty well although the map didn't always match the ground - less the fault of my dodgy tracing than because some of the smallest throughways hadn't been on the tourist map. Main route choice errors came because there were 2 parallel lanes running north-south, one of which had lots of side alleyways and the other almost none, and I kept finding myself in the one without options!

Afterwards I hastily stuffed my stuff into my backpack and headed for the station to catch a train towards Gothenburg. It had stopped raining but must have been super-humid, judging by the amount of sweat I exuded. Don't think I was really presentable enough for first class, but it was only about 35SEK more than second (I'd intended to book the 2nd class ticket cheaply online a month ago, but then had no way to print it) - about the price of a cup of coffee, which was complimentary in first although fairly undrinkable. But the associated muffins made a good breakfast. Changed trains at Herrljunga, as did about 200 other people with backpacks and orienteering insignia. Got to Boras at about the time that Geoff got HOME to Adelaide to greet the Dog of Anxiety.

Dumped gear at hotel, wandered off to the arena to watch the opening ceremony, which was of course all in Swedish. Not quite sure why there was a fashion parade of club tops with homemade skirts but think there must be a dressmaking school in town, from which the models were recruited - orienteers can't walk in high heels. Also there was someone spraypainting an orienteering scene alongside the stage while all of the speeches went on. Once the speeches were over, the youth relay began, and it was a reasonable consolation for the fact that I won't get to watch the sprint relay at WOC. 50+ 4-person teams with 2 boys and 2 girls (one of each under-14 and one of each under-16), and the first-named/numbered teams were Vanessa's friends from Galgenen with whom we went orienteering a week ago. So I even had teams to cheer for :)

C • very creative idea. I had t... 1

C • Gamla stan 2

Ever since Malin told me that you can buy Naturpasset permanent orienteering course maps even at nominated pharmacies (apotheke) in Sweden I have wanted to test this fact for myself, because I couldn't quite believe it. The nearest map-selling pharmacy I could identify was at Stockholm's Ostra station, about 3km north of where we are staying, and I felt quite strange going in and asking for a map! The salesperson probably thought I was indeed strange because I gave her back the information folder explaining the Naturpasset concept and ran out of the chemist's with the map in my hand :)

The map covered quite an area of forest with a couple of lakes and a trainline dissecting it. Forest was a bit manky and junky in places, as befits a suburban forest (an abandoned ski run, which appeared to have offered the potential for landing in the lake, was particularly weird), and yet was 'wild' enough to harbour a medium-sized stag which leapt out in front of me. After last night's rainstorm (which was heavy enough for minor flooding to have been reported by today's paper) there were some soggy patches and I was careful where I put my feet, having only running shoes, but the forest didn't seem particularly wet.

I didn't get as far north as the Norra Djurgarden section but made good use of 22 controls (hanging cardboard flags) on the southern part known as Lill-Jansskogen. Couldn't believe how many other control flags were out there, presumably hangovers from other trainings; at one feature there were no less than 5 different flags of varying vintage! Made a couple of daft mistakes until I got used to my compass; really can't tell which way I'm meant to be going on a bearing because the nose of the compass just blends in to the black lines on the map. So I'll have to be very focused on memorising the colours on the Jet rim when I take a bearing. Didn't mind the soft stuff underfoot, although it made me very slow (am expecting to take well over an hour for 4-5km courses at O-Ringen). Was disappointed that the wild blueberries I was running through were rather sour :(

To/from the forest/hostel. By the end my knees were a bit tender (though better than the other day) and I was really hungry.

Later in the afternoon I walked 4km to the nearest laundromat, as identified by the girl in the hostel, only to find that during the summer months it closes at 3pm! What's with places in Sweden closing up over summer, for a couple of months even? I really really hope that there is a laundromat somewhere in Boras and that it's open...

What I did manage to do on the way, however, was to buy tickets to a Roxette concert. I've been seeing the posters all over town advertising their 30th anniversary tour for next Saturday night in Stockholm and was a bit sad that I'll be in Gothenburg by then. But guess where they're playing Friday night? Gothenburg! It's only 20 years since I last saw them in concert (yep, half my life ago) and they were past their best hits already then - but I am still excited.

