Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

I suspected that I might have slept a bit too well on the plane (not really waking up until after 5pm Australian time) and that I might pay for this, and so it proved, not sleeping much after 3.30am or so. Eventually got up about 5.30, and after taking in the second half of Norwich-Arsenal, headed to Fitzroy for the first leg of a Monday morning triathlon - certainly didn't fancy running on a 30-degree lunchtime on my first day back. As it turned out, morning conditions were pretty close to perfect (certainly more than can be said of riding home in the evening, with squally winds, although I missed the rain). Was feeling rather sleepy, but not as slow as I expected to be.

After a long absence, you notice the things which are familiar but in the background most of the time (like the birds at first light, and the smell of the trees on a cool still morning). The house a few doors up is coming up for sale this weekend - if (as I suspect) I paid a record price for the street, that record is not going to survive Saturday - and the conversion of the old post office into apartments, which has been blocking the footpath towards Station Street since I've been here, is now finished with its products up for sale in two weeks.

Took to the pool on a morning which was made for outdoor pools, still and sunny. Seemed to go on for a long time but not too bad. Drifting out of it a bit in the last couple of laps.

I think it would be fair to say that I was not at my most productive today, although at least I wasn't as far gone as I was when I got home; in fairly rapid succession I had a slight misadventure with a vicious cutting implement and realised I'd forgotten to get a critical ingredient, at which point I decided that takeaway might not be such a bad idea after all.

Also had a massage after work. After a month away, the masseur earned her money today.

C • Vicious cutting implement 3

All went fairly smoothly with the flight home - both legs were early (I knew I didn't have to worry about my connection when my companions on the train in between terminals at Dubai were the pilots for my next flight).

Slept well, perhaps too well, on the second leg, despite a few distractions. When you're a gold frequent flyer in economy you usually end up fairly close to the front (although on the way over I was in one of the handful of economy rows on the top deck, which was good), which means you tend to be close to small children (who were quiet after the first hour). Also amongst the company was the person behind me who made it known in not-to-be-argued-with manner that I was not to recline my seat then changed his mind 30 minutes later, and someone who felt a regular urge to rearrange the things they'd put in the overhead locker, a process which intermittently involved dropping things on me.

Not sure if I'll call this one of my best runs of 2015 - it was a little slow-paced for that (not sure how much of this is the slippery ground?) and my Achilles was intermittently troublesome - but it was definitely one of the most enjoyable.

Flew into Zurich late last night and stayed at one of the airport hotels in Kloten (a town/outer suburb around 2km from the airport). Airport hotels are often in very unpromising running environments but I knew from staying here in January that Kloten had potential.

Today's plan was fairly straightforward - head into the hills between Kloten and Winterthur with a vague target in mind, and after the initial climb, see where the yellow signs took me. In Kloten itself snow was falling but not settling on hard surfaces, but 50 metres higher it was proper snow, and most of the run was done in it - just a couple of centimetres of fresh snow with no ice beneath, the sort that's nice to run in. Took quite a while to build into this run, but had plenty of good moments, especially on the sections on white tracks across fields (if it wasn't too windy) or through forests. The highlight, though, was the descent back towards Kloten at around 16-18k - gentle downhill through a fairytale forest with a couple of centimetres of fresh snow on everything (except the track I was running on). The last loop in town to get me up to the 2.15 I wanted could have been a bum note, especially as I felt as if I was starting to fade a bit at 2 hours, but it turned out reasonably good, taking in the town's Christmas market (at which the most lucrative economic activity appeared to be the issuing of parking tickets). Rolling hills most of the way, with almost no extended flat sections until back in town.

Now on the homeward leg - due back in Melbourne Sunday night, but the tightness of my connection is such that there's every chance of some unscheduled time in Dubai (although at present our departing flight is showing on time, and as an A380 we shouldn't have a bus transfer in Dubai, which from experience can add another 30 minutes to the time required).

More of an orienteering experience than a full-blown training. Original plan was terrain intervals with Jim, but this didn't quite happen - (a) because Jim wasn't well and decided to call it a day after the first section, and (b) because the forest still had quite a bit of snow and ice, with only limited melting despite temperatures today being well above freezing. It wasn't enough to be a major impediment to progress in itself, but I didn't have the confidence to know what holes the snow might be filling in the rougher stuff (and running down a partly snow-covered scree slope requires more bravery than I possess). Nice on the tops, though. A bit wobbly on a couple of the early controls but otherwise navigating reasonably well on a decent area (Norwegian Middle Champs a couple of years ago).

Amazing what difference having a bit of metal on your shoes can make in these conditions - parts of the track to the start were sheet ice, but it was still possible to run up them, albeit slowly.

In the petrol station on the way back, encountered someone of Middle Eastern appearance with no Norwegian and very little English who wanted to know how to get to the processing centre for asylum-seekers.

I leave Norway tonight - initially to Zurich, then flying out of there tomorrow afternoon. May not have seen the last of the snow for this trip as the forecast suggests there is at least some chance of snow in the Zurich area tomorrow morning.

