Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

I've finally finished updating, and getting onto the OA website, my file of all Australian (long) Championship results from 1971-2017, sorted by name (but if you download it you can sort it other ways), all the way from Hans Aamodt (25th, M65A, 2002) to James Zuijdveld (7th, M21C, 1983). You can find it here.

Another nice morning - would be difficult to have a bad run on a morning like this, sunny and crisp - and a decent session, noticeably faster than my last few interval sets here. Felt like I was going a little lactic on the last couple, which is an indication that I was trying respectably hard. No sign of Achilles soreness today.

Only drawback of the conditions is that it drew all the dogs (and their owners) out, but at least none got in the way.

Going to/from All Nations. One of life's little mysteries - the traffic on Station Street is typically banked back further at 7.20ish than it is at 8ish, and definitely was today. (From the perspective of this run, being banked back is a good thing because it's easier to cross stopped traffic than moving traffic).

It seems the local real estate agents are promoting (via signs) one of the independent candidates for the by-election - I'm assuming this is payback for the Labor candidate making renters' rights a big centrepiece of her campaign.

Ended up as a pretty decent run in the end, on one of those wonderfully fresh-feeling mornings you sometimes get in the wake of a cold front and rainband (typically mornings like this stay clear for 2-3 hours after sunrise and then become progressively more cloudy and showery during the day). Settled down within a couple of kilometres and pretty solid the rest of the way, including the substantial climb over the core of Eaglemont. A few sharpish Achilles twinges on the sharper uphills - enough to make me thing that committing myself to 2 hours yesterday might not have been a great idea. Will need to keep an eye on this.

Perhaps I was a bit more awake than usual for a morning run because I'd got up early for the F1 - did think it was a bit strange that Fox Sports said it was starting at 5.30, and indeed it started at 6.

Thought yesterday indicated that something wasn't right, and this morning confirmed that, with multiple bits not performing. Hoping for better luck some other day.

Plan B was the water - went to Fitzroy (wouldn't normally do this on a weekend, but I think the outdoor pool at Northcote is still closed). Went more or less OK although still rather tight. Caught up with a couple of regulars who I haven't seen in the usual weekly timeslot for a long time, which provided the opportunity for us to collectively lament the current state of Australian governance.

A largely blank Sunday did give me the opportunity to get some other things done, such as some OA Conference papers, and my tax.

C • SA governance 3

Sprint into Spring at VU Edgewater. The best that can be said about this is that it doubled my number of successfully completed Sprint Into Spring events (for a certain definition of "successful") in the last four seasons - I missed most or all of the last three seasons either through being away or being injured. That's about all that can be said for it, because this was one of those days when my body didn't want to function, something particularly apparent on the first half of the course, which was a running race. About the only thing I took away from this was a decent split on 15, where I avoided falling into the trap (Lachlan Cherry had just gone through me before it and wasn't so fortunate); did hit smaller traps on 14 and 19 but didn't lose much time on either. Behind a lot of people I would hope not to be behind (although it must be said that Clare's in a bit of a purple patch at the moment).

Did a couple of the short training sets of sprintervals in the park afterwards, but struggling for concentration and not running a lot better than first time round. Didn't see a small path on the first one which cost me quite a bit of time on 6 (I thought initially that Alex Ikin had gone through the OOB but his route was perfectly legal).

A get-the-stiffness-out session on a morning when there was a reasonable amount of stiffness to get out. Seems to have done the job OK. First time I've been at Fitzroy for a while - there's a bit of building work out the front associated with the rebuilding of a main drain down the middle of Alexandra Parade. (It's also the first time for a while I've done a 7pm Friday bike commute through the CBD - the highlight being almost getting doored by someone who emerged from their car clutching a half-drunk stubbie).

It hasn't got much news on the mainland, but a big bushfire has been burning for the last 10 days out the back of St. Helens. From the fire maps I've seen, it looks like it's burnt most or all of Transit Flat (World Cup/Oceania long 2015) - something the local orienteers don't seem too distressed about - but is so far staying west of the other St. Helens maps, and will probably continue to do so unless there is a period of strong W/SW winds (something not currently forecast).