Figured we needed to do something special for G's last day in Europe. The plan to "go out for breakfast" was somewhat thwarted by the fact that all the cafes open at 9am only had sandwiches on offer (and it's pretty weird to eat salad at that hour). Next came a visit to the Nobel museum - interesting, but far too small, because I would like a detailed description of every laureate's contribution (well, those who contributed to scientific fields, anyway). As it is,a brief summary of the awards from each year is available on touchscreens, and overhead floats a continuous procession of all 800+ names/photos hanging from an endless conveyor belt; I was tempted to watch them all come through but apparently that takes about 6 hours.

At 1pm we hopped on a ferry to Vaxholm, inner heart of the archipelago - and G didn't even protest about getting on a ferry again! I figured this was a way to show him some of the scenery I'd seen on yesterday's run, but it turned out far better than that. Ferries, yachts, tiny motor launches and great big cruise ships were everywhere. Wooded coastlines with granite rocks coming right down to the water and lots of islands; even the tiniest often had houses on them. I was reminded a lot of having caught a ferry from Vancouver to Vancouver Island in 1998. Vaxholm is not at all like Victoria, though - instead it has lots of beautifully painted wooden houses perched on granite rocks, and a really great little restaurant on the water about 1km north of the wharf, with the best cake buffet on display that I have ever seen. You pick your cake from the table, and then you take it to the register and pay for it!

In fact the ferry was like that too - buy your ticket after getting on the boat (a refreshing change from wrestling with ticket machines as the train draws near), but you can't get off without handing over a ticket. We have generally found Sweden to be very trusting (mind you, our tickets were never checked in Switzerland, and we've been surprised by the general lack of safety warnings throughout Europe) but there are warnings everywhere in Stockholm about pickpockets. Maybe the warnings are a community service, like the emu parades of teenagers picking up litter. Once back in Stockholm we wandered around the little connected islands of Skeppsholmen and Kastellholmen, watching the screaming people on the rides at the Tivoli amusement park across the water, and then looking at all of the old restored boats along the waterfront (plus their mailboxes, nailed en masse to bollards, and which I think Kay would like). For some reason I hadn't registered before coming here that Stockholm is so much a city of the water.

We spent the day wandering around a subsection of Sodermalm, looking back at the city across the water, admiring granite rocks unfortunately graffitied (seems to be an universal language) and peering into shops selling a variety of ornamental things which we tried not to break, or clothes far too expensive for me. We tended to gravitate towards bookshops even though most of the contents were in Swedish. I just love a good bookstore and hope they never go out of fashion! Found a nice cafe for lunch - there's a plethora of restaurants in the vicinity - and I commented on similarities to some areas of Melbourne (e.g. Brunswick St). It's probably a good thing that our packs are volume-limited, or I'd be buying gifts for so many people...one thing which puzzles me is the Moomin merchandise everywhere. I'd thought they were Finnish?

In the evening I went for a run from Gamla stan; along the waterfront to the northeast until the first bridge to the island of Djurgarden (not actually its name?) but then I continued along the north bank under the sweet-smelling linden trees until the far end of the island before crossing the water (only a canal at that point) and coming back around the south side of the island, watching a cruise ship heading out to sea and looking at the serious granite cliffs of Nacka (new subway going through the centre of them?), then past the Tivoli/amusement park and various museums. Did a few sprints up a hill I found, which my legs seemed to be ok with but afterwards my right knee really hurt and I had to stop many times thereafter and stretch it out. Think it's due to general tightness but I hadn't thought my ITBs were particularly bad and yet suddenly now my kneecap is grinding on bone again :( Overshot my destination at the very end as an inadvertent route choice error, then decided to go around the block to make it up to 90 min.

C • I ran in the same area yest... 4

We left V's at 8am to catch a train to the airport then flew via Berlin to Stockholm. Yes, Airberlin still give out the chocolate hearts :)

Arrived at the hostel in Gamla Stan, the old town island, about 4 and I had intended to go out for a run but by the time we'd done some food shopping it was raining and the cobblestones quite slippery, so we wandered around looking at the souvenir shops which are of even greater density than in Berlin, but at least they seem to have a better variety of kitsch. There are heaps of restaurants in this part of town so it took a while to choose one for dinner. If I want to run around here I think I'll have to do so pretty early before the tourists infiltrate the area. Kind of wish I had a sprint map, though.