Club training near Bekkestua. This wasn't exactly a Halden Onsdagsnatt, but it was my first experience of Nordic night orienteering, on a map which was partly open and partly a patch of forest a few hundred metres across. Complex relay format with teams of three and two runners out at once (most of the time) - I was in a team with two juniors of 16 or so (one boy, one girl).

Took most of the first leg to work out what I was doing, then did OK with one exception - but it was a significant exception. At 4, I didn't see the marker (the controls were reflectors and this one was hanging on the other side of the tree); I didn't have the confidence to be sure I was in the right spot and convinced myself I was on the next knoll 100 metres down the hill, losing 2-3 minutes in the process.

One lesson: just because everything else is frozen doesn't mean that marshes are.

Second leg of the relay. A mass start and all in the yellow, so much easier than the first leg. I thought there might have been forking but there didn't seem to be; dropped by the bunch out of the start (which I wasn't quite ready for), but picked off a few in the second half. Definitely more intense pace than first time round.

Headed north (we've moved since yesterday and are now at Avlos, on the south side of the Kolsas hill), with a view to doing an out-and-back on the trails on the east side of the hills. That was dependent on conditions. The ice had mostly cleared in the suburbs, and there was almost none in the forest itself (presumably the trees intercepted the ice yesterday morning), but anything in the open was still lethal. There wasn't actually that much in the open, but enough that I decided that, although it was possible to run, it wasn't that enjoyable, so I dropped back into the suburbs.

Not being especially familiar with this part of town, once through Bekkestua I figured that I would eventually hit either the T-bane to the north or the Sandvika-Baerums Verk road to the west. As it turned out I did a fair bit of semi-looping (some of it nice, some of it not quite so nice) and became somewhat unsure of where I was and which way I was heading (low cloud meant the hill wasn't available as a directional landmark), but eventually popped out one station west of where we're staying.

My attire, or relative absence thereof (I was wearing shorts, it being above freezing), attracted a certain amount of comment from the locals, particularly various groups of kids coming home from school.

Not a fast run but the ice had a bit to do with that; a bit sore at times but felt as if I had a reasonable amount left at the end (I'm orienteering tomorrow night, so today wasn't as long as a midweek long run normally would be; have some lengthy plans for Zurich or points nearby on Saturday morning).

Went to bed thinking there might be a bit of snow overnight, but woke to see none. There was a puddle in the car park and I thought the changeover to rain had already happened. Stepping outside quickly disabused me of that notion - there might have been puddles on some of the more heavily salted roads, but everywhere else was sheet ice. It was pointless even contemplating doing an intervals session in such conditions and I quickly decided to try my luck again in the afternoon, but it was still too treacherous when I got home (it would have been OK at Blindern by then, I think), so this becomes my weekly rest day from running instead of Friday.

The culprit was freezing rain. For Australians who are unfamiliar with the stuff, this is when rain falls from a warm layer of air aloft into a sub-freezing layer at the surface, becomes supercooled and freezes on its first contact with the ground or any other object. (The most common scenario for it is when warmer air is pushing in after a cold spell, with it eventually turning to rain as the surface layer warms - which is what happened today).

In large quantities it's known as an "ice storm" and can create havoc, especially with trees and power lines (Norway sensibly seems to have put much of its urban electrical infrastructure underground). Today certainly wasn't on that scale, but walking to and from stations and anywhere else where gravel hadn't been put down was an interesting challenge (seeing people trying to negotiate the ramp out of the Forskningsparken station suggested that the locals weren't finding the conditions any easier than I was). The roads weren't as crazy as I thought they might have been but apparently someone drove off a road into the ocean at Sandvika (they got out).

With temperatures expected to stay above freezing overnight, I'm cautiously optimistic that things might have improved by the morning.

Morning recovery session before the OA Board meeting (which for me started at 10am). I had the idea of going out to an island, which sounded attractive in theory. It was a bit less attractive in practice - I'm staying next to what's described as "Norway's biggest shopping mall" (I was under the impression that Norway's biggest shopping mall, if defined by the amount spent there by Norwegians, was actually in Sweden), and getting to said island involves a couple of kilometres each way of negotiating commercial districts and main roads in peak-hour traffic. It was nice once on the island though. Back considerably better today.

I realised before I started that I'd put my gloves in the wash by mistake and they were still at Cassie's. If it had been, say, -2 I'd probably have just gone with bare hands, but at -7 I didn't think that would end well, so I improvised by wearing socks on my hands instead. Seemed to work OK.

It was reported today that an international study of sports governance structures had actually rated FIFA second-highest. It doesn't say a lot for the rest, although I suspect that FIFA has a lot of structures which look reasonably good in theory but buckle in practice under the deluge of money that floats around football. In case you're wondering, shooting took the wooden spoon. (Orienteering wasn't part of the study, although looking at the criteria I think IOF would score reasonably well).

