Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Longest run since I've been home. It was another windblown effort (although the wind had its advantages later - with the front passing during the afternoon, I had tailwinds on the bike in both directions). More awake starting out than I sometimes am at this hour in the morning, and for once didn't negative-split on an evrly morning long run. This had something to do with the wind balance for the first and second halves, but also had a bit to do with tightness which surfaced in the second half and caused me to back off a bit - more the groin area than the hamstring this time. Not desperate to do extra at the end; I currently have something longer still earmarked for Saturday, but will wait and see how I come up (tonight's massage, punctuated as it was by numerous foot cramps, will help).

This morning definitely felt springlike (the evening certainly wasn't), and the sound of willow on leather in the nets at the Bill Lawry Oval was a reminder of that.

This ended up being an evening session of 250s on the Tan after a day when other windows of opportunity disappeared - was doing a blood test eaerly which I couldn't eat before and wasn't keen to run without having eaten anything, then had to drop something off at lunchtime (as it turned out a late-running meeting would have stopped me going at lunchtime anyway).

This was a rather strange-feeling session on a crowded Tan - never felt even remotely fast and ended up as a bit of a token-gesture session. Felt a little tight again without the specific hamstring issues of the last couple of days.

Went into this one feeling a little unsettled by the day's news. I've seen enough of the wilder shores of rhetoric circulating in regional Australia to fear that one day the violent rhetoric might turn into actual violence (and it's never been far from our minds that if it did, those of us working in climate change featured amongst the candidates to be potential victims), and now it has. This should, but almost certainly won't, be treated by the media and the community as seriously as they would the murder of a policeman (already the alleged shooter has been the subject of a fair bit of vaguely sympathetic public comment, not least from Barnaby Joyce).

Going to/from the Tan. Lots of traffic (not surprising in peak hour), and also had to dodge some flooding underneath the Swan Street bridge - the southwest swell is already causing a decent storm surge in the bay (although tomorrow will be worse).

This was a pretty familiar story - struggling for the first half-hour then improving steadily after that. Slightly longer than usual for recent Tuesdays in the name of street collection (Amber Ct, Bundoora). Hamstring again a bit tight but better than in the later stages yesterday.

Somewhat blustery, but certainly not as blustery as Tasmania (where Maatsuyker Island has just clocked a 174 km/h gust as I write, with 140-150 being observed at a number of mountain sites; with temperatures just above freezing at 1000m and steady rain, wouldn't be nice conditions to be out on the Overland Track or similar places).

The local indigenous calendar recognises three seasons, not two, in what we would describe as winter and spring; what one might call "core winter" (June and July), late winter/early spring (August/September) and late spring (October stretching into December). This morning, windy and dry and not particularly cold (and dewless) had a bit of a change-of-season feel to it.

The swim felt OK but was slower than it felt.

Sign going in at the Welsh church in La Trobe Street: "There is no angry way of saying 'bubbles'". In a similar vein, not too far down the road I was struggling to find a non-angry way of asking a taxi driver "why did you open your door in my face". (No contact made, in case you were wondering).

Tan at lunchtime. Felt reasonably lively at times, although it didn't really show in the numbers because of a lot of traffic delays. The most significant concern is that some left hamstring tightness started to emerge in the last 15 minutes; I've had no trouble with that previously this year, but given past history of the injury it's one I'll treat with some care.

Went past a restaurant on Southbank which was doing a Scottish Commonwealth Games special: a deep-fried Mars bar ($10) and Irn-Bru ($4). I'm guessing you can get both of these in Glasgow for less than half the price. I'm also assuming they don't feature at the athletes' village, although the efforts of the Scottish marathoner yesterday make you wonder. (Someone suggested that it was hardly the first time someone had had a spew in the street in the East End of Glasgow on a Sunday morning).