(For non-Australian readers, most eucalypt species are adapted to fire and not killed by it. Often post-fire regrowth of small trees and shrubs will make forests less runnable, sometimes dramatically so, but that depends on the forest type and how intense the fire was).

First attempt at the Wednesday street-O/Thursday long(ish) run combination for a while (the last time I actually managed to finish a Wednesday night A course, I broke down in the process of doing so and didn't run again for weeks). This felt like a fairly solid morning's work for a lot of the way; struggling a bit in the final half-hour (although still with enough enthusiasm to do a few convoluted moves at the end to get to the 90). Then rode to work (something I don't normally do after a long run) and got some tangible evidence, in the form of a couple of cramps, that I wasn't imagining being tired later on in the run. Fairly tired through the day as well. The masseur certainly earned her money tonight.

Around the halfway point of the run, I was reflecting that at about the equivalent point of the equivalent run last week, I was crossing an international border (although I think the signs for the City of Moreland are more prominent than the ones for France).

Not sure where that came from. Last year's Summer Series was an almost complete write-off for me (I only completed one A course all season, my first of the season), thanks to a combination of a calf issue, a hamstring issue, a back issue, and being out of town during the narrow window when none of the above applied. (Towards the end of the season, running in the evening after sitting down at work all day wasn't appreciated by my back).

I didn't have a lot of confidence before this one - mostly through having woken up at 4.30 and hitting some afternoon flat spots - but settled nicely after passing through my first control (one, #10, which I might have been better off missing). The plan was a jog but I was clearly doing better than that - cruise speed rather than tempo, but still definitely faster than standard. Degree of difficulty was fairly low - Dandenong Creek has some hilly parts, but some weren't used tonight and I only hit the others late - but I'm happy with this. A bit of haven't-had-a-massage-for-too-long Achilles soreness late (that comes tomorrow).

(Perhaps I should thank a difficult-to-catch admin person who I needed to sign something this afternoon, forcing me to get up and walk to the other side of the floor four times in the process of trying to find her).

The numbers weren't great tonight, and I was probably close to being in the bottom decile of the age range of those who were there.

Back to All Nations intervals. A couple of real low points early on - first some sudden Achilles soreness which caused me to stop briefly (but disappeared within a minute), then a very weak second rep. After that, I was reasonably happy to get through it, albeit not especially convincingly - better on the uphills than the downhills. Sometimes I have really good runs a couple of days after getting back, but not today...

The on-leash compliance rate hasn't improved since I've been away.

Warm-up and down. Not especially convincing, especially for the former.

As might have been expected, slightly absent-minded this morning, without too many consequences. At an unusual venue (North Melbourne) in the name of later-in-the-day logistics; didn't feel very energetic early on, but a bit better later in the session. Made an attempt at a run as well but it didn't work out. Lasted through the day more or less OK, apart from a flat spot in the late afternoon.

Headed out with Jenny (who's over here for a workshop this weekend) late in the day for what was a bit of a token-gesture run for both of us - in my case after spending 12 hours trying to fend off jetlag, in hers after a day spent sitting in a conference room. Naturally this wasn't an especially energetic run but I did feel better for it, at least for the next hour or so. Took in the Chandler and Fairfield bridges; the former is becoming a bit more complicated to access as the construction work gets more advanced.

The fending off jetlag part was more or less successful (in as much as it's 8.30 and I'm still awake), although I did create random sequences of letters by falling asleep into my keyboard on three separate occasions while I was writing the Australian Championships report for the Australian Orienteer. I didn't have quite the same chance to avoid jetlag as one of my colleagues who's at a workshop in Oklahoma this week - within a couple of hours of her arrival the tornado sirens had gone off (somewhat to her disappointment, it was dark so there was nothing to see).

Travel day. Not the easiest of long hauls I've ever done - both flights were full, there were many long queues (an hour just to get into the transfer area at Abu Dhabi), and at the end of it all my bag was just about the last one off - but made it home.

The timing of this flight was a bit different to most times I've done this route, which means it's the first time that I've really had a good chance to see the incredibly stark mountains on the Oman/UAE border properly (from the air). Also got to see the land where the route clips the southern tip of India (looking surprisingly dry) and crosses Sri Lanka (showing some evidence of the landslides I've been writing about).

