Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Never reached the heights of the other two long runs I`ve done here but still a solid morning`s work after an indifferent first half-hour. A stellar morning - no wind, clear and the best visibility yet since I`ve been here (we won`t mention too loudly that it was -9 again, not that that deterred the tennis players by the river).

I took a more adventurous route this time, heading out first to World Cup Staium and then roughly E-SE across town. I wouldn`t have wanted to have been doing it at any busier time than 8 on a Sunday morning, but it was nice to do something different (and to get something bigger than a one-contour hill for the first time this week). I`d hoped to get as far east as the hill the Seoul Tower is on but ran out of time and only got to the National Museum area.

Unlike yesterday afternoon when we went past there, there were no riot police in sight at the World Cup Stadium (or to be more accurate its shopping complex). In the 1980s Koreans were world`s best practice in rioting and street theatre (one incident which sticks in my mind is the person who bit the top off his finger and wrote the name of then-dissident-later-President Kim Dae-Jung in blood on his cream jacket), but on the eivdence of yesterday the standard of politically-motivated rioting in Korea has declined as precipitously in Korea as it has in other developed countries. Apparently it was an industrial dispute over the use of contract labour.

On the way home tonight.

A similar session to the one I did in Geelong a few weeks ago - two sections of around 2.5km at 10km race pace or something like it, interspersed with easier sections. This took the form of laps of Yeouido Park, which has a convenient-length track running inside its perimeter - a nice place to run. Not a bad session, and got into a nice rhythm in the second half of the second fast lap (which was a bit faster than the first). Thought ice might have been a problem after drizzle yesterday evening was followed by below-freezing temperatures (-4 this morning and quite windy), but it had dried out quickly.

Conversation over dinner last night turned at one point to Australia-New Zealand relations, which meant I had the interesting task of explaining the nature and cultural significance of the underarm incident to an audience which consisted of an Italian recently settled in NZ, a Japanese and a Mongolian. Not sure if they understood or not.

Also noticed in yesterday's paper that a poll had found that, in the event of war between the US and North Korea, a majority of South Koreans would support the North Koreans. Illustrates just how much international goodwill the US have squandered in recent years.

Never really got going this morning. Moved away from the river for the first time, doing in essence a loop of the "island" of Yeouido, with a few sidetracks because there aren't paths all the way along the back side (this also meant a few more road crossings than I was really comfortable with). "Island" is perhaps stretching it a bit - the body of water separating Yeouido from the rest of the south bank of the Han River is about the size of Merri Creek. It did have a floodplain associated with it with a few dirt tracks, a rarity in this part of the world.

Today was the first cloudy morning and, not coincidentally, by far the warmest (i.e. it was actually above freezing).

My route took me reasonably close to the National Assembly building. South Korea is currently between governments - like the US, the new President doesn't get inaugurated until a few weeks after the election. The new government has obviously learnt something from Western political practice because they were quoted a couple of days ago blaming the neglect of their predecessors for the fire at Seoul's 600-year-old South Gate a couple of weeks ago. (There are, however, still remnants of more ancient local political traditions - prompted by an amnesty, more than 20 busloads of voters from a small town presented themselves to the local police station to confess to having accepted bribes for their votes in a recent local council election).

C • Sounds like 1

Grant's advice was that Olympic Park was worth running in, and today was the best opportunity to do it. Given the distances involved, this meant getting the subway out there and running back - the 45-minute subway trip did provide some good opportunities to further practice my Korean-alphabet reading skills. (I also discovered in the course of watching last night's game - which was China-Japan; I must have got the dates wrong - that the Korean for "yellow card" is "yellow card", but I don't think I can count this as a new word learnt).

