Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Biggest dilemma here was the timing. I was staying at a very nice hotel in central Helsinki - turns out it was the one BJ and Leea stayed at on their wedding night. (I'm guessing that it costs a fair bit more than the 94 euros I paid if it's a Tuesday night in October; you can often get some very good deals at hotels in Nordic cities on weekends, especially in summer). I wanted to take full advantage of the breakfast (so didn't want to run after it), but also didn't want to get up super-early because of the late night last night. This all ended up as a 7am wakeup and running without eating anything, unusual for me.

The plan was to head north into "Central Park" (actually a strip of forest running north-south which extends to within about 3km of the city centre). I didn't quite get my direction right heading out but reoriented myself, not for the first time on a Helsinki run, using the public transport map on a bus shelter. This run was another bit of progress towards normality, though faded a bit later on, probably because of the aforementioned non-eating (whether this would have been an issue had I joined BJ and Gareth in having massive T-bones last night is unknown).

It's definitely holiday time; the amount of traffic in central Helsinki at 8am was at levels I'd consider light for a Sunday morning in Melbourne. Spent the rest of the day doing not terribly much (the "not terribly much" including some relaxing at a local beach in what became a delightfully sunny afternoon). The one post-World Cup sign was two men walking down Esplanadi at lunchtime blowing red, yellow and black vuvuzelas; I suspect it was a different story in Berlin.

Flying out late tonight (via Singapore). Should be home Wednesday morning.

Late afternoon run with Gareth and BJ from BJ's place in the northern suburbs of Helsinki, mostly on forest tracks with a bit of bare rock thrown in. Continuing a slow climb back from last week's bad patch; the others dragged me along faster than I've been going on runs of this type for a while, but didn't handle it too badly. Learned quite a bit about BJ's various business ventures (mostly involving taking videos from innovative mobile platforms, aerial and otherwise) - he seems to be doing very well. (Lots more potential for orienteering coverage once issues with battery life are resolved - at the moment they have only about 10 minutes for their copters so they couldn't be used to, for example, follow a whole course).

The build-up to this run hadn't been the most relaxed of days, starting with a near-miss on the freeway approaching the airport (someone moved into my lane while I was alongside them, meaning I had to take an instant decision to move into the next lane and hope there was nothing there). Venice airport, far too small for the traffic it gets, has relegated LA and Heathrow (Terminal 5 excluded) one place each on my list of the worst airports in the developed world - I arrived 1 3/4 hours before my flight and by the time I got through the check-in and security queues the flight was boarding. More surprisingly, Helsinki was chaotic too; I guess on a Sunday afternoon in mid-July a lot of people were coming home from summer holidays.

The reason for the Helsinki stopover is that I'd realised that if I went straight through, I'd be in the air when the World Cup final was on. Instead I watched it with BJ and Gareth (and many others) in a central city bar. The World Cup is a truly global event and that's reflected in where I've watched its finals - three of the last five in Finland, with the other two being in an Edinburgh pub (2010) and listening to it on the radio in a tent in the Yukon (2002). Also memorable from my point of view was Argentina's last win, in 1986 - the ambassador's residence was across the road from my school and the celebrations (including some horn-blowing blockies) were certainly in full swing by the time we arrived for the day.

Last day of the 5-days of Italy (of which I missed two because of IOF meetings). This was on essentially the area used for the first loop of the courses yesterday, except that we climbed the mountain in our first few controls rather than between the pre-start and start (in fact our course had a fairly similar structure to the women's WOC course once we got to the top).

This was by no means a great run but I was definitely happier with it than some earlier in the week. Still didn't have the strength to run the big climbs but didn't feel as awful on the little ones as in the last few days, and was running with a little bit of fluency in the terrain after feeling as if I was on tip-toes on Sunday and Tuesday. The biggest mistake was about 90 seconds on 4, a very annoying one on a short leg - it was a high point next to a black loop which I took to be a circular cliff but was actually a sinkhole. The others were about 30 seconds apiece on 2 and 6. Nicer terrain than I expected, although slow, and the green was less green than I expected - quite enjoyed myself this morning in general.

And no European orienteering trip is complete without a control on a charcoal burning ground...

It was then on to the WOC relay (as with yesterday, I watched the women's race in the open and then worked in the TV van for the men's). The women's relay was a bit disappointing but perhaps not surprising when we needed to call on an under-prepared reserve (a reminder that we need to take the position of relay reserve seriously), but we can still take back a lot of decent results from this week, including the sprint relay, Hanny's two top-15s, Rachel's sprint and a near-career-best from Jules. We also achieved what I regarded as our major objective - to make sure we get two men next year.