Did quite a bit of finding out stuff today, which is the way I like to be doing things. Among the things that I found out today were that the 12 months ending this month are the driest such period for the NE NSW/SE Queensland region since 1901-02, that Melbourne is having its 16th driest year to date (which I suspect will come as a surprise to many Melburnians) but Adelaide is having its 13th wettest (and has had nearly double Melbourne's rain, and more than Sydney's), and that the period between 1960 and 1982 when I'd been puzzling about why Moree was cooling relative to other sites in northern inland NSW was also the period when irrigated cotton started to become established around Moree. (Still trying to work out what's driving an anomalous post-1980 cooling trend at Robe; I suspect upwelling of cold waters along the coast has something to do with it, but am fairly sure we don't have sea temperature data close enough to that coast to be able to put that to the test).

State Series at Two Kangaroo Creeks, one of those classic moderately hilly central Victorian gully-spur areas that I used to expect to do low 6s on back in the day. It's not quite now what it was then; there have been several fires on various parts of the area in the last decade, which have produced a certain amount of (unmapped) attractive-looking but evil-feeling regrowth - something which made its presence felt on 3, 4 and 5. (Bryan still managed to get close to 6 min/km, though).

Started as badly as last week, overrunning 1 to the tune of 45 seconds or so (after the slightly odd run to the top of a hill for the start triangle and then coming straight back down). Settled technically after that, never feeling especially strong (and wasted a bit of time getting across the monster erosion gully at 6 and 7), but picked up a bit towards the end. A couple of minutes closer to the pace than last week, which is probably a fair reflection of the respective runs. Ended up 4th (albeit a distant 4th).

Those who remember a certain era in Melbourne may be interested to hear that Franco Cozzo's Footscray premises are up for sale. (Looking at this story saw me detour to visitfootscray.com, a website which, I think it can safely be assumed, has nothing to do with either Tourism Victoria or the City of Maribyrnong). These days most of the annoying TV advertising seems to be our taxes at work, in the form of the thinly disguised Victorian Liberal Party ads that appear at least once in every Commonwealth Games ad break.

Same old same old for the first half-hour, but hit my stride after that and probably felt as good aerobically in the second half as at any time in the last month - actually hitting the hills (and there were a few, this run being centred around the Yallambie rollercoaster) with some level of confidence. Still a bit creaky, though the Achilles I was worried about yesterday stayed under control today. Amaroo Way, Yallambie is the latest to be ticked off the list.

Possibly inspired by the Tour, there was a fair bit of footpath chalkwork in Banyule which appeared to be associated with a recent run (probably a school one), starting with 'Run like a zombie's chasing you!'. 'Almost' may have a different definition in these parts, as '3km. Woo hoo! Well done!' was followed within 50 metres by 'Almost 4km. Go you superstars!'.

Got a few things done today on a fairly rare day without other commitments (among them being sorting out a couple of things with my bike, and getting the IOF Foot Commission minutes done while watching JWOC).

Pool running at Fitzroy. Some of the regulars thought the water was a bit on the cool side but it seemed OK to me. A reasonably mundane session.

There was no trace of it during the session, but had occasional flashes of sharp Achilles soreness while sitting during the day. Not sure what it's about but will have to see how it behaves once I get out and run tomorrow.

The Australian (which only yesterday was on the receiving end of an adverse finding from the Press Council on their coverage of climate change matters) was up to one of their classic tricks today. This time it was a front page story about a new paper which had found little or no warming in the very deep ocean, then went on to feature numerous quotes from our very own Hoggster about how this wasn't a surprising result (and was entirely consistent with other observations of climate change) because the response time of water as deep as that was centuries or millennia. So far so good you say - except that the "No warming!" part of the story was on the front page and Hoggster's explanation was buried in the continuation of the story on an inside page that nobody ever reads. This is a routine tactic of theirs.

Not for the first time in the last week or so, we woke to news of a plane crash somewhere. I noted with interest that the plane in this one was leased from Spain's Swiftair. Swiftair must have a lot of spare planes because my Oslo-Berlin flight a few weeks back was also one of theirs (operated by Air Berlin in this case), and it was the dodgiest plane I can remember being on since SCAT Airlines in Kazakhstan.