Olympic Park was nice, although only large enough to keep me occupied for 10 minutes, and it was then down to the river trail (a tartan track for the first section), eventually linking up with my route from Sunday. This took me past the Olympic Stadium, which is a few kilometres away from Olympic Park (surprisingly, there isn't a direct subway link between them, which must have made things awkward in 1988), as well as close to the Lotte World theme park. In the best Korean conglomerate tradition, Lotte appear to have fingers in quite a lot of pies, including theme parks, hotels, department stores, soft drinks and electronics. They must have other interests too because when Ecmo and Glenn were here in 2004 (en route to Kazakhstan) they spotted a sign "Lotte: The Pure Natural Freshness".

The run was excellent - definitely my best this year. I'd hit a good rhythm by the 15-minute mark and was flowing beautifully for most of the way, especially in the middle where I was very much in "I don't want this spell to break" mode. It wasn't quite so spcial at the end but still had plenty left, and would have done more had it not been for the small matter of a meeting start time. It was a little warmer than recent days (-5 at the start, 0 at the end), and felt more so because I had a light tailwind almost all the way.

Just checked the IOF calendar: my next trip is to the Netherlands in May, and the weekend before the meeting just happens to include a World Ranking event in Belgium (an added bonus is that I haven't orienteered in Belgium before so it will add another country to my list).

Headed out along the river in the opposite direction, towards the World Cup Stadium. Didn't quite get to the stadium and didn't see much else either, thanks to fog which reduced the visibility to 100-200 metres for much of the way. A little warmer than it has been (probably about -3) but with the moister air quite a bit of ice was accumulating on exposed surfaces - definitely at the outer limits of what I was comfortable in wearing shorts. The run itself was smooth but nothing exceptional.

I noticed yesterday that our hotel has no 4th floor - either Korea shares the Chinese superstition about the number or this hotel gets enough Chinese custom to take it into account. If there's anything in Chinese lucky or unlucky numbers then Orienteering Australia might be in for a financially prosperous year, because I've just finished doing the 2007 accounts and our net assets at the end of the year end in $888.88.

I'm also a bit disappointed that Fidel Castro didn't choose to quit a few weeks ago when I was in Miami. I may not have much time for the political attitudes of Miami's Cubans but I reckon they'd be able to throw a good street party (especially one they've been waiting the best part of 50 years for).

While on the subject of long-lived political enmities, the big football match is on tonight - South Korea against North Korea (in Beijing, I think). Will be worth watching; if something similar was happening in Australia I'd probably be searching out a pub to watch it, but I'm not sure that that's the Korean style (and the area we're staying is a business district without much evening life anyway).

C • The Chinese superstition ab... 4

10x1 minute or thereabouts in the park by the Han River - a fairly standard intervals workout when travelling. Quite sandy ground which was good for me. I'm not sure if -5 is exactly optimal conditions for interval training (although I did do a session in the snow at -12 in Norway a couple of years back), and didn't feel great in the warm-up, but loosened up pretty well and was quite a bit faster from the 3rd repetition onwards.

Update: looked at the observations when I got back and it was actually -9 - I must be acclimatising better than I thought. It is extremely dry (for the meteorologists reading, dewpoints mostly between -15 and -25) with no hint of frost, even on car windscreens.

A fairly easy and straightforward run, initially around a park near the hotel (smallish, but a nice loop for faster sessions later in the week), then along the river and across one of the bridges, mainly to check out for future reference whether it was possible to cross one of the main bridges on foot (the river is about 1km across and, as you might imagine, all of the bridges carry a lot of traffic).

Spent most of the rest of the day on a trip out of Seoul, with the main target a well-known waterfall. (Our meeting doesn't start until tomorrow but we came early because of the flight schedules, in case you're wondering why we're not working). It turned out the waterfall (about 50 metres high) was frozen solid, and was playing host to a group of ice-climbers which is not something I've seen before - they made it look easy but I'm sure it isn't. Nice to have a look at something other than the concrete jungle.

I'm not sure where they're planning to have APOC. The forests I saw looked open (at least in winter) but were almost all very steep - suggesting it might be similar to Japan.

In a return to my roots, I'm gradually trying to learn the Korean alphabet off subway station signs (my parents tell me I originally used road signs for a similar purpose at age three or thereabouts).

C • Ice climbing 8