WOC itself went off without too many hitches, although not without a certain amount of Italian last-minute organisation. I'd be interested to know how they made the finances work; there didn't seem to be much commercial sponsorship so I can only assume they got a fair bit of money from provincial or local government.

Final sign that I've got WOC very much on my mind: with a certain amount of imagination, I was thinking that the water going down the shower plughole was producing a set of noises which sounded similar to listening to Per Forsberg in his more excitable moments, from 200 metres away in the opposite direction to that in which the speakers were pointing....

Didn't get out today - no public event and was involved in meetings before going out to WOC. Spent a bit more time in the great outdoors (as opposed to the TV van) today - Clive handled the women's race and then I took over for the men's. I also did the voiceover today, which seemed to work reasonably well once I got going (a few hesitations in the early stages), even if I did make reference to a country which ceased to exist in 1993.

It was another impressive result by Hanny, considering she wasn't running this race until a day or two ago. Jules can also be happy with his day's work (and there was another notable outside-Europe result with Emily Kemp's 11th). Our other objective is also fairly close to being achieved - our men will be promoted unless they have a disaster (and even if they failed to score they'd probably have at least a 50-50 chance of making it), though the faint chance that our women might be promoted to division 1 seems to have gone. The closest battle is a straight head-to-head between China and Japan for the second promotion place from division 3 (NZ have wrapped up the first), which will hopefully be more sedate than this.

Probably not quite as horrible as yesterday but still pretty ordinary. Set out with the aim of doing an out-and-back on Svetlana Mironova Road, but couldn't find its start on map memory so settled for essentially the loop of the lower Lavarone villages. Still feeling rather clogged up but I shouldn't be this week just for a minor cold.

IOF Congress was mostly pretty uncontroversial this year (the closest votes were over whether to give the Council the power to appoint all WOC organisers, a fairly academic point given that it's getting on for a decade since the last contested WOC bid, and over changes to Council terms). The most bizarre intervention was from the Spanish delegate at yesterday's seminar who somehow managed to work opposition to Catalan independence into a debate on whether or not rogaining should be recognised as an official IOF discipline.

Lavarone, apart from WOC, is a remarkably quiet place - the lake has a couple of beaches but I haven't seen a non-orienteering soul there, even on the sunny days. I notice the hotel rates increase next week so maybe that's the start of the holiday season. There's also not really anywhere to eat other than the hotels; went across the street tonight and ended up eating with Garry Morrison (South African OF president). This also meant I had the slightly odd experience of using South African rand to pay for a dinner in Italy (Garry paid on his card and I paid him my share by offloading my leftovers from last year's trip).

My running is badly out of sorts at the moment and today was particularly out of sorts - trying to squeeze something in before a long day of meetings and WOC finals, but struggling with even the slightest hills. It was also very slippery underfoot after yesterday's rain - not sure if that was a major issue for the WOC runners.

Then it was onto the WOC itself. I ended up spending a lot of it inside a broadcast van - the way it's working is that we're doing a 30-minute highlight package, which means Clive and myself sitting in the van identifying footage as it comes up which can be edited into a package, then that's edited into the package, then a voiceover is done for it. Clive's been doing that so far but I will probably do Friday, and maybe Saturday. We didn't finish until about 8pm (and then had the pleasure of going back to the car in a hailstorm).

IOF/media race - the principal purpose of which is usually to remind everyone that Havard Tveite would still be a very useful addition to a lot of WOC teams (possibly including his own, given their result on Monday).

It rained heavily through the day (I think the final score was about 55mm, definitely the most I've experienced on my birthday). The event fell into the only decent dry window of the day, but the forest was still saturated and very slippery in places. I didn't cope well with the steep slippery slopes, and continued to struggled with my running more generally. There were also a couple of mistakes late (one on a classic central European bingo control, a wall in the green which was about ankle height).

5-Days sprint in Levico Terme - first two-thirds through the old town before a fast downhill finish through parkland to finish. Lost 15 seconds or so on 1 after mistaking an index contour across a gap for a wall and therefore missing a short cut, but then settled well and got through the first half OK. Became scrappy then, though - three successive small time losses on 9-11, 9 through not seeing that there was no way through where I thought there would be (though plan B wasn't horrible), 10 through starting down a ramp I shouldn't have, 11 through being a bit unsure where the forbidden area was. Probably about 45 seconds across the course. Ran better than I thought I might on the warm-up, and being first starter meant being first finisher (which earned me some more kind words from the commentator), but there were three former WOC medallists in today's field (Alain Berger, who won my first "JWOC", was the extra), and the leaders were just under 15.

