Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Travel day, Stockholm-Helsinki-Hong Kong-Melbourne. All went smoothly and got an upgrade on the last leg, which made it smoother still.

How to take advantage of a travel misadventure: I spent a fair bit of time talking with Jeff Riseley during the wait in Hong Kong (he was on his way home from the Stockholm Diamond League - I recognised him from the event T-shirt). In comparing notes on long-haul travel horror stories (the exhibit I proferred being the Casanova + Casanova epic on the way to Europe this year), he mentioned he'd once been stuck in Los Angeles for two days thanks to a ticketing snafu. He put the time to good use - there was a race on in LA the next day, he entered at the last minute and ran an Olympic A qualifier.

A turn-the-legs-over session in Uppsala, home of one of the world's longest temperature data sets, beginning in 1741 (Anders Celsius was an Uppsala boy). Thought I'd be doing this on my own but Susanne appeared just as I was about to head off so we went together - a fairly short loop, mostly on the south side of the river around the university, and up to the top of a smallish hill which I suspect gets used a lot for hill intervals in Uppsala. Achilles better than I thought it might have been after it started to trouble me in the last 10 minutes yesterday.

The linguistic amusement of the morning was provided by the bus whose destination was Stabby (actually a small village a few kilometres from Uppsala). Don't know what the violent crime rate is there but I suspect it's low. We've had a few moments of such fun in recent days, including the big signs in shop windows saying 'SLUT' (as part of 'SLUT REA', which I think means closing-down or end-of-stock sale), and the presence of Fanny's and Willy's across the street from each other in central Soderhamn. (Fanny's is a women's clothing store, Willy's is a supermarket).

And we spotted something calling itself a "Swedish restaurant". I thought such things could only be found in Ikeas.

Now at Stockholm Airport waiting with Lachlan to start the long haul home. (For reasons too convoluted to explain here, Susanne is going to Helsinki via Berlin and flew out this morning; we converge in Helsinki before they head to Singapore and I go via Hong Kong).

C • Uppsala 4

Going nicely for the first half but then blew it on the last technical section, once again in an area with lots of little rock and not much definition in the contours, to the tune of 5 minutes on 9 - I kept convincing myself that I couldn't possibly have climbed an extra contour and thus the area of rocky ground I was above was the one below the control, not the one above it, following the Andrew Bolt relocation method of making increasingly desperate attempts to make the facts fit my preconceived (and erroneous) ideas. This turned a good run into a disappointing one.

Hit the first control right on and thus got rid of my 8-second man (the only person I saw from the chasing start all day; he briefly recaught me after 9 but I got away again), and was solid on the long climb into 2. Pretty clean from there except for a 30-seconder at 7, until it came unstuck at 9. At that point I suddenly discovered I was tired (I doubt I would have noticed this had the mistake not happened), managed to miss a bit on 13 despite the crowds, and then took a route choice on 14 (the second-last) which had me wondering - you always wonder about the sanity of a route choice at the end of O-ringen which sees no-one else around and no elephant tracks - but from the splits I don't think it was too bad. Found the energy to outsprint two people in the chute but was not remotely surprised to find they weren't running my class (at least both of them were under 60).

Starting to get a bit of a feel for running in the terrain just as it's time to go home (which I do tomorrow afternoon), but can't be happy with this result. Gained five places to 75th but I think that was all DNSs and DNFs; fell three minutes short of reaching the top half of the finishers.

Odd coincidences time: I started just over two minutes behind Christian Mittelholzer (Switzerland), who I also started two minutes behind in my first 'JWOC'*. I didn't see him this year either.

(* - officially still the 'Open European' championships in those days, but you get the idea).

That's more like it. Knee back to normal, more or less, and a decent run technically too, with no mistakes bigger than 15 seconds, and none of the mid-leg losses of confidence that I've suffered from on the last two days. Not as much of the smaller rock on the ground as the last two days (or maybe I just didn't notice it as much because I wasn't so compromised in trying to deal with it?); still not flowing particularly well in the terrain - certainly not as well as the locals - but making a bit of progress. Maybe I'll be able to run reasonably well in Swedish terrain next week; unfortunately by then I'll no longer be in Sweden.

With the short course today there was only limited scope to make up overall ground, and I'm still a couple of minutes outside the top half of the field. The chasing start tomorrow should be fun. In theory, at least, Monday's result should have put me back in amongst a bunch of people who I should be able to beat, but whether it will work like that in practice is an interesting question.

Something that's taken a bit of adjusting to, mentally, is the exchange rate: it's been in the 5s (or occasionally high 4s) throughout the 20+ years that I've been coming here, and I still find myself thinking in terms of 5:1 when it's actually close to 7 (6.99 at last report). At that rate Sweden is no longer, in general, an expensive country - grog probably still is expensive even at 7:1, but that doesn't affect me.

