Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

WMOC sprint qualification. As in 2012, I had a serious scare (without the 2012 excuse of being sick, although I think my speed when well in 2014 probably isn't too different to my speed when sick in 2012), but just made it through. On the initial results list I thought I had made it by the narrowest imaginable margin - dead-heated for the last qualifying spot - but the addition of DNSs (top half of entrants go through, not top half of starters) moved the cut line down a bit so I made it by the generous margin of 12 seconds...

As expected yesterday, it was largely a running race, although the use of artificial fences added a bit of interest to it, particularly in the first half. This took a bit of getting used to - it's the first time I've run a race with them and it's not intuitive to have to look for them across, for example, main paths. Maybe lost 5-10 seconds on 1 handling the fences slightly inefficiently. Fences of a different sort caught me out on the second-last - didn't check which side the control was on and lost 20 seconds, a silly mistake to make in a sprint and I would have been cursing had it cost me a final place.

Raw speed was lacking, not surprisingly. I mentioned in earlier discussion that I expected some of the Brazilians could run and my one-minute man demonstrated it, catching me by halfway through the course on his way to eventually winning the heat. Just like 2012, it looks like I drew the significantly tougher heat - the cutoff was 2.15 behind the leader (although it probably would have been more like 2.45-3.00 if Thomas Jensen had had a decent run), whereas in the other M40 heat it was over 4 minutes (ditto for nearly all other classes). Not too upset with an early start tomorrow - unless it dries out more than I think it will, I can imagine the walking tracks which I expect to form a significant part of the course cutting up pretty badly.

Rain (mostly light to moderate), of the Sydney-in-a-summer-easterly-dip variety, fell for the entire competition day, which rather spoiled the arena atmosphere (i.e. those who had other options quickly cleared out). No significant technical issues that I saw (and no protests), though the results were fairly slow in coming through.

There were a number of Australian heat wins (Kevin Paine, Ted van G, Geoff Lawford, and perhaps others I didn't notice). Bragging rights of the day, though, go to Bill Jones for finishing one place ahead of Jaroslav Kacmarcik, who in his 1980s heyday was arguably the fastest runner in international orienteering.

The bus trip up to Canela was a bit of an epic - I thought the quoted 3 hours for 130km was a bit conservative but it ended up being nearly 4 (although that included an unscheduled stop, supposedly to allow other buses to catch up, which just happened to be outside a shoe shop having a sale). Canela seems a nice town at first glance (and certainly somewhere where it feels like walking around at night is fine), and the place I'm staying seems OK (and sufficient overlap was found between my very limited Portuguese and the owner's equally limited English to communicate the necessary).

C • M40 favourite 4

Event: WMOC 2014
 

WMOC sprint model event - of only limited value as a model event because the already slim area had been reduced by half by last-minute building works (although I was still able to get some useful info on map interpretations), but getting there and back was still useful as a shake-out-cobwebs run. Lots of people poring over the map and trying to read too much of it, as usual. (The long distance model will be much more useful as it will be our first chance to have a proper look at Brazilian forest terrain).

Met Janne Salmi on the way back to town. He's first-year 45s this year so is someone else's problem from a competitive point of view. Thomas Jensen is probably the M40 favourite (though Nick Barrable will have a decent shot, especially in the sprint), and Rune Olsen will take some beating in M35. I really don't know what to expect for myself competitively because the Brazilians who make up 60% of our field are such an unknown quantity (I'm guessing that not many of them can navigate well but at least some of them can run); if I can get through qualifying OK the final terrain should suit me better.

I may not have mentioned that I'm on the jury for this event. The last time I was on an IOF jury (WOC 2012) we had precisely no protests to deal with but I doubt we'll be so lucky this time - to start with, someone will inevitably be disqualified for crossing something they shouldn't have in the sprint and won't be pleased about it. (Maybe disqualification will be the least of their problems; we heard today that there are 150 soldiers guarding things like uncrossable fences).

Saw my first Latin American political demo in town this afternoon (noisy but peaceful, with no vehicles overturned and nothing set on fire). Judging by the number of "Aecio 45" banners I'm assuming it involved opposition supporters unhappy with the verdict the (slim majority of) the Brazilian people delivered last weekend. (I was wondering what the story was with the "Aecio 45" and "Dilma 13" signs, but it seems that party tickets in Brazil are coded on ballots by number).

I'm still on edge in Porto Alegre in a way I wasn't in Rio (let alone Curitiba) - maybe it's all the electric fences, though the city centre feels OK during the day. One thing I did spot walking through the suburbs which I didn't expect was a Melbourne Victory shirt. (Previously, I've seen two brave - or possibly foolhardy - people wearing Argentine ones).