Also interesting, flying over both in the middle of the night, is that the lights of Istanbul are far brighter than the lights of Adelaide.

C • lights of Adelaide 4

Last run in Geneva, a bit later than planned after sleeping in later than I'd planned on (obviously my watch alarm isn't loud enough). My plan today, as sometimes on long runs here, was to head for France, the target being Veyrier and a track which went on the far side of the border for a kilometre or so. This particular route takes you past one of the quirkier spots of Geneva - the Jewish cemetery which straddles the border. (There's a reason behind this - denominational cemeteries have been banned in Geneva for centuries, but the law doesn't apply to cemeteries which have the majority of their area in another canton or country).

As is often the way with this particular border, it wasn't obvious that you had crossed it (just a couple of marker stones if you knew where to look, and a small Republique Francaise logo on the dogs-on-leads sign - even the yellow Swiss walking track markers continued across the border). I couldn't help thinking, though, that there was a time 75 years or so ago where for some (not least some of those buried in the aforementioned cemetery), that few hundred metres would have been a matter of life and death.

This wasn't a brilliant run - never really got going, although flowed a bit in the last few kilometres. Still handling the climbing reasonably. Had originally been thinking of 105 minutes, but with the late start and an Achilles which was starting to play up a bit, I was happy enough to cut it off where I did and not try to do an extra loop.

On the way back tonight. I hadn't realised when making plans that tonight is the start of school holidays, with predictable consequences for the efficiency of the airport.

Didn't sleep terribly well last night and felt very sleepy indeed after getting up in the morning. Could have tried to battle it out anyway, but had the realisation that if I did this at lunch instead I could do one of my favourite Geneva runs, up onto the hills at the back of Pregny. I wasn't completely sure this would work out - lunchtime runs haven't been that great for me in the last year (and hitting a 2km climb straight out the door even less so), but it worked out fine - in fact it's probably the best I've felt grinding up long hills for ages (albeit a bit slow). The views from the top were as good as always, and it's always a marvel to find a spot as rural as this only a couple of kilometres from the UN headquarters.

The local paper had a headline about the Swiss National Bank throwing billions into the fire. I thought they might have been getting stuck into the bank's management of the exchange rate or something like that, but in fact they meant exactly what they said - it was a story about the destruction of superseded banknotes.

Planned today with intervals in mind but back was playing up for the first time in a while (maybe a different office chair hasn't worked miracles after all). Seemed to have settled down a bit by the afternoon.

As previously noted, the WMO office is next door to the newish (and very discreetly signed) premises of Japan Tobacco. You probably won't be too surprised to hear that there are more lunchtime smokers outside their building than there are outside ours.

It would, perhaps, have been more fitting for this run to be somewhere in the Swiss Alps, but this was a reasonable substitute, seeing the peaks of Mont Blanc and its neighbours silhouetted against the first light as I headed out, then seeing the first sun shining against the Jura on the other side of the lake from the higher parts of the Cologny ridge. Getting there involved a long climb which was a bit of a slog, on a day which wasn't an altogether smooth run, but made it up OK in the end. Quite a bit longer than originally planned but the destination was worth it.

On the way down, I took the street which runs across the Cologny slope about two-thirds of the way up. This has spectacular views and what would undoubtedly be spectacularly expensive real estate - $10 million would only scratch the surface here. I've since found out that amongst those who own property on this particular patch are the Onassis and Kellogg families, Tina Turner and the former Italian royal family. (The Italian royal family is one of several European royal families who never got restored after the turmoil of World War 2 and the lead-up to it, although Bulgaria's King Simeon went into democratic politics post-1989 and served a term as an elected Prime Minister).

C • Italian monarchy 1

Most obscure sight of my Paris wanderings: a plaque marking the former location of the Embassy of Texas. (Presumably this dates back to Texas's short-lived 19th century existence as an independent state).

Didn't feel particularly energetic or awake this morning, and knee was also a bit iffy. After a certain amount of procrastination and a false start of sorts, I decided a bit of rearrangement of the week was in order (it's probably not such a bad thing not to be flying home on Friday with wet swimming gear anyway).