C • Island 2

I think this is my first swim in Norway, in the pool at Bekkestua (with my nephews enjoying themselves in the kids' pool). Thought I'd picked an appropriate lane but someone felt differently, because they said to me something in Norwegian which I took to mean that he wasn't happy with my presence and wanted me to go elsewhere. (Swimming in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne has given me plenty of experience of locals who don't take kindly to interlopers on their turf). Moved across to what I thought was the fast lane with no further issues.

C • Skating 8

Given the principal purpose of being in Oslo this week, it was always on the cards that a planned schedule would be upended on at least one day, and so it proved with the arrival of Maja Katinka (to be known as Katinka) last night. (Cassie doesn't muck around with these things - there was still no sign of action when we left the house around 7 last night and the baby was born by 10).

With the morning devoted to family matters any running plans were shifted to the afternoon; this time with the cut-off start time to finish before dark shifted to around 1.30. This isn't really a time I'm used to doing long runs and the start was fairly dismal, but started to pick up from about 3k onwards as I hit the tracks along the edge of the Oslofjord - well populated on a sunny afternoon, even with the temperature slightly below freezing. (I'm staying in Sandvika due to a excess of people for the available space in Baerums Verk, which at the moment is not such a bad thing because it's below the snowline). Left those behind a bit later and, thanks to missing a sign for a track, found myself on a couple of roads for a while which looked reasonably major but were very quiet today, and settled down quite well. Turned around at the north edge of Fornebu, near the old airport, and was looking forward to the second half, but after being pretty good for the last month my back decided to throw a wobbly, and the rest of the run was about getting back by the shortest route possible and as intact as possible. The rolling hills and back street/bike track combination would have been nice under normal circumstances, but it was hard going today, and I had no inclination whatsoever to take it out to two hours (especially as the Achilles was starting to arc up a bit by then as well).

Headed into Oslo once my bag had arrived; by the time I got to Cassie and Jim's place it was almost time for lunch (i.e. it was past 11am - first 'welcome to Norway' moment, but felt a bit strange because I'd taken full advantage of the hotel breakfast, and done so reasonably late). Ended up planning on an afternoon run; the second 'welcome to Norway' moment was the realisation that if we wanted to get this done before it got dark we'd need to be out there at 2 or slightly after).

The quirks of winter conditions were on display today. Last time I was here in the colder months, the extra altitude at Cassie's place meant good-quality snow up there and an icy mess lower down. Today it was the opposite - icy up top (drizzle onto snow a couple of days ago), but essentially clear lower down. Struggled to keep up with Jim on the rougher trails above the snowline - I'm sure it helps to have an instinctive knowledge of which bits of ground you can trust and which you can't - and after a good month back was a little iffy today, but not too bad as a run. Felt comfortably warm even with temperatures below freezing (probably -2 or -3).

Last session in Geneva in what's not my favourite pool, although it's been better on this trip because I've been able to get in early when it's not too crowded. Seemed particularly uncrowded this morning; presumably the rain was a bit of a deterrent (although why rain should be a deterrent to swimming in an indoor pool is something of a mystery). Today is the first time in three trips that I've seen significant rain on a November trip to Geneva; I gather that this is a somewhat unrepresentative sample. (Even today, though, there's a decent rainshadow; 11mm here so far, compared with 77 at La Dole in the Jura maybe 30km away).

The job is done in Geneva now (although I'll presumably have a certain amount of follow-up once the statement itself appears on Wednesday), and it's now on to Oslo. Hopefully, unlike January, I won't have an unscheduled night in Copenhagen en route, although it is a promising sign that (a) it isn't snowing and (b) as I write, the incoming flight is on the final approach into Geneva, and not on the ground in Basel like it was at this stage last time.

In the finest traditions of earlier such efforts at Dubai, the run from one end of Copenhagen to the other after getting off plane #1 18 minutes before the departure time of plane #2 (at least there were no stairs/escalators/lifts involved, and you don't have to go through security again if changing planes within the EU). Unsurprisingly, my bag failed to make it but I'm told it's on the morning plane (something I'm just about to put to the test).

Had a certain amount of company for this run, although not as much as in Berlin airport last year where the surging pack had at least a passing resemblance to the first leg of Jukola (minus the lights).

C • ...one end of Copenhagen to the other 1

It's been the heaviest block of training I've done for a few months, but this turned out to be a bridge too far - struggling badly from midway onwards in a very ordinary performance. At least at that stage most of the hard part of the route (including a full frontal assault on the Cologny hill) was done and there were only a couple of smallish climbs to come, for which I was grateful. Perhaps picked up a little bit in the last 15 minutes, and did manage to muster the enthusiasm to do an extra lap of the block to get the time up to two hours.

A topographic map I saw at Neil's place last night promised "traces de dinosaures". Before younger readers (or their parents on their behalf) start getting too excited, to get to said traces requires climbing to 2400 metres in the Alps on the Swiss-French border (and, after Saturday's forecast dump, will be buried under snow for about the next six months).