C • Uncrossable features 3

C • Brazilian competitors 3

WMOC training map in a park near central Porto Alegre (one which I've read falls into the "don't even think about going here after dark" category - once the sun sets it apparently becomes the Porto Alegre Drug Superstore). Always wary of reading too much into training events, but if this is indicative of the WMOC sprint qualifier itself then it is going to be a running race - no real challenging navigation on the suggested courses (and long legs for a sprint) and no real decision-making apart from which way to go around some lakes. Felt generally OK but wasn't pushing things terribly hard.

I didn't get a particularly favourable impression of the city last night and even in daylight the area around the bus station (which I went to again this afternoon, this time to organise my onward ticket from WMOC) is seedy, but most of the rest of the central city seems OK in daylight - if still lacking much to dissuade me from the idea that the best thing to do with the non-model event bits of tomorrow might be to catch up on assorted OA e-mails (especially as rain is forecast). Canela, a smallish town where the rest of the WMOC week is, is reported to be much nicer.

It was crime in other places which has caught up with me though - ever since I've been in Brazil I've been paranoid about card cloning (only using ATMs inside banks, and paying cash at restaurants), and I checked my accounts today to discover that it had indeed happened - in New York. Spent a bit of this afternoon on the phone with the bank (who seem as convinced as I am that I haven't spent this week making various withdrawals from sundry ATMs in Florida) - definitely a nuisance but no more than that, as my other card is unaffected and I should get the money back.

Maybe Curitiba isn't quite as tranquil a place as I suggested in yesterday's entry - heading in the opposite direction as I came back from this run were two troop-carriers and nine other police cars, all with lights flashing. (Couldn't find anything relevant in such news as I could understand, although in a country that averages somewhere in the vicinity of 140 murders a day, it would have to have been something pretty drastic to make the national news).

The run, however, was tranquil enough, if not quite as good as yesterday's - decided that I liked yesterday's venue enough that I'd head there again, albeit somewhat earlier in the morning. Still plenty of locals out and about. Early-morning Achilles stiffness didn't really appreciate the cobbles of the first 500 metres.

The rest of the day was a long day on the road - I'd thought that 11 hours for Curitiba to Porto Alegre seemed optimistic (it's 770km, double each of the two previous trips which were both a bit over 6 hours), and so it proved. Got in 80 minutes late at 9.20pm, and (guided by advice that the area around the bus station was an area where wandering around with a pack not really knowing where you're going at 9.20pm was asking for trouble) did something I don't think I've done before and got a taxi for the 1.5k or so to the hotel instead of walking it. Drew the line at getting room service at the hotel. The trip itself had quite a bit of pleasant coastal and near-coastal scenery interspersed with assorted near-coastal architectural atrocities - the coast around Florianopolis, especially north of it, is a bit of a Gold Coast equivalent for everyone between Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires. (Numerous billboards en route featured Sharon Stone spruiking one particular real estate development, although I'm not convinced the picture of Ms. Stone which appeared on the billboards was 100% up to date).

This will be by no means the last long haul of this type I'll experience in the next couple of months - my current tentative plans involve three overnight trips (although at least one, probably two, of these will be on routes with lie-flat seats) and four or five 10-12 hour daytime ones. My tentative plans, though, might be getting a little bit of restructuring because I've just read that Bariloche, where I plan to spend a bit of time around 20 November or thereabouts, is the favoured destination these days for Argentina's schoolies.

And I'm slightly disappointed that the Amazon jungle doesn't feature in ads for 4WDs on Brazilian TV (admittedly, the 4WDs in question looked like the sort of 4WDs where the majority of them would rarely venture beyond the Sao Paulo city limits). I'm assuming that, like everywhere else in the developing world, the vehicular workhorse of rural Brazil is the Toyota ute.

C • Bariloche 4

In Curitiba. Not having anywhere to go today, I stayed in bed a bit later than I might have otherwise and decided to do my running after peak hour; thought it might have been warm (not that that is a bad thing in the context of being ready for next week), but it didn't warm up as quickly as I thought it might in a subtropical city. Lots of road crossings in the first kilometre but then picked up a nice bike track parallel to a railway line to the botanical gardens. I wasn't sure if it was allowed to run in the gardens themselves, but once it was obvious that others were doing it I happily joined in (and enjoyed it enough that I did two laps rather than swinging a bit wide on the return as I'd originally envisaged). First half a bit iffy but second half pretty good.