That was before getting the latest news from home. After seeing that, the next few hours in general, and the swim in particular, passed in something of a daze. (As many of you know, Bruce and I go back a very long way - he was my original junior coach, among other things). Can only hope for the best of outcomes (and at least the conditions are favourable, and will stay so for a couple of days).

Then it was back to an afternoon partly spent writing, once I could concentrate enough to write, and partly spent watching the news coming out of Portugal and Ireland getting worse and worse. (I'm assuming that the Australian media has only noticed the Irish part). For the second time in a few months, a Portuguese bushfire disaster feels particularly close to home - this time because it appears that the WMOC 2008 forests are amongst the many which are going up in flames.

This weekend had a dual purpose - part of it was to be a tourist, but another part was because Fontainebleau looked to be the most interesting event option available within reasonable range of Geneva ('reasonable range' is defined differently for Australians than for most people) - the other possibility which looked interesting was in the sand-dune terrain at Bordeaux, but I would have had to fly.

Fontainebleau is famed (unusually for a central European area) for its rock. This turned out to be one of the less technical bits of the forest (which covers about 200 square kilometres) and the rock was mostly a backdrop rather than the main player - only two of my controls were on rock features - but it was still quite an interesting area, fairly flat but with just enough contour detail to make it a map-reading challenge rather than compass and hope (except for #8) - and the block of forest that #2-4 were in was one of the most delightful I've run in for a long time.

The run was pretty good - didn't quite pinpoint three of the controls (6, 7 and 17) in the flatter stuff, but no more than 10-15 second apiece, and felt better running than in most recent events (despite a bit of early right knee soreness), although I was tiring a little at the end - probably unused to the soft ground. I was running the second-longest normal course (there was also a track-free option); fastest when I left was 43 with the top four all being 16-18 year old juniors (three boys and a girl). (Update: a late starter did 35, which is more like what I'd have expected of a decent elite runner).

Nick Campbell (a Brit living in Paris) was my logistical support for the day, working out how to get to the event by public transport and joining me for the trip. It was a 3.5km walk each way to the assembly area but this was quite pleasant (might not have been quite so pleasant had it been raining). Nick also pointed me to one of his clubmates to borrow a compass when I got my Northern Hemisphere compass (unused for a year) out to discover it was now largely liquid-free. (Not sure how I would have gone trying to use a Southern Hemisphere compass on an area like this where bearings were important).

Got back to Paris a bit after 2 and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring, without really going into anything (given the queues at the major, and even not-so-major, attractions). Lots of people out on what will probably be the last warm weekend before winter. Pretty tired now - probably did about 15km of walking all up in addition to my course. About to get the train back to Geneva.

C • Fontainebleau 2

Staying just across the street from Gare de Lyon (with an 11pm arrival last night I didn't want to spend any longer moving on once in Paris than I had to). One advantage of this from a running perspective is that it's within striking distance of the Bois de Vincennes, about 3km away down a boulevard with wide footpaths and not a lot of traffic across or along it early on a Saturday morning. The Bois itself is proper forest once you get into it - nice spot to be relatively close to a large city (although I wouldn't want to orienteer in the bits I saw - flat and thick). In a pretty good mood and moving quite well once warmed up. Perfect conditions at this time of the morning, on what became quite a warm day (the news headlines mentioned 'records des temperatures', but I think these must have been elsewhere - 22-24 in Paris in October is warm but certainly not record-breaking).

There was setting up for some kind of public event (perhaps a run), and someone wasn't too happy about not being allowed to drive into the area, with much horn-blowing and gesticulation. (There was to be more of this when there was a prang pretty much right in front of the cafe where I was having breakfast).

The plan for today was to head out to Versailles, then do other things with whatever time I had left in the day. This proved to be a rather more complicated process than I thought (starting with the ticket machines not accepting foreign credit cards - an occasional problem in France, I've had issues with petrol stations here too - and needing lots of coins). Part of the rail line was shut down for weekend works with replacement buses, but they haven't worked out (as Melbourne does) that to do this efficiently you need express buses as well as all-stations ones (which have to go into side streets which aren't really designed for buses - and certainly aren't designed for two buses to go past each other - to get to each station). This took so long that by the time it came to the end of the bus trip, our tickets had expired and we had to get new ones for the last part of the journey (in total it took 2 1/2 hours for 25km) - I wasn't too impressed, and neither were some Americans who were voicing their non-impressedness somewhat more loudly (no national stereotyping here :-).