From Fishermens Bend prior to what proved to be an expensive car service (and the most expensive problem hasn't even been fixed yet). Longest run I've done for a few weeks, down as far as Elwood and then back along the shoreline (the reverse of what I often do down here, partly in the name of seeing the beaches, and the damage to them from the storms a weeks ago - not as much as I expected - in daylight). Never sparkled but kept plugging away, though there will certainly be sterner tests than this. A bit of early Achilles soreness eased as the run went on.

250 on/250 off round the Tan. First time for a while I've done this; didn't feel very fast but otherwise not too bad. Saw Bruce leaving as I was arriving. Tan not as busy as it usually is at lunchtime, though I was a little on the late side. Plenty of people with badges for the AIDS conference evident once you got close to the Convention Centre.

Going to/from the Tan. Achilles started to hurt a bit in the very last bit but didn't show any sign of trouble afterwards.

A steady run though nothing to set the world on fire - continue to feel as if I'm on the edge of a cold, but at least didn't seem weak today (still slow uphill though). Starting to enjoy myself in the second half. Lots of fog again (it persisted all day in some parts of Melbourne, with some very low maximum temperatures to match).

Spent a bit of time this afternoon/evening battling with the JWOC website - hope it's better tomorrow. Can't complain about the men's results, though (and obviously very pleased for Tim).

Streets collected: Amanda Court, Yallambie (the small pocket of it on the southwest side of the army base), after a bit of a map-memory false start.

Morning swim at Ivanhoe - rather slow as I got back into it. As noted previously, the pool is under renovation which means the changerooms are portables outside (I haven't braved the temporary showers yet - went back home for that). A rather foggy morning so Fitzroy might not have been a goer even if that had been my original plan (they close it if the lifeguards can't see across the pool).

The morning's papers carried some well-deserved derision for Athletics Australia (as someone pointed out, it must be in the constitution of the Commonwealth Games Federation that every Commonwealth Games has to feature an officious official making a fool of themselves). Alex Rowe's reported public reaction showed a lot more good grace than I think most of us would have mustered under the circumstances (not that I'm especially surprised, having met him when on the way back from Europe last year - he was someone who it was apparent was going to become a friend inside the first two sentences). In orienteering, we don't have the money to do as much for athletes as we would like, but I'd like to think that we at least have a better working relationship between athletes and officials than a lot of other sports seem to.

Monday evening runs have become a somewhat unusual feature in the last year or two but that was when I headed out today (from home while dinner was in the oven), lunchtime having been otherwise devoted to sending off my Brazilian visa application. (I wanted to get this off as soon as possible - it's apparently far from unknown for them to take a month or more to get processed). This run was of the sort I'd expected of Monday nights; took a while to get going, but feeling quite nice later on in the valley as the fog threatened to settle in.

A somewhat nondescript run - too long a Saturday race to have a full Sunday long run on the agenda, but not big enough to scrub Sunday altogether. The performance was somewhat nondescript as well, though was probably better in the last quarter of the run than elsewhere. Feeling rather drained afterwards, though, and sleepy through some parts of the rest of the day.

Collected a couple more for the streets list - Almeida Ct, Bundoora and Altona St, Heidelberg Heights.

This was a wildly erratic race - not particularly large errors but lots of them, especially early on - I didn't hit any of the first seven cleanly. Settled a bit after that but rarely navigating with much confidence, and lost further chunks of time on 21 and 24. In the case of 21, I went the ridge route which was the best option in principle, but the control was lower relative to the next cliff than the map suggested and bashing from one to the other was a challenging exercise at best. (Getting off that slope and onto the flats heading to 22 was like going from a narrow Italian mountain road onto the autostrada). By the end, the extent of my ambitions was a kilometre rate in single digits, something which was achieved (just) with some help from Bryan over the last couple.

