Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Significantly more humid today (the difference between a dewpoint of 21 and one of 24 is very noticeable), and I thought my original aim of 90 minutes might be a struggle, so decided to commit myself to something like 65-70 and see how I felt. Headed north and then north-west, initially through the city (under a few elevated roadways - the anti-Skyrail people wouldn't cope too well with Guangzhou, although I suspect most of them don't cope too well in general with years which start with a 2) but ending up in a nice park surrounding a lake, meaning an essentially traffic-free middle 20 minutes or so.

Coming back, I was to remind myself that a good way to see a foreign city is to get lost. On this occasion, my navigational misadventure was to hit a road running SW-NE rather than the one that I thought I was hitting, running W-E; I then couldn't make things fit the map (although as it turned out I was running on the other side of the same road I'd been on on Monday), and ended up using a Metro station to relocate. (Another few hundred metres and I'd have reached the zoo, which I certainly would have recognised). That wasn't quite the end of my route choice misadventures, as what looked like a short cut on the way back ended at a boomgate and a sign 'Military Administrative Area'; I beat a hasty retreat. Ended up getting close to the 90 minutes anyway.

Don't think I was quite getting full value for my kilometres from the Garmin in the concrete jungle (or perhaps the green jungle for that matter), but this wasn't a fast run. Held up OK though given the conditions. The extension placed me firmly in the middle of peak hour, with some interesting traffic conditions. Also spotted two people handing out flyers outside a station; if I was at home I'd have a fair idea what they were doing, but I suspect handling out those sorts of leaflets outside a station in this part of the world would quickly result in an invitation to have a deep and meaningful conversation with the Public Security Bureau.

The meeting finished at lunchtime which allowed some time to explore a few neigbourhoods, both in the older part of town (where we stayed in 2004) and the rising centre to the east, none of which existed in 2004 but now plays host to three buildings in the 400+ metre range (one elegant, one reasonably graceful and one spectacularly ugly monolith) - in this part of the world, if it's decided that the CBD is going to move 8km or so to the east, that's what happens. Made some good use of the Metro too, including exercising a certain amount of brute force to get myself off a peak-hour train (when in Rome do as the Romans do....) - having successfully negotiated the Sao Paulo metro with a pack at peak hour this was pretty tame.