Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

WMOC sprint final, 17th. More of a running race than yesterday, run mostly in typical Eastern European (or Scandinavian) housing estates in the town of Komlo (which wasn't as desperate-looking a place as I'd expected somewhere whose economy was based on defunct-for-the-last-20-years coal mines to be). Not a lot of fine navigation, and not really that much major route choice either - some of the other courses I saw were considerably better in that respect.

I was a little bit slow right at the beginning but then got into it - certainly couldn't be upset with my mental intensity today, and ran pretty well. Didn't miss anything of any significance, the only wobble being a slightly iffy route choice on 12, right at the end, which cost me 5 seconds at most. Ended up about 2 minutes behind Janne Salmi.

I'm fairly encouraged by this as far as my long distance prospects are concerned; a top 10 should be within range if I can have a decent run in the final (although a lot will need to fall my way to get into the medals).

Susanne was the best of the Australians with a (very close) 5th. Hermann was 6th although the result lists claim him as British - as far as I know Hermann's only connection with Britain is that he was a POW there.

Jesus obviously didn't pray hard enough before the start - he missed qualifying by one place in M40-1, being squeezed out by Attila the Romanian.

WMOC sprint qualification in Pecs. A bit rough around the edges and lacking a bit of running sharpness but did the necessary, coming 9th in heat 1.

The first two legs were straightforward (the second was a complete-waste-of-space 400m road run which I should have used more for planning than I did). Got more complicated after that, although mostly in the form of solving you can't-get-there-from-here route-choice puzzles than the rapid decision making that can be called for in some European old towns. Avoided major mishaps, although took one wrong staircase and started up one dead end.

Tomorrow will be the big day. A result in the teens, which is what today's time points to, would be a par result for the sprint (although below par in the long).

WMOC sprint model, on a Communist-era housing estate on the south edge of Pecs, running a course which Amber set for us. Took a while to get much in the way of pace going but this was useful for getting my brain into sprint mode, doing a consistent job of looking for dead ends, awkward walls and fences and the like. Did start to go around a butterfly loop the wrong way but not huge amounts of harm done. A nice hit-out.

Jog back from sprint model area to base with Jenny, taking us through some of the less attractive bits of Pecs (featuring assorted factories which, I suspect, ceased to operate fairly quickly after the point at which they actually had to find customers for whatever it was they were producing). Enjoyed the fresh north wind, something that won't be with us next week.

Out on the second of the two training maps - this was reputed to be, and was, the better of the two with quite a lot of karst detail on its lower half. It was also the first part of a World Cup course from 1992 which Jim ran (the second part of it is on the WMOC final map), so we used the first eight controls from that course.

The karst detail is reasonably readable but there are certainly traps for the unwary in the greener parts - missed a bit of time on both controls in the green. Also ran for 50 metres the wrong way up a track from a junction, reopening nightmares from the 1996 World University Championships (where such an error put me into the wrong block of forest, something which I didn't recover from until 22 minutes later). At least it's better to do it in training. Not as good uphill as I was yesterday. The white forest is quite variable - some is very fast nothing-but-leaves-on-the-ground stuff, other parts have quite a bit of undergrowth and lower visibility.

We then moved along to the local lake, at least until beating a retreat in the face of an advancing thunderstorm. I've since discovered that the Hungarian word for radar is 'radar'. There aren't too many Hungarian words which bear any similarity to English, something I'd noticed on my previous visit when I was taken very much by surprise to see a sign in a back street of central Budapest saying 'TAB'. Taking a look inside revealed that it did indeed perform the same functions as an Australian TAB; I resisted the temptation to plonk a few hundred forint on something running in race 5 at Zalaergerszeg and moved on.

Several months later, I read a brief piece in the business section of the Sydney Morning Herald about how the NSW TAB had lost millions on a dud investment in Hungarian betting shops.

I started lying down at 9.40 last night, and my travelling companions tell me that I was asleep by 9.40.03....

Much better for that in the morning as we headed out to the first bit of training. This was the less inspiring of the two training maps, being fairly standard continental terrain with just a few small sinkholes, and was mainly useful for reacquainting myself with central European terrain - contours without a lot of definition and green that didn't always line up that well with what was on the map. (This map was fieldworked in winter, and 2010 was a very wet year in Hungary, so I wasn't hugely surprised - hopefully the WMOC maps themselves will be fieldworked in summer). Still nice to be out there, and stronger uphill than I have been in the last week. No controls out but set myself a course and navigated reasonably well with just a few minor wobbles, none of them more than 15 seconds.

We started/finished near a fun park (climbing walls, toboggan runs etc.). I was content to watch/laugh/take pictures of those who ventured onto the mechanical bull.

Pecs shows every sign of being a nice town to spend the next week and a half (and it will be hard to resist excessive consumption of the ice cream that is in abundant supply).

And it looks like WMO want me to come to Geneva a week earlier this November than last year. This is not something which causes me great distress given the timing of a certain well-known event in Italy.

C • Street orienteering? 1

Event: WMOC 2011
 

Evening shake-the-cobwebs out session in Pecs with Jenny and, once we got to where he was staying, Jim. My trip over went as smoothly as Jenny and Sus's didn't - the only flight connection which was late was the one which didn't matter, the Sydney-Hong Kong one which meant that I had 6 hours in Hong Kong instead of 6 1/2, and the only other glitch was that the airport ATMs didn't like my card, so instead of offloading my leftover Hong Kong dollars at a lousy rate in Australia I offloaded them at a lousy rate in Hungary instead, generating enough local cash to pay the fare from the airport to the main station and buy some $2.25/kg bananas. Still, it was a long haul - 42 hours door-to-door - I was less than fresh, and it showed on the run which was a bit of a struggle. Started raining a bit towards the end.

We're staying almost right in the centre of Pecs - a fairly basic place but it will do the job. It's on the sprint qualification map which is a bit unusual. Warmish (mid 20s) and a bit humid but certainly not as hot (yet) as I thought it could have been (and the system which was forecast to bring 37 to Paris yesterday - not sure if it did or not - seems to have missed us).

C • banana envy! 5

Melbourne-Sydney-Hong Kong-Helsinki-Budapest. So far so good (although I've only got as far as Sydney so far).