Still, it was worth it when I got there (I wasn't exactly the only one there, but that was expected). Didn't end up having much time for anything else afterwards before dark - having found a more efficient route back - except a walk down some of the Champs-Elysees. (I'd done most of the other must-sees the last time I was here, in 2008). Hoping to find some good food tonight (one would hope it shouldn't be too hard in this part of the world).

C • Gallic efficiency! 6

It's been a decent week of training - perhaps I'm feeling more relaxed because I'm getting more sleep than I would at home (and possibly because I'm a very long way away from anyone who cares about what Tony Abbott is saying). The positive mood extended to this swim - not so much because of the quality of the session itself (which was fairly standard), but because a pool that I previously haven't enjoyed very much is now a bit more enjoyable - they actually have a fast and a slow lane now, so although it's still relatively crowded, you don't have people trying to go past you at two or three times your speed. I actually managed to get through an entire session here without crashing into anyone.

Off to Paris this weekend, to be a tourist tomorrow and then to run on the legendary Fontainebleau terrain on Sunday.

A favourite, if challenging, Geneva run - the Le Lignon loop, out to the footbridge and back along the far bank of the Rhone. I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to take this on a few days ago, although I'd forgotten just how many times this goes up and down the escarpment once alongside the river - I'd remembered a couple of very steep, if short, climbs from doing this with Neil a couple of years ago but had somehow airbrushed the other three sets from my memory. Still, I coped with this reasonably well, and wasn't too perturbed that this ended up being 15 minutes longer than I was originally planning on today (although I hit the wall pretty hard in the later part of the day and spent a bit of time on the couch on arriving home before summoning the energy to prepare dinner).

Perhaps the best few minutes of this came in the kilometre after the footbridge, alongside a classic western European rural scene - green field, forest patch alongside with gradually yellowing leaves, an old farmhouse on the hill, and a few cows. It was certainly easy to imagine yourself a lot further than 4-5km from the city centre (at least if you didn't look east and see the apartment towers rising above the other riverbank).

The neighbourhood I'm in has a few signs of novelty: the cafe next door accepts Bitcoin as payment (although how they keep track of the wildly gyrating exchange rate is an open question), and numerous shops have signs offering cannabis legale - it's been legalised in Geneva in the last few months.

Doing some trawling of national climate summaries today, I discovered that the highest temperature of summer this year was the lowest on record for both Sweden (which didn't get above 28) and Denmark (which didn't get above 27), whilst Norway's was the lowest since 1998. (That said, both Norway and Sweden got considerably warmer in late May than they managed during the three summer months).

It probably won't come as any surprise to anyone who orienteered in Scandinavia during the alleged summer of 1998 that it features prominently in such records, the mudbath campsite at the Modum 2-days being a particular highlight. There were a few of us there; from memory, Ecmo, Rob Preston, Andy Hill, and probably others I've forgotten. (This was my last big trip in impoverished-student mode; I started working the week after getting home).

Another reasonably encouraging day, this time going out past the UN complex and feeling steady (if not very fast) going up the long hill past there - something which hasn't been the case for the last couple of months, most of which has involved even a couple of contours being a struggle.

With a new starting point comes new turnaround points, and for this run it involves the path which runs between the US mission (as intimidating as you might expect) and the WHO. (I'd spent a number of visits wondering what the OMS I was seeing on bus destination signs was, until I realised that that's the WHO in French).

A much nicer run today, although still a bit slow and somewhat disjointed at times by traffic. Was hoping to get out to a reasonably familiar haunt, the Bout-du-Monde riverbend, but ran out of time before I got that far out. Running reasonably smoothly, and for the first time in a while felt like I had plenty still left in me at the end.

It's the first time since 1989 that I've been in Europe at this time of year. It's the last couple of weeks of daylight saving with consequently late sunrises (at the moment it's getting light at about 7.15, which will probably be after 7.30 next week). My Geneva rain-repelling qualities are also again in evidence - none has fallen since I've been here and none is forecast in at least the next 8 days.