Joined Neil for a run from his place in the evening - same loop as in January (I think), with some fairly rough trails in places in the dark, though a bit less hairy this time because it was drier. Seemed to be handling it reasonably well although Neil was definitely stronger on a couple of the sharp climbs. Still rather warm.

My side gig this week is representing the Antarctic at a meeting on possibly setting up a multinational climate centre for polar regions (Australia was asked to send someone for this purpose at short notice, no-one else could go, and I was already in town). Unsurprisingly 99% of the discussion has been about the Arctic and my main role has been to remind people occasionally that there are two poles.

C • Well the earths poles 1

Intervals session along the lakefront on the clearest morning yet - excellent view of Mont Blanc (at least until the sun came up directly behind it). Felt pretty good today and performing a bit better than last week, too; feel as if I'm in a reasonable patch at the moment.

You certainly can't accuse Global Cryosphere Watch of looking for junkets. Their next workshop is in Salekhard, Russia, on the Arctic Circle in western Siberia - in the first week of February. (I won't be there).

Speaking of matters Russian, I was somewhat surprised to learn today that the Commonwealth of Independent States still exists, sort of.

Warm-up and down. A bit of traffic on the way back.

Fairly smooth session at the pool, not as busy as it is in the evenings, after another earlyish phone hookup with back home (although at least this one was 6am rather than 4am).

On entering the office there was a sign for a meeting "Safe and Secure Management of Conventional Ammunition". Evidently the responsibilities of the World Meteorological Organisation have expanded considerably since I was last here (either that or someone else was borrowing the meeting room).

I may be a long way from home but news of two epic fails back in Australia have reached me - one being the TV station which illustrated a story on France with a backdrop of the Dutch flag, and the other being the Queensland MP who said that the threat of terrorism should open a debate on reintroducing the death penalty - something which I'm sure will be a serious deterrent to suicide bombers.

Lunchtime run, initially through the botanical gardens (which I think is the first time I've run there - they don't open until 9.30 in winter so lunchtime is the only time it's possible), then along the lake. Felt reasonably good, and less slow than usual for a Monday recovery session - I continue to be surprised with how little impact yesterday's long descent had on the quads.

It was a delightful day, sunny and calm and around 15-16 degrees, and many were taking advantage - I saw people water-skiing, sunbathing in bikinis, and even a couple of people swimming in the lake. I'm not expecting too many of these people to be doing the same thing this time next week: current forecast is snow flurries and -7.

Perhaps I wasn't quite as far from the action on the weekend as I'd thought - Grenoble was one of the places where there were police raids today, although they seem to be of the sort which involve hauling in for questioning someone who knew someone who knew someone whose second cousin went off to fight in Syria (the serious stuff seems to have been in Brussels and Lyon).

Stayed last night at Embrun, a valley town between Gap and Briancon (although the town centre itself is on a bit of a bluff). Most of the routes with potential from town looked like there was a fair bit of up to them but I decided I was up to that challenge. (Forests weren't really an option today - I saw quite a few people heading for the hills in battered 4WDs and orange vests, and the shot I heard in the distance as I was starting was a fair indicator of what they were doing).

The climbing started more or less immediately, and I suspected from the cycling kilometre-and-%-grade markers and the road graffiti (some of which referred to cyclists, albeit not the big names, and some of which referred to local non-enthusiasm about a proposal to build high-tension power lines in the vicinity) that this was a climb of some note in the cycling community. (I found out afterwards it was a category 2 climb in the last time trial in the 2013 Tour). Fairly hard work but settled into a steady grind for 5k at 7-8%, including a couple of spots where (not for the first or last time this weekend) I was thinking "how did they build a road across that without it all sliding down the mountain?". The slope eased for a couple of kilometres past a village and then turned into a rolling section for 40 minutes or so either side of the turnaround. Was feeling fair to middling through this section, a bit iffy climbing one small hill, but at that point I knew there were 8km to go and this was the last one.

I was rudely awakened from my bubble when a dog rushed out in the village near the top of the descent and went after me - a quick look confirmed a small bite (enough to break the skin but that's about it). The owner showed the level of concern that I'd expect an Australian dog owner to show towards a victim in the same circumstances - zero - but did eventually call it back. Perhaps it's as well my French isn't good enough to say anything too abusive, but I think I made it suitably clear by gesture and facial expression that (a) I'd been bitten and (b) I wasn't too pleased about it. It's the first time I've been bitten while running for nearly 30 years; it was somewhat relieving when some post-run googling revealed afterwards that rabies has effectively been eliminated in France. (There's been one case since 2003, 300 kilometres away and involving a dog illegally imported from Algeria).

Perhaps this got me fired up because I suddenly started feeling pretty good (although the descent probably had something to do with that), and the remaining 35 minutes or so of the run went pretty smoothly. Thought that finishing with 8km of continuous downhill might not have been great for my quads but no real sign of trouble as of tonight. It wasn't as special as two previous out-and-backs with big outward climbs around this time of year in recent years (the Pyrenees in 2011 and Patagonia last year), but still fairly decent.