C • Ta da! 3

We had thought about catching a train somewhere such as Luzern, or to the mountains, for a day trip, but the options outside of the Zurich zone were likely to cost about $160 for the two of us to get a return trip to many places. And Etzel, the hill which overlooks Pfaffikon, had been looking at me (being the view from V's kitchen window) for about 4 days now. So I went for a walk. At 1068m it's about 650m above Lake Zurich and took me about 90 min to get to the top via well-signposted walkways (Wanderweg). The last 1km was a bit rough with approx 300m climb, and as a sign below said, 580 steps and lots of tree roots. Nice views from the top; northerly out over the lake and also towards the village of Einsiedeln in the south, and the mountains beyond it.

There was a less steep way down towards the east to the tiny village of St Meinrad (chapel & guesthouse) in a saddle. I was startled at the couple on MTBs who took off in that direction from the top, and hoped not to find them in pieces on the way down; actually, I passed the woman walking her bike but once the path turned from rocks to gravel they took off. On this alternate route I passed a couple of odd things; WW2 bunkers built into the hillside with a line of concrete bollards between them, and a little hut full of bee boxes (entrances like letterboxes) with an elderly gentleman tending them (collecting the mail?). Nice walk by myself even if it did seem awfully sweaty. Knees handled it ok because I had fed them anti-inflammatories.

In the evening we introduced Tobias to the concept of baked potatoes, Aussie style. I suggested piling up a mountain of the toppings and he saw fit to add snow, I mean sour cream.

C • Etzel 1

C • I love a good Wanderweg 1

Vanessa & I ran from Pfaffikon to Galgenen (Tobias' mum's place) via small bits of forest, some steepish little hills one with a nice little church on top (V powered up like I was standing still), and past a number of dairy farms. All the cows have bells although not as large as those on the cows up the Alp, and I do like the fact that there are numerous fields among the blocks of apartments.

The plan thereafter was to attend an outdoor church service at Tobias' aunt's farm at Brunnen, where the cows spend the summer (although sadly we didn't get to see them because they were in the barn - apparently the sun is too hot for them), so some of us drove halfway up and then walked the rest, while the more mechanically-minded among us got to drive the 60-year old tractors! The 120 or so guests were greeted by Alphorn-playing which resonated across the mountains. It surprises me how many notes can be produced by such a simple instrument. About 20 tables (with beach umbrellas) were set up on the grass on a hillside looking towards the mountains where we orienteered on Friday, and it was possible to order beer or cider even before the service! Afterwards there was a barbecue with piping hot Wurst and plentiful salads & cake (and coffee which was basically Schnapps), and because my knees were unhappy I hitched a ride back down to the cars with my favourite tractor-driver :)

In the evening we walked across the lake-bridge to Rapperswil with Vanessa & Tobias and ate dinner at a waterfront Italian restaurant, below the castle. I ordered the Vesuvius, which was like a calzone except that instead of the pizza being folded in half, it was a volcanic mountain piled up in the middle!

C • Theres a lovely photo of yo... 4

G & I spent a day which would have astounded Kay with its laziness - I think the only thing we achieved was distracting Vanessa from study. Going up & down stairs was hard work today! After an evening dip in the lake (rather choppy, and water weed-y) V & I felt cool enough to go for a recovery jog in the nearby forest, which was punctuated by our humorous attempts to do strength & agility type stuff on the fitness course.

This was something else - an extraordinary day out and quintessentially Swiss, and it may be impossible to top among my orienteering experiences. It was also bloody tough!

We drove the one-lane road along the Wagitaler See to the far end of the lake which is at about 900m altitude, then with some of the juniors from V's club (oh goodness, if I thought I didn't speak Schwabisch, I really don't speak Schwyzer-Deutsch!) G & I spent the next hour and a half following a farm track & walking path uphill to about 1500m, with magnificent views of the Alps getting closer above us and the sound of tinkling cowbells doing likewise. Once we were above the treeline, the cows manifested, so bucolic and bovine that they could be patted and one of them licked my tasty sweaty rump. We veered left below the saddle and stopped at a cluster of huts where the farmers live for the summer to mind their cows and where a cable pulley allows for bringing essentials up the mountain. Also where some controls had kindly been put out for us - even with SI units - in a very tricky area of open limestone which had been used for Swiss O week in 2009.