1 - Splits

In the pool at Fitzroy, which hasn't changed a lot since I left. It was a rather wintry morning, with a couple of blustery showers (one of which generated a spectacular rainbow). Not too bad a session and not too bad a day, physically, despite not having slept terribly well last night.

There was a lot to think about this morning; like many readers, I've flown over the eastern Ukraine on many occasions - at least until recently, it was the standard route from many places in western or central Europe to the likes of Singapore, Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur (Hong Kong flights go further north to pass north, rather than south, of the Himalayas and Tibet). There was also a classic "fair and balanced" front page of the Herald-Sun on the subject of the carbon tax, of the sort that only News Limited can do.

Slept for about the right amount of time at about the right time, but this didn't seem to make a lot of difference to the run, which wasn't much better than yesterday's - stiff and sore early (a long-overdue massage tonight will help), and lethargic throughout. Light a bit earlier than it was when I left town, which makes the mornings a little easier. Took a bit of a tumble at one stage, taking a bit of skin off and covering myself with ample quantities of mud, but no lasting damage.

You'd expect our workplace to pay more attention than most to the weather forecast, which is probably why the bike shed had only about two-thirds its usual number of occupants today. (It turned out that both morning and evening commutes were dry, with most of the moisture-related action in Melbourne coming around lunchtime).

No sooner am I back from one trip that I've booked the next one (I would have done this weeks ago, except that what I was doing was sufficiently exotic that it turned out I'd unearthed a bug on the Oneworld booking website, and by the time this was sorted out, I was overseas and thought that putting $5500 on my credit card on an internet site from an Italian IP address might be thought suspicious enough for the bank to block my card, not something you want to happen when away). The plan is to go from the nationals in WA to New York (via Qatar), spend a couple of weeks in the US and Canada including the North American Championships, then onwards to Rio as a prelude to WMOC. Once WMOC is done, I plan to get as far south as I can before coming back from Punta Arenas and spend the last few days in central Chile, returning home in mid-December.

C • Patagonia 2

The last part of the flight wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped. I was in the second row of economy, presumably a result of being a gold frequent flyer, but had thought it might have been the equivalent of the (possibly apocryphal) stories about South African car hire companies offering customers they really don't like a free upgrade to a BMW. It turned out it wasn't the babies that kept me awake, it was the somewhat-older-than-I-am couple who talked incessantly in the seat in front (and the Singapore-Melbourne leg doesn't have that long a window for sleeping anyway). It then took more than an hour for the luggage to arrive in Melbourne, putting the airport bus into the worst of the peak-hour traffic: all a reminder of Australian infrastructure at its not-so-finest.

I had no expectations for this run and those expectations were matched - I think this is probably a PW for my Tan loop. The most positive thing to emerge was that my Achilles, which was more than usually tight coming off the flight, did loosen up more or less OK (eventually).

Had some pretty rough patches during the day but seem to have made it to a reasonable hour in the evening.

Life's little mysteries: why does 12 degrees on a winter evening in Melbourne feel so much colder than 12 degrees on a summer evening in Lavarone?

C • 12 deg? 3

Helsinki-Singapore-Melbourne. Had harboured thoughts of trying to do a session in Singapore airport (and had brought gear for the purpose), but a gym seems to be one of the few facilities it doesn't have (except in an expensive lounge).

Helsinki airport was very different on Monday evening to Sunday afternoon - when I arrived I was almost the only person in the place. (The fact that no flights leave between 9 and 11, before a cluster of long-hauls between 11 and 12, has something to do with this). This did mean that bored security guards with nothing better to do decided to pull my bag apart.

Random encounters time: in front of me entering the Qantas lounge in Singapore was none other than my uncle (with various other members of the extended family inside).