The rest of the day involved a lot of looking at mountains with, in general, not a lot of snow on them. The Galibier was open (except for the summit bit that the tunnel bypasses) - astonishing in mid-November - so I went that way, which was as spectacular as one might expect - I'd heard that it was a pretty hairy road but it was tame compared to a couple of the roads that I did yesterday (and, for that matter, the eastern approach to the Croix de Fer later in the day).

(I assume that Lautaret-Galibier-Telegraphe-Croix de Fer has been a Tour stage at some point? Would be an epic on a bike).

The only real negative to the weekend (apart from the dog) was how little was open (in the business sense) - I'm sure the local food is good but no-one seemed particularly inclined to sell any at this time of year. I thought I might end up having to resort to Macca's - in France! - but ended up finding somewhere that sold plastic-wrapped baguettes, which I settled for in the circumstances (it was 2.30 by then). The rapidity of this lunch meant that I got back to Grenoble 40 minutes earlier than my booked drop-off time, all of which was consumed circling the city in search of a petrol station which would accept a form of payment other than French credit cards.

Security update: saw numerous soldiers in one stretch, but I assume they were on a regular training exercise and not keeping the Galibier safe from any would-be jihadists. There were a couple of cops outside the Grenoble station, and a couple of officials at the almost-permanently-unstaffed customs post at Geneva station who didn't seem to be doing anything other than looking stern.

I went to bed last night hearing of a shooting in a bar in Paris (which, on the facts as they existed at the time, could conceivably have been one of the local gangs at work) and got up to learn that it was something much bigger.

My assumption (correct so far) was that any major issues would be confined to major cities ('major' in this context meaning places bigger than Grenoble). As my weekend plans do not involve any major cities I saw no obvious reason to make radical changes, the one concession being to reverse my planned direction. (The logic here was that if the Galibier is closed - something I've heard conflicting reports about - the only realistic alternative coming from the north was the motorway into Italy through the Frejus tunnel, and if border controls are being reimposed that could have some nasty traffic jams).

The run was a get-things-out-of-the-way-early affair before heading for the hills. I'd last been to Grenoble en route to the 1996 World Cup final in Villard-de-Lans in the hills about 30km away, which featured challenging limestone terrain (although not as extreme as WOC 2011), possibly the worst collective navigational perfomance ever seen from an international field in the men's B race, and an opening ceremony march through the town which was so slow and dragged on for so long that a few of us ducked out to the side to buy ice-creams. Grenoble itself is one of those places where running options are either flat or vertical, and as I wasn't in the mood for vertical I went along the river to the university and back. Hardly anyone out early but starting to be a bit more life later.

Spent the rest of the day mountain-exploring, although it does feel a bit like cheating to go up l'Alpe d'Huez in a car. (Only saw two cyclists - I suspect you'd be able to add a couple of zeroes to that number on a Saturday in summer). Going down the other side was definitely one of the more white-knuckle drives I've done, with a single lane, no guardrails, a surface littered with small rocks fallen from above and a sense that the whole thing could slide into the valley at any moment. I certainly wouldn't argue with Tony Martin's assessment (although I hope they at least cleared the debris off the road before the Tour came that way).

November is very much the low season in the mountains. I'd had thoughts of a nice lunch in a mountain restaurant somewhere, but there were few signs of life in the side valley where I was in the middle of the day (an indication of when the tourist season is in these parts is perhaps given by the noticeboard at the start of some walking tracks which had on it the weather forecast for 28 August). Even in Bourg d'Oisans, a quite substantial town, the "fermeture annuelle" signs were ubiquitous and the choice turned out to be between kebabs and pizza. (It wasn't easy to find anywhere open to stay once the daylight ran out, either).

As for the previous night's events, if you didn't know they had occurred, nothing would have seemed obviously unusual in this part of the world (at least if you stayed away from TV; seeing someone captioned as "Vice-President de Front Nationale" on the screen when I was having lunch made me thankful that I don't understand enough French to know what he was saying). There certainly wasn't a visibly increased police presence (quite possibly because the local gendarmes have been redeployed to places which have a higher risk rating than completely-out-of-season winter resorts), and the only visible sign was one town-hall flag at half-mast. I see it as a good thing that life seems to be carrying on more or less as normal; one of the points of terrorism is to try to stop life carrying on more or less as normal.

C • life as abnormal 2

Morning swim. More people blasting past me this morning. Not as much sleep as I would have liked - got home pretty late after going to the ice hockey (which went to extra time and then a shootout - first time I've seen Geneva win on several visits).

This weekend's plan is the French Alps - getting the train down to Grenoble tonight and then picking a car up there in the morning. From there it depends a bit on the weather - tomorrow is forecast to be colder than recent days (freezing level around 2000m) but not much precipitation. (From the route-planning point of view, the landslide which forced the re-routing of this year's Tour is unhelpful - the road is still closed and it's quite an important link in what I'd originally had in mind).