I was really looking forward to the challenge but wasn't even at the first of the controls on the bare rock slopes when my fear of heights manifested. It's a bit unnerving when you're balancing on a knife edge of sharp rock, which is too small to have been considered significant by the mapper, and yet there seems to be no way forward or back; possibly down but that would lead to a crevice which might have either a rock bridge across it or a sinkhole in the bottom. I stood and gibbered for a bit then decided that I just had to be really careful, I mean wussy, and take the long way around each time, otherwise I wasn't going to get to enjoy the amazing scenery I'd come all this way for. And it was truly beautiful with all the alpine flowers among the heather and between the rocks. Generally I took the heather option, because even an open area of rocks has rows of tiny sharp knife edges which I'm not good at balancing on, and so I was super super slow (V took about half an hour for this section of the course, which took me an hour and a half then I called it quits and came off the mountain because they were bringing the controls in) but this gave me time to look over at the huts and cows in the next valley beyond the pass and the snow still in patches on the next range of mountains, where apparently there is a glacier.

The descent was pretty hard on my knees and there were plenty of stops to take photos down over the lake, pick wild strawberries and fill up with drinking water at the many free-flowing troughs along the way. We couldn't have had a more Heidi-like experience in the Alps (although the well-loved cliche-strewn books don't relate whether she went orienteering).

C • Sounds magical! 4

We left the pleasant little hostel in Ulm (beds for 20 people max) about 9am to catch a bus to the station then a train to Schaffhausen. I'd been tossing up between going there vs the Bodensee (Lake Constance) so was surprised that the train's route took us first south to Friedrichshafen and then west along the northern edge of the Bodensee, anyway. At Schaffhausen station I managed to change my Euro into Swiss Francs while buying tickets to Zurich, but balked at paying 8 CHF each to store our bags in lockers, so convinced G that we could take them with us on the bus to the Rheinfall (Rhine falls).

Probably not the smartest of ideas, since there was a steep downhill to the river which we'd have to come back up, but the falls were fairly impressive (Europe's answer to Niagara?) and well touristed. We walked across the bridge above the falls towards the castle but it turned out that 5 CHF was required to enter that side so we said "bugger it" and ate our picnic lunch on a park bench before catching the bus back to the station, then train to Winterthur where we could begin to use a Zurich region all day ticket, then we 'accidentally' got on an intercity train which stopped only at the airport before reaching Zurich Hauptbahnhof, otherwise we'd have been late to meet Vanessa.

V had arranged to go to some O training and had worked out the timetables, which involved catching a train and then a bus back towards Winterthur (we marvelled at the planes flying in to land, appearing so close above the forest) and afterwards a bus and train back to the central station, where we retrieved our packs and caught the train to Pfaffikon, arriving about 9pm. But somehow it had seemed an easier day than Monday. I realise though, that we caught no less than 11 different installments of public transport in the one day. Can anybody top that?

What they call continental European forest, on the edge of a village. I opted for the map version with tracks, and then proceeded to follow some very bad bearings between tracks - still getting used to this compass. I found it difficult to run in the forest, either because of the knee high blackberries (Vanessa looked at me blankly when I mentioned this, but her knees are a little higher than mine) or the young saplings in what may or may not have been mapped as light green, but either way was almost impossible to push through when hunting in the wrong place for a control. Which I did a few times. I finally got into the nicer part of the map with pine forest but then had to call it quits so that we wouldn't be late for the bus. Given more time I'd have finished the course, but it was probably good for my pack-carrying hip flexors that I didn't do so.

C • public transport 3

The cool change came through late yesterday and so we slept much better - also slept in - and the morning's task was to do the rest of the washing; no hardship as there was a market just across the street (theoretically a farmers' market, but I'm pretty sure papaya, among other things, isn't grown locally) and so we wandered around deciding what we wanted for dinner (fresh ravioli) and comparing the various berries for sale.

For future reference (some of which I knew already):
Erdbeeren = strawberries
Himbeeren = raspberries
Brombeeren = blackberries
Heidelbeeren = blueberries
Johannisbeeren = currants (black or red)
Stachelbeeren = gooseberries
Yesterday we picked the tiny wild strawberries which taste like bubblegum, but I can't remember what Susanne called them in Swedish. Do they have a German name?