One of the reasons Curitiba interested me is that it has a reputation for highly innovative urban planning - it stuck in my mind from our studying it in geography in Year 10 or thereabouts (at which point a lot of what was being done was quite new). It has one of the world's more effective bus systems (complete with express routes which run every couple of minutes where there are "stations" in elevated tubes by the roadside, and the bus doors open level with these), which may be why I haven't seen a traffic jam of any consequence here yet. Less obviously, there's also been strong encouragement to develop near main transport routes and not elsewhere, lots of parkland - it probably helps that there wasn't the pressure of people moving from poor parts of the rural north that meant that most bits of spare land in places like Rio and Sao Paulo became favelas - and such a focus on recycling that it's sometimes hard to find a bin for ordinary rubbish. I would imagine it probably has the highest standard of living for the average person of any city in Brazil, and probably Latin America (Rio and Sao Paulo have higher per capita GDP but I'm guessing the distribution of wealth is much more uneven there). In general it comes across as a place where things work.

I'm conscious that up until now I've been existing in a bit of a bubble (particularly in Sao Paulo). Curitiba itself is a bit of a bubble in the context of a country with vast regional differences in wealth, so may not be the most representative of samples, but I did walk through a fair slice of the city todaay, including its city centre and inner northern suburbs.

As noted earlier the district of Sao Paulo I was staying in, while good in other respects, didn't look the most promising of places for running (no way of avoiding crossing a busy road every couple of hundred metres, unless you kept doing laps of the same block), and I'd planned a rest day for today. However, the discovery that the hotel I was staying in had a rooftop pool meant that an alternative was available, though the swim (the first I've done for a month) was a bit of a token effort - struggling a bit from the choppiness of running into my own backwash, although at least I didn't end up with the dizziness I sometime have after doing a lot of laps of small pools.

Heading out to the bus station made me appreciate just how much traffic the Metro carries in peak hour in the peak direction (which I was glad not to be heading in) - packed trains every minute or so, and a continual sea of people on the side of the stations heading to the exits. (I imagine Luz, the main interchange station, must be well up there on the lists of the world's busiest stations, although I believe Mumbai leads that particular honour).

Spent much of the rest of the day on the bus to Curitiba (stage two of the three-stage trip to Porto Alegre) - a reasonably pleasant trip with some excellent scenery on the first half (which we got more time to look at because of slow-moving traffic). Once again the trip gets the thumbs up - no doubt something will go pear-shaped at some stage but it hasn't happened yet.

Getting out early so that I could get an early getaway to the bus station (in anticipation of traffic jams which mostly didn't exist - ended up getting there 90 minutes earlier than I needed to). Once again along Copacabana beach. A very slow first kilometre but settled down pretty nicely after that. Humid again after overnight rain, but a nice breeze. No sign of any post-election disturbances (at least where I was, and I haven't heard news of any elsewhere either).

Spent much of the day on the bus to Sao Paulo. This was definitely not the sort of bus where you have chickens for company (it's not a genuine developing-country bus unless it has chickens); in fact, it was more luxurious than anything I've seen in the developed world (and has a section at the front where the seats are essentially the equivalent of airline business class, something I'll have to look out for in the quite likely event of doing an overnight haul later in the trip). Part of this is undoubtedly the result of long-distance buses still being regularly used by the middle classes in South America (budget airlines are still in their infancy in Brazil, and essentially unknown elsewhere in the continent), rather than being a last resort for the desperate. Also as a product of this, the bus stations (at least the two I've seen so far) are also clean and well-organised places which can reasonably be compared with major European rain stations (although the districts they reside in are not necessarily similarly clean or well-organised - Rio's is in a dodgy area, and I gather Porto Alegre's is too).

Had more conversation on the trip than I expected - the person sitting next to me was a Sydney-based Brazilian-Australian who was back visiting family. Also got to see the first of what will be a lot of South American landscape, quite hilly for the first half and with a bit of a Queensland feel to the vegetation, flatter later on. The Sao Paulo region is in extreme drought and that was reflected in the evidence of several recent bushfires en route (apparently very rare in this part of Brazil).

As noted earlier, I was a bit apprehensive about Sao Paulo but I seem to have fallen on my feet so far, not least through finding what turns out to be a nominal $400-a-night hotel in the middle of an upscale business and shopping district for about a third of that price. It's also two blocks away from a station on what seems to be a very well-functioning metro system (maybe Melbourne would eventually get a better system if they got into the habit of rioting whenever there's a meltdown like yesterday's, as Paulistas did over fare rises last year). It would be a better location still if my language skills were better, as just around the corner is what I suspect is the largest bookshop in the Portuguese-speaking world.