Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Not the sort of long(ish) Sunday run that I'm used to. Oslo in winter is not completely unexplored territory for me, but today's conditions were somewhat different to the last couple of times I've been here - on both of those occasions, the temperature was well below freezing and had been so for some days, whereas this time, it's been getting close to 0 (or even a little above it at low elevations) for the last few days and so there has been a little melting of the surface - not so good when it refreezes.

I put my trust in Jim to lead me somewhere which wouldn't be too bad on this score, and also avoided running in ski tracks, a very serious social faux pas in Norway (I believe public floggings of people who walk or run in ski tracks take place out the front of the royal palace every Monday lunchtime). For the most part the route succeeded in this aim, although there were a few exceptions - unsurprisingly I was much more tentative on the steep donwhill chutes than Jim was and was going at about one-third his speed (though I only ended up on my backside involuntarily once). The other shock-to-the-system bit was a short stretch across a field which has accumulated thigh-deep windblown snow - my quads were screaming after about 20 metres. The lowest part of the run revealed that the extension of the metro line out this way is finally completed (it was opened at the end of last year after having been under construction, and/or stalled whilst the various governments involved argued over the bill, for more than a decade).

This felt like hard work at times (and kilometre rates are fairly meaningless in such conditions) and both back and Achilles were intermittently troublesome, but things finished off OK. Think I still appreciate these conditions more than I'll appreciate next weekend's back home.

The day continued with the somewhat novel experience of a 4-year-old birthday party, not quite as chaotic as I had imagined. (I don't even have much historic experience of these as the fourth birthdays of both Cassie and myself fell during extended overseas sojourns).

I'm now embarking on the first leg of the long haul home (slightly convoluted because I didn't think I could convince work to book me coming out of anywhere other than Geneva, even though it would probably have been the same price to fly directly Oslo-Dubai). Somewhat annoyingly, the Norwegian Oslo-Geneva flight I've used a couple of times on Sunday nights now goes on Sunday mornings and there wasn't a good alternative option by air, so the route is Oslo-Zurich tonight, then train to Geneva tomorrow morning and onwards from there.

I had good reason not to like my chances, once a look at flightradar24.com revealed that the incoming flight was on the ground - in Basel. At that point I was prepared to settle for getting as far as Copenhagen, and that's what eventually happened - we got out of Geneva a few minutes before its midnight curfew (after a further delay when the deicing truck ran out of fluid). This was an uncomfortable flight on a crowded plane and I probably haven't been in "are we there yet" mode more on a trip since I was around the same age as the person who was the pretext for my Oslo excursion - checking my watch every few minutes. Made it to Copenhagen shortly before 2, and hit the mattress in an airport hotel sometime around 2.45 (with an alarm for 6.15).

I got to Oslo just in time to make it for the first of the weekend's two parties (the family one, which given the size of Jim's family involves abundant uncles, aunts and cousins). Knew I'd struggle today given the lack of sleep and would probably hit a flat spot around 2 - which I did, falling asleep in a chair despite a munchkin background soundtrack of some volume - so planned to run as late as I could in the afternoon without hitting proper darkness.

The major challenge today was to avoid falling over. The snow is less icy on the "here be dragons" side of the Oslo county line than it is in the city, but that didn't mean I was feeling comfortable on the steeper downhills. Not a great run as a run, with back having one of its periodic off days (more so in the first half), but managed to grind up the big final climb, an inevitable part of any run which finishes at Cassie and Jim's place (today's was 110 metres in a bit under a kilometre, in snow). Predictably slow given the ground conditions.

And it may well be in the if-your-auntie-was-a-man-she'd-be-your-uncle territory, but I couldn't help thinking that if she'd managed to hold her seat in 2012, then there's a pretty good chance that Rachel Nolan would have been about to become Queensland Premier now. (Without knowing anything much about what she's been doing in the last three years, I'm a little surprised that she didn't line up for another go as some of her former colleagues did).

Morning swim at the Varembe pool following an early-morning hookup with my colleagues back home. Not as crowded as I've often found it at lunchtimes (in part because there was an extra lane open), though still had its moments. Shoulder a bit stiff early on but got going (in as much as I ever get going swimming) later on.