C • I managed a treadmill sessi... 1

Biggest dilemma here was the timing. I was staying at a very nice hotel in central Helsinki - turns out it was the one BJ and Leea stayed at on their wedding night. (I'm guessing that it costs a fair bit more than the 94 euros I paid if it's a Tuesday night in October; you can often get some very good deals at hotels in Nordic cities on weekends, especially in summer). I wanted to take full advantage of the breakfast (so didn't want to run after it), but also didn't want to get up super-early because of the late night last night. This all ended up as a 7am wakeup and running without eating anything, unusual for me.

The plan was to head north into "Central Park" (actually a strip of forest running north-south which extends to within about 3km of the city centre). I didn't quite get my direction right heading out but reoriented myself, not for the first time on a Helsinki run, using the public transport map on a bus shelter. This run was another bit of progress towards normality, though faded a bit later on, probably because of the aforementioned non-eating (whether this would have been an issue had I joined BJ and Gareth in having massive T-bones last night is unknown).

It's definitely holiday time; the amount of traffic in central Helsinki at 8am was at levels I'd consider light for a Sunday morning in Melbourne. Spent the rest of the day doing not terribly much (the "not terribly much" including some relaxing at a local beach in what became a delightfully sunny afternoon). The one post-World Cup sign was two men walking down Esplanadi at lunchtime blowing red, yellow and black vuvuzelas; I suspect it was a different story in Berlin.

Flying out late tonight (via Singapore). Should be home Wednesday morning.

Late afternoon run with Gareth and BJ from BJ's place in the northern suburbs of Helsinki, mostly on forest tracks with a bit of bare rock thrown in. Continuing a slow climb back from last week's bad patch; the others dragged me along faster than I've been going on runs of this type for a while, but didn't handle it too badly. Learned quite a bit about BJ's various business ventures (mostly involving taking videos from innovative mobile platforms, aerial and otherwise) - he seems to be doing very well. (Lots more potential for orienteering coverage once issues with battery life are resolved - at the moment they have only about 10 minutes for their copters so they couldn't be used to, for example, follow a whole course).

The build-up to this run hadn't been the most relaxed of days, starting with a near-miss on the freeway approaching the airport (someone moved into my lane while I was alongside them, meaning I had to take an instant decision to move into the next lane and hope there was nothing there). Venice airport, far too small for the traffic it gets, has relegated LA and Heathrow (Terminal 5 excluded) one place each on my list of the worst airports in the developed world - I arrived 1 3/4 hours before my flight and by the time I got through the check-in and security queues the flight was boarding. More surprisingly, Helsinki was chaotic too; I guess on a Sunday afternoon in mid-July a lot of people were coming home from summer holidays.

The reason for the Helsinki stopover is that I'd realised that if I went straight through, I'd be in the air when the World Cup final was on. Instead I watched it with BJ and Gareth (and many others) in a central city bar. The World Cup is a truly global event and that's reflected in where I've watched its finals - three of the last five in Finland, with the other two being in an Edinburgh pub (2010) and listening to it on the radio in a tent in the Yukon (2002). Also memorable from my point of view was Argentina's last win, in 1986 - the ambassador's residence was across the road from my school and the celebrations (including some horn-blowing blockies) were certainly in full swing by the time we arrived for the day.

Last day of the 5-days of Italy (of which I missed two because of IOF meetings). This was on essentially the area used for the first loop of the courses yesterday, except that we climbed the mountain in our first few controls rather than between the pre-start and start (in fact our course had a fairly similar structure to the women's WOC course once we got to the top).

This was by no means a great run but I was definitely happier with it than some earlier in the week. Still didn't have the strength to run the big climbs but didn't feel as awful on the little ones as in the last few days, and was running with a little bit of fluency in the terrain after feeling as if I was on tip-toes on Sunday and Tuesday. The biggest mistake was about 90 seconds on 4, a very annoying one on a short leg - it was a high point next to a black loop which I took to be a circular cliff but was actually a sinkhole. The others were about 30 seconds apiece on 2 and 6. Nicer terrain than I expected, although slow, and the green was less green than I expected - quite enjoyed myself this morning in general.

