Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

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.

From Nesslau in northeast Switzerland. Took a while to find a good way to do this but good once I did. Started out up the river valley, which for the first bit had a nice track along a flat bottom next to the water, but I know enough about pre-alpine Switzerland to know that that was unlikely to last for long, and indeed around the next corner was a (nice) waterfall with a bit of stair work. Ended up back up at the main road, and as the alternative for continuing was an unrunnable gorge crossing I decided to stick with the main road up to the next village - a bit too much traffic for comfort. Was settling nicely in a physical sense by then, though, and once in that village, found a good side track for an out-and-back, then came back on a similarly quiet path/road on the other side of the valley. Not a bad run in the end.

The main target of the day was the Santis, the highest peak in this part of Switzerland and also location of a weather station with 150 years or so of history. If you're really keen you can walk or run up this (as Lachy did last weekend), although you'd want to be better with heights than I am in the upper sections of the tracks. We were well and truly above the low cloud/fog line here, and the views were as spectacular as you would expect ('gute Fernsicht', as per the forecast, turned out to mean everything as far as the Black Forest and French Jura), though it was sobering to see that summer 2015 looks to have just about finished off the two summit glaciers. (Vanessa tells me there's still a fragment in a sheltered spot not visible from the summit).

It may be low season but there were still lots of people out, many of them walking in the foothills. The road up to the pass at the cable car base was also much used by motorcyclists (as I suspect many Swiss mountain passes are in good weather).

A couple of my long-term Australian sites (Snowtown and Palmerville) are in places better known for murder than they are for meteorology, but the Santis can go one better than this, thanks to the 1922 murder of the weather observer and his wife on the summit. The case was never solved although a prime suspect committed suicide a few weeks later.

Finished the day by joining up with Vanessa, Tobias and a few friends, and after one false start, finding a pub to watch the rugby in (I'd almost got the date of this wrong by a day).