Something else that doesn't affect me but was still interesting is that local real estate is astonishingly cheap by Australian standards - I didn't see much in the window of the local agents for more than a million kroner (about $A140,000). You can even pick up a lakeside summer cottage for A$27,000 if you feel so inclined. Presumably it's a different story in Stockholm. (Based on Cassie's experiences, Oslo prices seem fairly similar to Melbourne's).

C • Relativity 8

Ready to run rather than jog today, but not really to race (not really able to generate much power) - although how I would handle the rocky ground even without injury is an interesting question. A lifetime (or even a year) running in this stuff must count for a lot.

Started very tentatively, with little confidence navigating in the terrain - actually ended up hitting 1 and 2 more or less head on but probably lost 1-2 minutes over the course of those two legs just through hesitations. Got into it a bit more after that, especially on the more open hills, and was starting to navigate with some level of confidence through much of the second half, although with an annoying 1-minuter on 7. Again the last part of the course was technically straightforward, although this time it involved green and single tracks which were prone to traffic jams.

Felt rather lethargic before the start, and sleepy in the afternoon afterwards. It wasn't a particularly hard physical run so I hope this isn't an indicator of forthcoming illness (although there are no symptoms as such).

Lost less time to Per Ek than on Sunday (although I suspect that says a bit about his run as well as mine) and placed 71st, a little worse than Sunday. Hoping for more improvement over the next two days. After yesterday my target became to finish in the top half of the field - rather less ambitious than I would have hoped for at the start of the week. I'm currently about 5 minutes outside that.

Sunday's splits were further evidence that I'm struggling with running in the terrain. Normally the flat, open last part of that course is the last place I'd expect to do well, but they were where I got my best splits.

O-ringen rest day. Knee considerably improved today, no real issues walking on the flat although still a little sore up and down stairs. Reasonably optimistic about being able to race more or less as normal tomorrow.

Had a reasonably quiet day around Soderhamn, some of it in the company of Lachlan and Susanne, including going out to what turned out to be a packed local beach (it was sunny and the temperature had soared to, well, 22). Judging by the number of control flags on car rear vision mirrors and the like I suspect at least half the crowd there were of O-ringen origins. Going down to Gavle tonight to catch up with an old friend for dinner.

Deep down I didn't really expect to get to the start line today, so in that sense to get to the finish line was a bonus, but finishing was about the only positive to take out of today.

I didn't sleep well; 10 last night was not a great time to have the thought occur to me that in the current atmosphere, if Australia has an Anders Breivik (and various media and political identities are doing their darndest to create one), local climate scientists are one of the groups he or she might take an interest in. In any case I was getting up at 5 for a 5.15 phone hookup that ended up falling through.

Today was my early start day (everyone gets one), and I arrived at the assembly area to be greeted by very few people and pouring rain. (It was a moist unstable easterly which was dumping rain on the first bit of topography it hit, which happened to be next to us; the campground, 10km closer to the coast, appears to have had next to nothing). The rain eased and setting off for the start - after struggling to walk first thing in the morning - suggested that a jog would be possible, even if requiring the consumption of some industrial-strength HTFU (not on the WADA banned list as far as I know).

With a bad knee, the last thing I needed was lots of rocky ground, but lots of rocky ground is what we got today - almost relentless for the first half of the course. I couldn't really run in the rock at all with any sort of fluency (I suspect I would have struggled to run fluently in it even without an injury, although being able to lift your legs properly would certainly be a help).

With the difficulty of making progress through the terrain, my mind wasn't really on the job. I hit 1 and 2 right on without being especially confident about it, but 3 was straight out of my long list of O-ringen day 2 debacles, and like many of the previous ones it happened in a flat area with formlines, boulders and very little else. You'd think I'd learn after 20 years (perhaps I have learned a little bit because I only lost six minutes instead of the 20+ of the equivalent occasions in 1989, 1991 and 1998). Had a bit more confidence in the hillier areas but then totally lost confidence again going back into the flat area at 7, ultimately not going too far off line but being so tentative about it that I probably lost a couple of minutes in the process. Took advantage of a long track option on 8 - I'd had more than enough of the rock by then - and finished off a bit better, although blown away for speed by a couple of others over the closing controls (and by sundry M/W10s in the finish chute).

I knew that I wouldn't be competitive today, and even without mistakes I still wasn't going to be competitive; the only real goal was to get into the chasing start on Friday. That should at least be fun, but getting into the top half of the field is about the best I can hope for now. Past experience with this type of injury suggests that it shouldn't be too bad by Wednesday (it's improved somewhat even in the course of this afternoon).

Organisation fail of the day: whoever it was on the Bollnas local council (or whichever other body was responsible) who thought that the day O-ringen was in town was a good day to close half the access road down periodically for lawn-mowing on the verges.

C • Lawn mowing 1