And no European orienteering trip is complete without a control on a charcoal burning ground...

It was then on to the WOC relay (as with yesterday, I watched the women's race in the open and then worked in the TV van for the men's). The women's relay was a bit disappointing but perhaps not surprising when we needed to call on an under-prepared reserve (a reminder that we need to take the position of relay reserve seriously), but we can still take back a lot of decent results from this week, including the sprint relay, Hanny's two top-15s, Rachel's sprint and a near-career-best from Jules. We also achieved what I regarded as our major objective - to make sure we get two men next year.

WOC itself went off without too many hitches, although not without a certain amount of Italian last-minute organisation. I'd be interested to know how they made the finances work; there didn't seem to be much commercial sponsorship so I can only assume they got a fair bit of money from provincial or local government.

Final sign that I've got WOC very much on my mind: with a certain amount of imagination, I was thinking that the water going down the shower plughole was producing a set of noises which sounded similar to listening to Per Forsberg in his more excitable moments, from 200 metres away in the opposite direction to that in which the speakers were pointing....

Didn't get out today - no public event and was involved in meetings before going out to WOC. Spent a bit more time in the great outdoors (as opposed to the TV van) today - Clive handled the women's race and then I took over for the men's. I also did the voiceover today, which seemed to work reasonably well once I got going (a few hesitations in the early stages), even if I did make reference to a country which ceased to exist in 1993.

It was another impressive result by Hanny, considering she wasn't running this race until a day or two ago. Jules can also be happy with his day's work (and there was another notable outside-Europe result with Emily Kemp's 11th). Our other objective is also fairly close to being achieved - our men will be promoted unless they have a disaster (and even if they failed to score they'd probably have at least a 50-50 chance of making it), though the faint chance that our women might be promoted to division 1 seems to have gone. The closest battle is a straight head-to-head between China and Japan for the second promotion place from division 3 (NZ have wrapped up the first), which will hopefully be more sedate than this.

Probably not quite as horrible as yesterday but still pretty ordinary. Set out with the aim of doing an out-and-back on Svetlana Mironova Road, but couldn't find its start on map memory so settled for essentially the loop of the lower Lavarone villages. Still feeling rather clogged up but I shouldn't be this week just for a minor cold.

IOF Congress was mostly pretty uncontroversial this year (the closest votes were over whether to give the Council the power to appoint all WOC organisers, a fairly academic point given that it's getting on for a decade since the last contested WOC bid, and over changes to Council terms). The most bizarre intervention was from the Spanish delegate at yesterday's seminar who somehow managed to work opposition to Catalan independence into a debate on whether or not rogaining should be recognised as an official IOF discipline.

Lavarone, apart from WOC, is a remarkably quiet place - the lake has a couple of beaches but I haven't seen a non-orienteering soul there, even on the sunny days. I notice the hotel rates increase next week so maybe that's the start of the holiday season. There's also not really anywhere to eat other than the hotels; went across the street tonight and ended up eating with Garry Morrison (South African OF president). This also meant I had the slightly odd experience of using South African rand to pay for a dinner in Italy (Garry paid on his card and I paid him my share by offloading my leftovers from last year's trip).

My running is badly out of sorts at the moment and today was particularly out of sorts - trying to squeeze something in before a long day of meetings and WOC finals, but struggling with even the slightest hills. It was also very slippery underfoot after yesterday's rain - not sure if that was a major issue for the WOC runners.

Then it was onto the WOC itself. I ended up spending a lot of it inside a broadcast van - the way it's working is that we're doing a 30-minute highlight package, which means Clive and myself sitting in the van identifying footage as it comes up which can be edited into a package, then that's edited into the package, then a voiceover is done for it. Clive's been doing that so far but I will probably do Friday, and maybe Saturday. We didn't finish until about 8pm (and then had the pleasure of going back to the car in a hailstorm).

IOF/media race - the principal purpose of which is usually to remind everyone that Havard Tveite would still be a very useful addition to a lot of WOC teams (possibly including his own, given their result on Monday).