The afternoon was spent writing postcards, which we had been procrastinating on doing while there was a postal strike in Germany. Once they were safely on their way to Australia, I went for a run. Upriver this time, and after about 15 min I got to where the Iller runs into the Donau, and followed the Iller-Radweg gravelled cycle path, through a strip of forest between farmland and the river. River must have been pretty shallow since people were wading on the shingle banks and someone was convincing their horse to go right across.

This run took place entirely in Bayern, since the state border is the west bank of the Iller. I came back via a road into town, and found the place where people were training for the Ulmer Kanu-Slalom to be held this Sunday; a permanent slalom course which has been created in a tiny man-made canal which parallels the Iller. The water was moving at a reasonable pace and some of the smaller kids were struggling to get their kayaks to go upstream. I sat and watched for a bit - so that I could tell Amber :)

Also I found a fortification embankment/wall which curves around the south side of Neu-Ulm and has a nice park alongside, so I followed the park and found myself about to gatecrash an outdoor symphony concert. But the orchestra was still tuning up, so that's ok. After dinner I took G back there as people were leaving the amphitheatre, and we read the information boards which said that the wall, which went around the whole of Ulm and Neu-Ulm, was finished in 1859. This surprised me, since the twin towns had been in separate states since 1810. But perhaps there was a joint goal of keeping the French out?

C • Smultron 5

After 20 minutes' running along the river flats, my legs felt pretty good so I decided to do intervals. Not sure that my lungs and core muscles were really up to it though, and I took a long time to catch my breath in the 'recovery' bits.

Why, may you ask, did I choose to stay in Ulm? Well, because neither Stuttgart nor Munich are on the Danube. But as it turns out, we are staying in Neu-Ulm, which is not technically the same as Ulm at all. Dear me, no, it's the suburbs on the wrong side of the river; in fact, it's in Bayern (Bavaria). Apparently so was Ulm, once upon a time, but then the river became the border between the states. So half of this run took place in Bavaria and the other half, after I'd crossed the river, in Baden-Wuerttemberg.

The latter part included a detour through the old town; I have never seen so many nicely-painted Fachwerk-Haeuser in such close proximity to each other. One, which is on a bit of a drunken lean over the Blau stream, is apparently officially in the Guinness Book of Records as the crookedest hotel in the world (the Schiefes Haus), but I don't know what the competition was like. Also I did a bit of sparrow-spotting; sparrow statues are to Ulm what bears are to Berlin.

In the afternoon G & I caught the train to Blaubeuren and walked through the town to the Blautopf, a sinkhole from which the Blau stream wells up and from whence it makes its way 20km downstream and into the Danube. The lake was a beautiful blue colour, but absolutely tiny compared to the Blue Lake at Mt Gambier. We also climbed uphill to a limestone crag with a good lookout over the town and river valley. I'm pretty sure that Amber and Susanne, and possibly Fern as well, have all done the same thing about 10 years ago?

C • Yep 3

This turned out to be basically a transit day - I didn't want to spend 6-7 hours on the train towards the south of Germany, so decided to fly for a similar price. This meant leaving the apartment before 7am for a 9am flight Berlin-Stuttgart (we caught the suburban bus to the airport, passing by all the fancy shops on Kurfurstendamm) but from Stuttgart airport we had to catch one train into the city, another from there to Ulm, and then bus to the hostel which we eventually reached about 3pm. After a late lunch we somehow fell asleep for a couple of hours (having not had a great deal of sleep, what with the thunderstorm and high humidity the night before) and in the evening finally did our washing, which success was marred by the subsequent discovery that 3 pairs of socks have now turned into singles and a favourite t-shirt of mine is also missing :(

Train trip from Stuttgart was interesting as the route gradually climbed east up a river valley, then over the Schwabisches Alp range of hills (not unlike the Mt Lofty Ranges in altitude) and down to the Donau (Danube). From Ulm it's only about 2500km downstream to the Black Sea...