No trip to Geneva is complete without at least one cross-border run, and this morning was it. A rather plodding effort but happy with my endurance; first time for a while I've been out beyond 2 hours. Had forgotten that getting round the northeast end of the airport isn't particularly pedestrian-friendly (especially on dark foggy mornings), but found some good route options after that, not least the small back road to return into Switzerland - I'm used to France-Switzerland border crossings which are marked only by a small sign and a notice saying that if you've got anything to declare please go to a bigger crossing, but this crossing didn't even have those - the only indication (other than my map) that I'd actually crossed an international border was that the colour of the house numbers had changed.

On Monday, for once, there was no protest outside the UN, but today there was a one-man operation with a sign (it was too dark for me to read what it was about). On Sunday afternoon I saw a small demo outside the British Museum and initially assumed it was Greeks wanting their marbles back, but it was actually Falun Gong.

For no obvious reason I felt horribly sleepy this morning. Held off on heading out for as long as I could, but was still feeling barely awake when I started (and with tight Achilles too). Didn't feel much better on the first rep of the set, in the same place as last week, and was fully expecting to look at my watch at the end and see something starting (figuratively speaking) with a 7. Instead it was a 63, similar to last week, and while this was never the most comfortable of sessions, I did have confidence from there that it wasn't completely useless. Even started to enjoy myself a bit on the last couple as the times dropped to 59.

The fog/low cloud was back in today, but it is still warm aloft and there is no sign of rain (or snow). My plans for this weekend (which are still somewhat fluid apart from getting the train to Grenoble and picking a car up there) involve the French Alps, and some quick online searching revealed that every col of consequence is still open, apart from one where the issue is a landslide rather than snow. (Normally the higher passes, like the Galibier and the Iseran, are well and truly snowed in by the end of October).

A particularly pedestrian warm-up, and return.

Felt very dry last night for some reason, and a bit out of sorts this morning too, which meant that I didn't have terribly high expectations for this run. These expectations were mostly lived down to, although things picked up a bit in the final third. Did explore some new territory, partly in the course of finding first a way around the railway construction site at Eaux-Vives and then a way out of the office complex I ended up on the other side of said site.

Observance of pedestrian crossings by drivers didn't seem to be an especially high point today.

Not exactly a day that went to plan. The original plan was to swim in the morning and run at lunchtime. I wasn't feeling especially awake in the morning, but headed up to the pool anyway, only to discover that the ticket machine was en panne, which meant that unless you had a season ticket there was no way to get in (the cashier's office wasn't staffed until 8.30).

Another false start came at lunchtime, as I realised that I'd forgotten to bring my running shoes. Fortunately, I'm staying close enough to get changed at work, walk across and swap work shoes for runners. Once that was sorted, I headed out on a gloriously sunny and pleasantly mild day up the hills to the north, not generally sparkling but not too bad after the first climb. (I felt as if I still had something left at the end yesterday, and this was consistent with that). Plenty of other people out as you'd expect.

The route back came past plenty of UN agencies. (Can anyone back home advise as to whether the appointment of Kevin Rudd to head a (worthy) UN initiative on better sanitation has led to any scatological remarks from his erstwhile political opponents?).

My slightly out-there feeling this morning was probably the result of a late arrival home last night, and probably not the result of hearing of a "UFO strike" on the morning news. In this case, the UFO strike resulted in a reduction of the number of flying objects in European skies - the UFO in question being the union representing Lufthansa cabin crew, who are currently embroiled in industrial action over planned cost-cutting measures.

Eventually got to the pool in the evening. I knew it would be crowded and it was, although at least the pool has a slow lane now so you're not getting in the way of people going twice the speed you are. 8-10 people in a 33-metre lane is still a lot, though, and I didn't always enjoy this session. Briefly lost track of numbers in the midst of one particularly heavy bit of congestion and suspect that I may have done an extra lap (the time would seem to bear that out).

In 1974-75 (when I was three, turning four), we lived for a year in London while my father was doing a postgrad course at LSE. I have some fragmented memories of that time and had the bright idea, given that I didn't really want to be doing a long run in central London (even on a Sunday morning), of making our old house a long-run target.

This proved to be a bit more challenging than I'd thought. We lived in Sunbury-upon-Thames, about 30km from the centre (just as well I checked this - although I remembered the address I'd misremembered the suburb), so it was going to need making use of public transport to get to the region. The nearest railway line didn't start up early enough on a Sunday morning (and, as it turned out, was in any case shut down for trackwork), so I went looking for somewhere within a radius of 10km or so which had a train by 7.30 on a Sunday morning - not so much a case of Last Train to London as First Train out of London. (The 7.30 start was governed by meeting a friend back in the city at 11, although that was hotel check-out time anyway).

Those of you who know me know that I enjoy this sort of logistical challenge, and I eventually found Surbiton - on a main line to the southwest from Waterloo with a 7.34 arrival, and about 10km from Sunbury (on the wrong side of the Thames, but there was a bridge more or less where needed) - the last piece in the puzzle was getting to Waterloo (the Underground doesn't start early enough) but there was a bus. The plan eventually became Surbiton-Sunbury, then back to either Twickenham or Richmond depending on time (Richmond's about 2km further but has more transport options).