Flying out of Geneva tonight: hopefully to Oslo, but with a tight connection in Copenhagen and snow about, I don't like my chances of getting all the way tonight.

In five trips to Geneva spanning the best part of three months, I think this is the first time I've seen proper rain - every other time it's either been bone-dry (often foggy), or cold enough that anything that has fallen has done so as snow.

I feared the worst for the conditions today - steady rain and temperatures around 3 degrees - but with an extra layer (yes, I'm getting soft in my old age) it wasn't too bad (and in any case the rain had eased to nuisance level by the second half). Headed out on a tour of various old Geneva highlights - first through the old town, then down past where I stayed in 2011-12 and along the river, then up through some of the more upmarket suburbs and over the top of the Cologny ridge.

This wasn't a fast run, but the combination of darkness and, sometimes, mud contributed to that. Steady for the most part, felt like I was tiring a bit in the last half-hour but it didn't really show in the performance.

Exploring more of the town meant seeing a few more things which have changed, notably the appearance of a very big hole in the hillside on the other side of the river section, revealed by some post-run googling to be part of a new rail line linking Geneva to the French towns to the south. (Geneva's existing connections to France run south-west towards Grenoble and don't serve the commuter towns). Just to show that the Anglo-Saxon world doesn't have a monopoly on very long gestation periods for public transport infrastructure projects, this particular line, due to open in 2017, was originally proposed the best part of 150 years ago. (Also to show that the Anglo-Saxon world doesn't have a monopoly on NIMBYism, the project was held up for several years by legal actions from residents of Geneva's posher suburbs objecting to tunnelling beneath their houses).

The post-run googling also revealed that in a referendum late last year, Geneva's voters decided they had better things to do with a billion francs than use it to build a road tunnel across the end of the lake which would drop its users into a part of town already gridlocked at peak hour.

Linked up with Neil and headed out from his place just west of the city centre, on (mostly) trails on both sides of the river. These were of varying degrees of roughness, muddiness and gnarliness (definitely a test for my newly-acquired light), and involved quite a lot of up and down, so not particularly fast going. Only ended up on my backside once which isn't too bad. Felt reasonably good with the sharp climbs - certainly better than on some recent occasions. Good to put a face to another AP name.

Neil also introduced me to the Swiss hiking routes and topographic maps website. I foresee myself wasting a lot of time looking at this at some point in the future.

Did a bit of a double-take, this being January, when I saw the headline in the Age "Deadly Pyalong crash: ice link probed", and then realised it was a reference to drugs.

Intervals session on the inner city waterfront, notionally 10x1 minute. Headed for the inner city because I was worried about black ice in parklands (in the dim early morning light), though it turned out the temperature had risen slightly above freezing overnight and it was a non-issue.

My expectations weren't terribly high given stiff quads and tight Achilles in the warm-up, but this turned out to be an excellent session, gathering pace as it went on and feeling sharp off the mark, particularly on the later reps. Dropped from 63 at the start to 55 at the end, although it's somewhat sobering to think that there was a time that I could run for 20-30 minutes at the pace I was managing for 55 seconds today (at 270 metres, this is 3.23 min/km, slightly under my 10k PB pace but outside my 5k one).

Warm-up and down. As expected, felt rather better on the way back, buoyed by a good session.

Went looking for a replacement for my intermittently misbehaving watch today, but fairly quickly discovered that the types of watches which are sold in shops in central Geneva aren't the types of watches that I was looking for (and not just because of the number of zeroes in their price tags).

Predictably stiff in the early stages, especially in the quads. Loosened up a bit eventually but this was really just a grinding-out-the-cobwebs run - wouldn't have expected anything else the day after my longest one since June. Combined it with a fact-finding expedition to ascertain such things as whether the swimming pool is open this week and what coins the nearest laundromat takes. Dry morning with temperatures just above freezing, but a bit of snow in the afternoon (more than I was expecting).

Not sure which bit of news from home in the last day or so left me more gobsmacked - the knighthood for Prince Philip, or the president of the NT Labor Party going off to fight for the Kurds in Syria. (With respect to the latter, the thought did cross my mind that it would have been considered only mildly eyebrow-raising for his equivalent three generations ago to join the action in the Spanish Civil War).