By the time we got home last night at 11pm my feet were absolutely killing me after spending so long on pavement, but we had seen:
400+ of Salvador Dali's artworks, 90% of which were plain weird and the rest just odd (but I expected that);
a very good exhibition about the Berlin Wall, including how life progressed in the time after it came down - this was tucked away in a shopping centre arcade off Potsdamer Platz and it took us a while to find, but it was completely free;
the Topographie Des Terrors outdoor exhibition, also free, which summarised the timeline and activities of Nazi Germany fairly thoroughly;
The amount of kitsch for sale in the vicinity of tethered High-Flyer balloon and the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, so we ignored those but couldn't avoid getting shafted by somebody who claimed to be collecting for a deaf charity (conveniently she was unable to answer any questions about its validity);
the amount of work currently taking place on Museuminsel, the impressive Berliner Dom cathedral and the palace being rebuilt in the original design (apparently it was replaced by an architectural monstrosity during the Soviet era);
lots and lots of tour boats on the River Spree and lots of hen's/bucks' day groups, both on and off the boats;
the kids who provided 'background music' while we were having dinner at an outdoor restaurant on the river and who then came around, cap in hand, to request financial appreciation;
the DDR museum which is set up to be fairly hands on with examples of the way life was 1945-1989 and which is fairly disparaging of the regime;
the enormous Alexanderplatz subway station at 10pm, and by some random extension of yesterday's fluke, Karina cramming into a crowded carriage right next to us and apologising for treading on my foot, so we arranged to have Sunday breakfast with her.

I went for a run beforehand and it started out truly awful because of how stiff & sore I was; not just in legs but stomach, back, shoulders feeling all completely fatigued. So it became: run 3 min, stop & walk or stretch 1 min; repeat until a reasonable amount of ground covered then turn and head for home. By which time I was in the Tiergarten, marvelling at the multitude of Maulwurfshuegel. Do the moles not get suffocated when churning through that amount of dirt? Also I found a tree which had been turned into a small shrine to Michael Jackson. That was kind of weird.

After leisurely breakfast with K we decided to walk no further than the Zoologischer Garten and aquarium which are just across the road. I haven't been to the zoo since going to Taronga with Amber & Tyson on the way to Aust champs 2001 (unless you count watching the JWOC 2007 sprint @Dubbo) and this seemed a comparatively shady way to spend the afternoon. My feet still really hurt after 4+ hours walking around, though.

Karina's mum had pointed out from their window the view of the 'Goldener Elsa' as the Berliners call her, on top of the Siegessaule monument in the roundabout at the middle of the Tiergarten, so I went there - via a roundabout route which determined that the nearest Laundromat is 20 minutes' run away, so too far to easily walk with a load of washing - and from there I decided to go see the Brandenburg Tor, where I stood and tried to imagine a wall going up next to me and dividing the city. There's a bit of a Wall installation in Potsdamer Platz which I had a quick look at, but the installation/memorial which took hold of me was the one I found on the way back in Tiergarten Strasse, to the victims of the systematic extermination of people considered to be defective (mentally or physically or socially). No wonder I am not a fan of the term euthanasia even though its meaning is a *little* different these days. Anyway, it was a fairly detailed informative memorial which was a bit hard to focus on through my tears and so it took me about half an hour to read everything in both German & English, and I think now I'm a bit sunburnt.

I think also we'll stick to newer history for the rest of the day - the DDR museum about life in East Germany (complete with Trabants, of course) and Mauer museum/Checkpoint Charlie. Probably not surprising that the soundtrack to U2's 1991 Achtung Baby album - partly recorded in Berlin, and the live ZooTV tour for it included a Trabi in the stage show - is running through my head...although it's showing my age when I admit to considering that one of their newer albums!

C • trabbi 2

C • Good to get it in early 3

We have rented a small apartment in West Berlin, just south of the Tiergarten, for 4 nights, so I went out in search of a Laundromat but sadly the place which the owner had pointed out to me on the map turned out to be a dry cleaner's. After that I checked out where the buses to the airport go from the Zoologischer Garten station (relevant for Monday morning) and ran around behind the zoo, saving the main Tiergarten for another - hotter - day.

The day was spent mainly window-shopping in fancy department stores (we are all of 400m from Kaufhaus Des Westens), reading English-language newspapers once we'd finally tracked some down, tracking down and photographing Berlin Buddy Bears (there is a genuine one in our street, but also lots of copybears around. Also lots of merchandise; I particularly liked the t-shirt which said "Ich bin ein BEARliner") and then at the end of the day, as we wandered into the supermarket to buy some milk, I caught sight of Karina, our friend from Canberra!