The it was on to Trento for the sprint relay - definitely a spectacle although it was fairly straightforward technically. An impressive effort by the team, especially the two women (Rachel for giving us a great start - she's had a good week for someone who lives more than 1000km from the nearest ISSOM sprint map - and Hanny for bringing us home well).

The rain which had been threatening all afternoon started properly during the last leg, and became torrential immediately afterwards - it was slippery enough as it was (with quite a few crashes), but would have been diabolical 15 minutes later. (For anyone who's wondering, 9mm was the magic number).

And, leaving aside the small matter of a WOC race in Trento, the big story of the day was Jonas Merz scoring his first ever win over his big brother. I think Matthias is coming to tomorrow's Foot Commission meeting so some pertinent sledging may be in order :-)

This was the first forest race I've done in italy, and I had a lot of trouble getting into the terrain - limestone country where it wasn't always that easy to tell what was up and what was down (with various lines of WW1 trenches to add somethign to the mix). I was never navigating with any real confidence, and probably dropped 5-6 minutes all up - the worst being the first control and 5, the first one in the trenches. It was also pretty tough underfoot in places, and I felt rather weak today for no obvious reason - something which was evident in the warm-up.

I was told when I arrived that the announcer had been talking me up as one of the favourites; clearly he was unfamiliar with my recent form (or even my not-so-recent) as this field included Tore Sandvik and Mikael Bostrom, with five WOC medals between them. With a decent run I might have got down into the upper 30s; Tore and Mikael both did 30.

Getting to the event was slightly ill-starred - first it took me 15 minutes to find my IOF parking pass, then we took the wrong road out of Asiago (confused by an O-sign which was going to the event office), then when we got to the event we got directed past the entrance by an official who didn't realise we were there for the event. (Getting out of the car park afterwards was also an experience the likes of which I haven't had since the glory days of VFL Park). There's a definite air of chaos about some of what's happening (no national stereotypes here :-) but it seems to be working Ok on the day.

And the World Championships must be in town; numerous hotel balconies in Lavarone are sporting national flags and drying orienteering gear.

Event: WOC 2014 + 5 Days of Italy
 

Venice public prologue. I'd previously flagged that it wasn't going to be possible (short of hiring a water taxi at vast expense) for me to get to the sprint qualifying, so went straight to the prologue and started as early as I could (it was an open start).

It's Venice - of course it was going to be fun. We went into the core of the tourist zone (although not as far as St. Mark's) and pedestrian traffic was a factor, but not a massive one. I thought the course was technically easier than the one I ran in 2011, but clearly this wasn't a unanimous view because on several occasions I was passed by people at high speed and then saw them again two or three controls later reversing out of a dead end or going at 90 degrees in the wrong direction. This was a decent run though felt as if I was tiring a bit towards the end. Was 6th the last time I saw the results.

WOC in Venice was also a unique experience - probably more so on TV (sepaking of which, my TV gig fell through yesterday but might happen later on the week). Wasn't concentrated as much in the (less interesting) eastern end of the island as I expected.

It was a long day; I eventually got to Lavarone around 10.30. In transit it was demonstrated that it is possible to get a dud pasta in Italy (although I shouldn't really have expected more of a motorway service area).

Started out this morning with thoughts of climbing Konigstuhl, the highest peak in the range to the south-east, but it was apparent I wasn't going to get to the top and back in the hour I'd allowed myself (plus my Achilles wasn't great this morning on the climbs). Instead, about halfway to the top I took to a track which ran east along the contour and downwards - nice in amongst the forest. Not quite so nice coming back along the south bank of the river - lots of traffic - but OK as a run.

As predicted, the function on the boat was a bit less raucous than its 1991 equivalent. At such gatherings in the science world, I'm used to having to explain what orienteering is, but there was definitely no need last night - I was sitting next to a Swiss woman whose long-standing friend from the village they grew up in was a girl by the name of Luder, of whom readers may have heard.

Heading for the station once proceedings end today for the overnight train to Venice. The logistics aren't going to work for me to get to the sprint qualification, but should be at everything else (probably with a TV microphone for much of it).