I got exposure to one of the less attractive bits of suburban British weekend culture by almost stepping in a pavement pizza within 50 metres of exiting Surbiton station, but settled nicely after that, through pleasant suburbs for about 4km, then crossing the river to Hampton and going along it - taking in various signs of poshness like the stables and the royal parks (inevitably reading Hogarths Way leading into the latter as 'Hogwarts'), as well as a not-too-smelly sewage treatment plant. Reached the old house at the far end, the street and house looking more or less as I'd remembered; couldn't find the pre-school where I apparently created various forms of havoc. (I think it can safely assumed that one other feature of the next street, the Thames Coffee Company, was not there in 1975).

I'd been a bit apprehensive about the trip back; the aforementioned sewage works and a racecourse occupy the land to the east of Sunbury and without doubling back, the only way around it seemed to be a major road which fed directly off the M3. It turned out it was mostly elevated and there was a bike path underneath it which wasn't too bad, and I found other ways after a couple of kilometres - mostly on what was supposed to be a main road into Twickenham but was quiet on a Sunday morning (and didn't have many cross-streets). The run itself had been OK-but-not-brilliant for much of the way but I picked up the pace in the last 20 minutes (don't know exactly how much as I'd left the Garmin behind), thinking I was running behind the timetable I wanted. Ended up making the place I wanted to be at 11 at 11.00.30.

A bit tired in the afternoon in remaining London sightseeing, but not too bad. Returned to Geneva in the evening.

The schedule for the rest of the day meant that my only available option was early morning from the airport hotel - one could tell oneself that a 6.40 start was actually 7.40 Swiss time, but then operating on Swiss time would mean having got to bed at 12.30am so you can't have it both ways.

I didn't expect anything particularly inspiring from such a location but it wasn't too bad - one of the things about running in unknown cities is that you get to see things you'd never see as a normal tourist. Sometimes this is because they're not worth seeing (the Tesco superstore and associated developments at the far end of this run fall into that category), and there was some reasonably mundane suburbia, but there was also a niceish country park (albeit with the drone of the nearby M4 ramping up the serenity) on the way back once it was a bit lighter. The suburb names Hayes and Harlington seemed vaguely familiar (it turns out it's the name of both a railway station and a parliamentary constituency, decided in 1992 by 53 votes although it's a safe Labour seat these days; definitely too far out of town to be in Monopoly).

Unsurprisingly, there were numerous signs in support of the Stop Heathrow Expansion campaign. (Said expansion, if you believe the various billboards around the place, is going to create about eleventy billion jobs or something like that).

The main purpose of the day (and the weekend) was, after a quarter-century of supporting them (I adopted them when I spent a year in Winchester in 1989), to see Norwich City on their home turf for the first time - it's the first time since then that I've been in the UK on a weekend during the season. (The only time I've seen them play was in 1989, away at Southampton, in a game with a very atypical atmosphere because it was the first to be played in England after the Hillsborough disaster). Certainly enjoyed the day (it helped that the team came away with the three points after a scrappy 1-0 win), and Norwich seems a pleasant enough place at an initial glance (and not as flat as I expected), which is relevant because it's not utterly impossible that I might find myself living here at some point in the future (the university has an active research unit in my field). Was tired enough to sleep a fair bit of the way on the train back to London, though.

Oh - a dewpoint of 15.5 in London in November (as it was during the run) is fairly ridiculous. (Norwich seemed to miss most of the rain though, with none of any consequence falling during the match).

Swim in the Varembe pool. Seemed to go quite a bit faster than last time, and also somewhat more relaxed in terms of the surrounding crowd - perhaps the first time I've actually enjoyed a swim in this location.

It's slowly dawning on me that being responsible for a 2011-15 five-year climate assessment that is going to be released the week before the Paris conference means that I probably have more of a platform than any scientist has previously to tell the world about what's happening to the climate right now, ahead of a big UN climate conference. It's a significant responsibility...

C • Something about the right man for the job? 2

I'm over in the UK for the weekend. The flight across was on time and with no dramas, but the 90 minutes after landing weren't a wonderful advertisement for Britain (despite the niceness of the immigration official), the highlight being almost refused entry onto the shuttle to the airport hotel because I only had a 20-pound note for the 5-pound fee (in most of the world this would be a free service anyway) and the driver didn't have change - another passenger came to the rescue. We then spent 40 minutes doing an extended lap of Heathrow (by the end of this, the thought was crossing my mind that I could have just about got into central London by now), whereupon the hotel couldn't find my booking (it turned out they'd filed it under Blair rather than Trewin - not the first time this has happened and undoubtedly not the last). Other annoyances were that both Oyster card machines at Terminal 5 were broken (I was hoping to get one tonight to give me the option of getting a bus out tomorrow if that turned out to be the most efficient way of doing things), as was one of the hotel lifts.