My walking route to the office takes me past the Icelandic UN mission's office. I suspect not a lot of productive work was done there this morning.

C • The Iceland team 6

Got back to Geneva last night and settled into my quarters for the two weeks, an apartment in the middle of the Paquis district (very close to where I stayed the first time I was here). By Geneva standards it's considered a bit seedy (it was a block away from here that I once saw a 'lady of the night' soliciting custom in clothing that was a long way short of being suitable for the -9 degrees it was at the time), but nothing too threatening.

The run, not to put too fine a point on it, was rubbish. Back was a bit iffy but the engine was worse, notwithstanding that this was about as undemanding as it gets (40 minutes along the Geneva lakeshore). Won't read too much into this in my early days here - took a bit of a backwards step today in the jet lag department, waking up not long after 4 and not really getting back to sleep.

The first day of the meeting went well (we've got a range of experts meeting for two days, then I spend the rest of the time distilling everything into a hopefully coherent report). There will be a lot of distilling to be done, because so far I've got 50+ pages of contributions for a statement which will be not much more than one-tenth that length (and I haven't even started my own bit yet). This time round we actually have somebody involved who knows properly what they're talking about when it comes to sea level, although she had to make an early exit this afternoon as the result of the third in the list of life's great certainties - death, taxes, and the French air traffic controllers going out on strike.

I spent the night at Gstaad, a place with a very posh reputation. From past experience of Swiss resort towns with posh reputations, I knew that whilst it would certainly be possible to burn through money like a celebrity there, it wasn't compulsory, especially out of season - I found a perfectly adequate place in the centre of town for about the same I paid for a nondescript motel room in Gundagai a couple of weeks ago.

My main hope was that the forecast change wouldn't bring too low a cloud base. By the time I started running the light rain had stopped (leaving a dusting of snow above 1500 metres or so, although that was gone by mid-morning) and the cloud was above all but the highest peaks, which made for a very scenic run (that was part of the idea of coming here). Of course, scenic views mean you have to do a fair bit of climbing to get them (220m in 2km early on), and I might have struggled to cope with that as a whole but with photo stops every couple of minutes it was more manageable. Didn't feel terribly strong but better than some recent runs; a bit of knee soreness towards the end of the long descent.

Took in some more of the mountains by taking a cable car up to 1900m and doing the first part of a walk from the summit, before heading back to Geneva. This proved to be a somewhat more drawn-out exercise than originally anticipated, thanks to the closure of Lausanne station due to an "intervention de police" (which turned out to be a bomb scare). A couple of trainloads of people had the pleasure of milling around Vevey station for a couple of hours waiting for it to be sorted out; there didn't seem to be any signs of alternative plans other than waiting for it to be sorted out.

Gstaad is the only place where I've seen a vending machine (at the station) which sells local cheese (definitely cowbells in abundance here...) and honey.

Travel day: Melbourne-Abu Dhabi-Geneva (with a bit added on at the end to get me into the mountains for tomorrow). Pretty empty flights on both legs, particularly the second one, which I think is the emptiest plane I've been on since the 2006 Australian Championships trip to WA (I flew the day before the Grand Final on one of the fifteen 747s which had been carrying Eagles supporters in the opposite direction). Got a row to myself on the Melbourne-Abu Dhabi leg; didn't think I'd slept that much but then remembered that I'd set my watch to Geneva time, not Abu Dhabi time, and it was two hours later than I thought it was.

Abu Dhabi's transfer system is not as efficient as Dubai's, but at least the highlights of last night's World Cup qualifiers were on screen while we were waiting for security. I was wondering what the Australian flag was doing on Sky News Arabia in what appeared to be the standings of one of the European groups, until I realised that Americans aren't the only people who can't tell the difference between Australia and Austria. Also noticed a duty-free shop offering tobacco at 120% below city prices - does that mean they'll pay you to take it off their hands?

Being overseas means I miss out on this week's shutdown of the Hurstbridge line (which, apart from the lack of trains, won't be good for local traffic). It turned out the Geneva Airport line was also shut down for the day, but you'd expect the Swiss to handle such things efficiently and they did; a bus left within a minute of my getting to the stop.