This wasn't entirely coincidental as I'd known that she & her elderly mother were to be spending this week in Berlin (at the end of an extended German holiday) and that they'd be staying in this district - but I didn't have the exact address. Now I do, because we went back to their apartment and swapped holiday tales for the evening. More interesting to me though were K's mother's tales of life in East Berlin aged 7, when in 1945 the Russian tanks came through and her family ended up being obliged to provide accommodation for 18 soldiers, who handed over their rations for her mother to cook, and then insisted that the children of the house be fed first. She says bluntly that this is the reason she's alive today, because of having been fed by the Russian officers.

From the hotel to the Aussenalster and, with numerous other people, around its perimeter. Then up through Planten un Blomen to the Fernsehturm at the top end of the gardens and back down between the lakes. A warmish morning but the breeze off the lake was nice.

The newspaper which I read out to Geoff last night (not so much translated as paraphrased) was full of the impending heatwave (apparently if it makes 38 in Hamburg as forecast on Sat that will break an 1992 record) and of the dangers to the public of swimming in the Alster (blue-green algae) or the Elbe (whacking great ships which will run you down) even though it's hot and you would really really like to go swimming...

Also it appears that Hamburg is gearing up for a bid for the 2024 Olympics. But I don't have time to find out any more about that because we are shortly catching a train to Berlin.

Spent a lovely couple of hours on a flat-bottomed boat last evening, starting from the Jungfernstieg and touring the little Binnenalster lake then the larger Aussenalster then up a number of fairly shallow canals and around a couple of islands with large houses on them (the tour guide was keen to point out the price per square metre) and back across the Alster lakes. Lots of people out sunbathing or picnicking on the waterfront, paddleboarding (one lady had 2 small dogs with her, both wearing lifejackets) paddleboating. By the time we had walked back to the hotel - fairly basic, but clean, which is more than can be said for the street outside; we are in an area where the street is home for a few people - it was 11pm so we didn't hurry to get up Wed morning.

After generic hotel breakfast/coffee (if ever I look back through my diaries of childhood family holidays, it seems that I talked mainly about the food) we walked over to the Speicherstadt - warehouse district from the 17/1800s - and found the Minuatur-Wunderland, where we spent at least 3 hours marvelling at the miniature worlds on display. So much attention to detail, and a minor obsession with trains and fire engines, all of which travelled around the displays (powered/guided by electro-magnets?). The creators definitely have a sense of humour too, as evidenced by the parade of nuns which turns into a parade of penguins, halfway up an Austrian mountainside. Not sure whether I was more amused by this or the naked sunbathers (all of 1cm tall) hiding in a sunflower field!

But the highlight of the Miniatur-Wunderland has to be Knuffingen airport, where scale models of planes move around the airport and even take off & land (ok, so you can see the rods guiding them, but the sounds are realistic). Sorry Tyson, that we went here without you! Every 15 minutes the entire place cycles through a nighttime phase so you can admire the night time lighting, which is very cool, but it does mean missing out on some of the little details of the 'land' you're in. There's so much to see, that if we had taken mum with us, I think she would still be in the first room...as it was, I wished I'd taken my glasses with me.

Once back out in the sunlight we lunched at a café then walked along the waterfront, observing the floodgates which can be closed at extra-high tide to prevent the main city area from being inundated. We picked a port-cruise boat at random (they seem to be a dime a dozen) then were afforded some extra excitement by the captain's rescue from the Elbe of a woman who seemed to have intentionally gone swimming therein. The cruise itself takes you into the working port and up close & personal with the container ships, which both G & I felt were well worth seeing.

Afterwards we'd thought of catching the train back but there was a big statue up on the hill - of Otto Von Bismarck with a goat on his head, if I understand the signage correctly. But it may just be that the statue was consigned by him and/or the goat may have been a later addition? We then walked through various sections of Planten un Blomen, the botanic gardens and associated parks, before turning back for the hotel, via the causeway between the Alster lakes, and up past the massive Hauptbahnhof, sussing out some restaurants for dinner (settled on Italian, and then ate steak).

C • Dogs on Paddle Boards 1

C • night time? 1