Wikipedia possibly jumping the gun slightly - it says of the elections whose posters I mentioned a couple of days ago:

"On 8 November 2015, in the federal election Councilor [[]], member of the Social Democratic Party (PS/SP), was re-elected in the second round as Conseillère des Etats of the canton of Geneva with an absolute majority of xxx votes. She is part of the Council of States (French: Conseil des Etats) since 2007. Councilor [[]], member of the Green Party (PES/GPS) (PES/GPS), was re-elected in the second round with an absolute majority of xxx votes. He is part of the Council of States since 2007".

Heading out into some of my more favoured ground in this part of the world - through the old town, across to and along the River Arve, then back (partly) through some of Geneva's posher suburbs before dropping down to the lake.

Had a bit of a false start because I'd slightly misremembered the route up into the old town and hit a few dead-ends and flights of stairs. Settled after that but still pretty slow, only really picking up in the last few kilometres. Plugging away reasonably, though, on my longest run for a while. Achilles a bit sore early and late. Did find a new way down the hill (didn't quite come down to the lake where I intended), down the Rue de 31 Decembre. Normally, streets that are named after dates in the calendar are an indication of a place that hasn't always been especially stable politically, but I don't think that applies in Geneva's case.

Lots of fog again, although today it broke up into a nice afternoon.

10x1 minute (actually 59-64) on the Geneva lakefront. A virtual carbon copy of the equivalent session in April, right down to the Achilles soreness in the warm-up and feeling as if I was fading a little in the last couple of reps (without any effect on performance). A decent session on the whole.

Warm-up and down. A few spots of rain coming back, which wasn't really expected either by me or by the official forecasts (both of us expected that Geneva would be beyond the eastern edge of the moisture).

Didn't feel too bad - having slept until a reasonable time - but inexplicably slow, given that this run didn't involve any significant roughness (apart from a couple of flights of stairs) and only minor hills - out west into the Le Lignon/Aire area without going all the way down to the river. Perhaps got going a little better in the last 2-3km. Don't think the slowness can be accounted for by being perturbed by seeing the local tabloid headline "Confession: Swiss hunter ate a cat" (they concentrate on the big issues here, too).

A candidate for elections coming up this Sunday (not sure what for, given that the Swiss national elections were only a couple of weeks ago) is promising "un nouveau souffle". Souffles have a fine tradition in Australian political discourse but I'm not sure what's been referred to in this context.

And I notice that you're now allowed to put bottles in recycling bins in Geneva on Sundays (although not in St. Gallen, where you can't even do it at lunchtimes). I wonder if this was the result of a referendum since last time I was here?

I can't completely leave home behind on these trips, but definitely would have preferred not to have had a 4am phone hookup on my first day in Geneva (hopefully this won't put me back to square one in the jet lag department).

That went on for the best part of two hours, whereupon I eventually headed out into the morning darkness. Lacking somewhat in imagination this morning, I simply headed for an out and back along the lake shore, never feeling particularly inspired (and sometimes a bit sleepy).

Doubled up with a swim, also in the morning (given that I had enough time to do so before work) - Geneva's pools now actually open at 7. (Just like at home, the serious crowd seem to hit the pool the moment it's open - it's noticeably less crowded after 8). Felt as if I was floundering a bit but enjoyed myself more in the second half as the people thinned out (there's a slow lane now so there aren't people blasting past me every second lap).

Second toe on my left foot a bit sore (maybe bruised?) today for no obvious reason (noticeable if pushing off from the wall too hard). Seems to have settled a little tonight.

Local Swiss event just north of Zurich, on an area unlike most I've seen before in Switzerland - the (slightly underestimated) advertised climb for the whole course was less than that in the first couple of controls last time I was in this part of the world. It was a flattish area, lots of tracks and lots of green, not yet in full winter mode so the green still meant something (often in European deciduous forests, the green can essentially be ignored in winter) - in particular, lots of brambles at ground level, not always reliably mapped.

My compass running in flat terrain wasn't very good today, but it didn't cost me as much as it might have on another day - indeed on 5, going out at 45 degrees in the wrong direction put me onto an alternative route choice which gave me my best split of the day. A bit wide on 8 and dropped 30 seconds or so, took what turned out to be a suboptimal route choice on 15, and then lost another 30 seconds or so on 16 - this didn't seem to be in the right place, but as it was on a "thicket" in an area of the map where there was no discernable relationship between the vegetation on the map and what was on the ground, it may well have been a mapping issue.

Ended up third in M40, although I think it was a fairly thin field (no names I recognised). Placing it in some perspective was that Markus Hotz, whom I've crossed paths with a bit in WMOCs, ran M21 and took six minutes longer to run 2.6km further.

Left the event a bit earlier than planned and got a train 30 minutes earlier than planned, which proved to be a bad move because it broke down and we had to wait for the next one an hour behind - yes, it does happen in Switzerland too. Now in Geneva.