Thought my plans had gone slightly awry when I got to Northcote to find that the outdoor pool is closed for repairs for the next few weeks. I'd never tried to do this sort of session in the indoor pool before, thinking it wasn't deep enough, but I found a spot which had just enough depth and went round and round in circles. Got into enough of a train of thought that this was less boring than it sounds.

Now on my way out to Geneva - I'm getting used to this as a long haul by now, but it will still be a long haul.

Took a while to get going on this one and slow through the first half (though with a bit more climbing than I sometimes do early, heading toward the Ivanhoe side). Started to feel as if I was flowing quite well in the last couple of kilometres, although still not going all that fast. Also got to check out a couple of new bits of railway works (which among other things close off my shortest route to the river, although the detour isn't that long).

Arrived at work to the news that Tony Abbott had been laying into one of our ANU counterparts on 2GB last night. One of my colleagues listened to the recording so the rest of us didn't have to.

C • That's... 3

Taking it fairly easy this week - not such a bad thing today given a reasonably late return last night.

I'm not back in town for long - heading out again on Friday night for my latest Geneva stint (two weeks this time). Naturally a lot of my planning is centred around the middle weekend - the offerings in Switzerland didn't look too exciting (it looks like there's an alpine countries match in Austria), so at this stage I'm looking at Fontainebleau instead - an area close to Paris with some fairly legendary rock.

Taking in some old haunts early in the day; I was staying on Canberra Avenue (at Defence's expense) so took the chance to get back into some familiar territory from 30 years ago or so (some of it less familiar than it once was - the old Hawkins residence is now a hole in the ground), through Forrest and up onto the track along the base of Red Hill which made up half of our school cross-country course, before coming back through Manuka.

The tree which used to be the gathering place of illicit recess/lunchtime smokers doesn't have any butts at the bottom of it now, so either it's been cleaned up or the rebellious youth of today no longer choose cigarettes as their way of showing rebellion. Also spotted was the office of the Thai Army Attache - once upon a time such a person would have been given their marching orders as a way of Australia demonstrating its disapproval of the military coup there, but it doesn't work like that these days.

The run itself was fairly ordinary, as expected. The talk went well, and the trip home was fairly smooth although it wasn't until close to 10 before I got back.

I'm doing a talk in Canberra tomorrow morning so today's plan was to work from Canberra (it isn't a public holiday in Victoria, my home base). The slight issue with this plan was because it was a public holiday in the ACT, the office wasn't open, so I needed to find somewhere to work from in the morning until I could check into where I was staying (having come from Goulburn in the morning) - the answer being a cafe in Lyneham.

In between all of this, I decided lunchtime would be a good time to go for a swim at the Civic pool. There was a bit of an issue with this plan too - whilst the CBD itself may have been quiet on a holiday, the pool carpark was overwhelmed with Floriade visitors. I did eventually find a spot and headed in. It was quite a decent swim after all that - felt pretty strong in the second half, particularly.

Australian Relays, last leg for an M35 team with Richard Goonan and Jim. In the original selections, the two gun teams both failed to contain a single actual M35, but we brought in Richard for Ted, and NSW Rob Preston for Greg Barbour. First leg was close between Jock, Richard and Jon McComb, but Steve Craig broke away on the second leg (and Tasmania had a weak last leg), so I started knowing that second was a certainty unless something dramatic happened.

This was as well, because my body was not functioning well today - back was tight making any sort of climb hard work (notwithstanding that 3-4 contours was about the upper limit of climbs today). Did manage to keep plugging away and only made one small mistake, perhaps 20 seconds at 10. Quads decided to throw a wobbly on the spectator leg (perhaps through having extra load put on them); at this point I was feeling a bit like the 35km mark of the Six Foot Track and wasn't looking forward to the final loop. Did come good, more or less, after that and the climb out of the second-last was probably the best I felt in the entire race, but I'm still glad I wasn't in any sprint finishes. Ended up 2nd, as expected. The three NSW runners all did around 37-38.

So ends a very well-run championships week, and so ends my season, more or less (apart from a few Sprint Into Spring races and an event in France while I'm in Geneva). Hopefully I can get a solid summer under my belt (and not break down two weeks after the nationals, like happened last year), but for now I'll be taking it reasonably easy in the next couple of weeks.