It rained heavily through the day (I think the final score was about 55mm, definitely the most I've experienced on my birthday). The event fell into the only decent dry window of the day, but the forest was still saturated and very slippery in places. I didn't cope well with the steep slippery slopes, and continued to struggled with my running more generally. There were also a couple of mistakes late (one on a classic central European bingo control, a wall in the green which was about ankle height).

5-Days sprint in Levico Terme - first two-thirds through the old town before a fast downhill finish through parkland to finish. Lost 15 seconds or so on 1 after mistaking an index contour across a gap for a wall and therefore missing a short cut, but then settled well and got through the first half OK. Became scrappy then, though - three successive small time losses on 9-11, 9 through not seeing that there was no way through where I thought there would be (though plan B wasn't horrible), 10 through starting down a ramp I shouldn't have, 11 through being a bit unsure where the forbidden area was. Probably about 45 seconds across the course. Ran better than I thought I might on the warm-up, and being first starter meant being first finisher (which earned me some more kind words from the commentator), but there were three former WOC medallists in today's field (Alain Berger, who won my first "JWOC", was the extra), and the leaders were just under 15.

The it was on to Trento for the sprint relay - definitely a spectacle although it was fairly straightforward technically. An impressive effort by the team, especially the two women (Rachel for giving us a great start - she's had a good week for someone who lives more than 1000km from the nearest ISSOM sprint map - and Hanny for bringing us home well).

The rain which had been threatening all afternoon started properly during the last leg, and became torrential immediately afterwards - it was slippery enough as it was (with quite a few crashes), but would have been diabolical 15 minutes later. (For anyone who's wondering, 9mm was the magic number).

And, leaving aside the small matter of a WOC race in Trento, the big story of the day was Jonas Merz scoring his first ever win over his big brother. I think Matthias is coming to tomorrow's Foot Commission meeting so some pertinent sledging may be in order :-)

This was the first forest race I've done in italy, and I had a lot of trouble getting into the terrain - limestone country where it wasn't always that easy to tell what was up and what was down (with various lines of WW1 trenches to add somethign to the mix). I was never navigating with any real confidence, and probably dropped 5-6 minutes all up - the worst being the first control and 5, the first one in the trenches. It was also pretty tough underfoot in places, and I felt rather weak today for no obvious reason - something which was evident in the warm-up.

I was told when I arrived that the announcer had been talking me up as one of the favourites; clearly he was unfamiliar with my recent form (or even my not-so-recent) as this field included Tore Sandvik and Mikael Bostrom, with five WOC medals between them. With a decent run I might have got down into the upper 30s; Tore and Mikael both did 30.

Getting to the event was slightly ill-starred - first it took me 15 minutes to find my IOF parking pass, then we took the wrong road out of Asiago (confused by an O-sign which was going to the event office), then when we got to the event we got directed past the entrance by an official who didn't realise we were there for the event. (Getting out of the car park afterwards was also an experience the likes of which I haven't had since the glory days of VFL Park). There's a definite air of chaos about some of what's happening (no national stereotypes here :-) but it seems to be working Ok on the day.

And the World Championships must be in town; numerous hotel balconies in Lavarone are sporting national flags and drying orienteering gear.

Event: WOC 2014 + 5 Days of Italy
 

Venice public prologue. I'd previously flagged that it wasn't going to be possible (short of hiring a water taxi at vast expense) for me to get to the sprint qualifying, so went straight to the prologue and started as early as I could (it was an open start).

It's Venice - of course it was going to be fun. We went into the core of the tourist zone (although not as far as St. Mark's) and pedestrian traffic was a factor, but not a massive one. I thought the course was technically easier than the one I ran in 2011, but clearly this wasn't a unanimous view because on several occasions I was passed by people at high speed and then saw them again two or three controls later reversing out of a dead end or going at 90 degrees in the wrong direction. This was a decent run though felt as if I was tiring a bit towards the end. Was 6th the last time I saw the results.

