Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

First swim for a while, in a local outdoor pool in a small place called Ranea (about 30km north of Lulea), a couple of hours into the drive. (In case you're wondering how I found it, my original thoughts were to look for one in Lulea, but the local council website covered the whole commune, not just the city, and Ranea came up). Quite a busy precinct as there was a mountain bike race starting nearby, but the pool itself was quiet. No lanes marked and got a few turns wrong, but otherwise good to be in the water, even though it felt as if I was flailing around a bit.

It was quite a long day on the road - Skelleftea-Lulea-Gallivare-Kiruna-Narvik, through mostly pleasant forest country until Kiruna, then increasingly mountainous and scenic on approaching the Norwegian border (my standard procedure on this stretch was to make a photo stop whenever I looked like getting stuck behind a slow-moving caravan). The Gallivare-Kiruna region is mining country, in the sense of digging stuff out of the ground in vast quantities. (Elsewhere in northern Sweden the mining that's happening is of vast quantities of data - the combination of a cold climate, cheap, mostly renewable electricity, and good communications makes it a good place for data centres; I think Facebook have set up somewhere around here).

Had to dodge reindeer a couple of times coming out of Kiruna - they have only slightly more road sense than kangaroos.

Achilles, which has been fine most of the trip, was a bit touchy today, especially after long stints in the car.