WOC in Venice was also a unique experience - probably more so on TV (sepaking of which, my TV gig fell through yesterday but might happen later on the week). Wasn't concentrated as much in the (less interesting) eastern end of the island as I expected.

It was a long day; I eventually got to Lavarone around 10.30. In transit it was demonstrated that it is possible to get a dud pasta in Italy (although I shouldn't really have expected more of a motorway service area).

Started out this morning with thoughts of climbing Konigstuhl, the highest peak in the range to the south-east, but it was apparent I wasn't going to get to the top and back in the hour I'd allowed myself (plus my Achilles wasn't great this morning on the climbs). Instead, about halfway to the top I took to a track which ran east along the contour and downwards - nice in amongst the forest. Not quite so nice coming back along the south bank of the river - lots of traffic - but OK as a run.

As predicted, the function on the boat was a bit less raucous than its 1991 equivalent. At such gatherings in the science world, I'm used to having to explain what orienteering is, but there was definitely no need last night - I was sitting next to a Swiss woman whose long-standing friend from the village they grew up in was a girl by the name of Luder, of whom readers may have heard.

Heading for the station once proceedings end today for the overnight train to Venice. The logistics aren't going to work for me to get to the sprint qualification, but should be at everything else (probably with a TV microphone for much of it).

This was a shorter run, although still with a fair bit of climbing in it as I went back to some of the more view-friendly points of the lower half of yesterday's route, this time with a camera. Started to feel better once the climbing started; grinding the gears has been a regular experience in the first kilometre in recent times, but this week it's taken me a couple to get going. One especially nice section once up high, on a track winding more or less along the contour through the forest.

Today moved to a more formal stage of the meeting (i.e. seating was formally by country). I was keeping an eye out for interesting combinations on either diplomatic or footballing grounds. The Irish might have potentially had a challenging peace-keeping role between Iran and Israel except that the Iranians haven't yet turned up, while none of the World Cup quarter-final pairs are close to each other (though Chile are directly behind Brazil).

It's good knowing enough of the local language to be able to get a handle on the local scandals. Not that today's scandal in Germany (involving a couple of MPs getting up to mischief) needed much translation, with headlines including words like "SPD-Politiker", "Crystal Meth" and "Kinderporno".

Tonight's conference function is on a boat doing a cruise on the river. I'm guessing it might be a less lively affair than the last time I had a function on a boat in Germany.

There are two major sets of hills around Heidelberg - one to the north-east and one to the south-east. (The city is located where the Neckar river, which runs west-east, emerges from an escarpment). I have two major hill runs in mind here and today was the north-east one (Friday is south-east if things go to plan).

There were certainly hills; the track started going up after 1km and kept doing so more or less continuously, easing off somewhat after about 5km but not really flattening off properly until very close to my planned turnaround time. (It wasn't until I looked at a topographic map later in the day that I realised that at this point I was just below the top of one of the two highest peaks in the district, a 546m summit - the river's at about 110). Of course a long climb also means a long descent, which my quads weren't always happy about, although they don't seem to have come up too badly afterwards. (The climb was a long grind but I managed to get through it, albeit slowly). Lots of nice German forest to run through; it's always a bit of a culture shock how dark it is.

The luggage finally turned up last night.

Orienteering is some way behind football when it comes to sponsorship opportunities, but one could be tempted to say that football has gone too far on seeing a tweet (since deleted) from York City FC: "The list of player shits available to sponsor has now been updated".

Didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked last night after going to the university to watch the Germany-Algeria match on the big screen there, before heading out on a nice morning in a crisp Canberra-in-November sense. This was an out-and-back up the river (a major transport corridor which of course, this being Europe, has a good bike/foot path as well as its roads and rail line) - there are big forested hills to both the northeast and southeast but I'll save those for later in the week.

The run was pretty sleepy early on; felt better later on, but pretty slow for a flat run.