Swimming 34:00 [2] 1.0 km (34:00 / km)
Morning swim in Launceston, after coming off the boat but before picking the rest of my load up from the airport. Didn't sleep too well on the boat (not the boat's fault I suspect, rather from having messed up my body clock the previous night), but got off it efficiently - it helps that the quarantine checks are at the Melbourne end these days.
Got to the aquatic centre (which the locals seem quite proud of - both the Mayor and the local MLC mentioned it in their speeches at the World Cup opening) a bit too early - it was still on holiday hours and didn't open until 8. Clevrly I wasn't the only one who didn't know this as there was quite a crowd milling outside. Once in, headed for the outdoor pool. Not the most relaxing of swims as the lanes didn't have speed markings and the other two in my lane were much faster than me - always feel like I'm intruding on the turf of others in such a situation (I chose that lane because they were doing slow breaststroke when I got in, but that was their warm-up). Decent on the performance front though.
First day of the World Cup seemed to go off pretty well - the Basin was an excellent arena and provided a better orienteering challenge than I thought it might. We were flying by the seat of our pants a bit in commentary because we weren't getting a good feed of results from the finish so had to result to old-school start list-and-stopwatch methods. The opening ceremony also went well, and I think I achieved my objective of giving the shortest of the five speeches :-). (I was a bit worried I'd be underdressed for this, but these worries ceased when the (very friendly) Mayor turned up in shorts and sandals).
Had thought of going out for a token trot on the map afterwards, but decided not to. I'm staying with Bruce and Louise Fairfax (with whom I go back a very long way; Bruce was my school coach as a junior). Louise is making her return to competition after a long time away and I had to give her a crash course in ISSOM mapping - she's never run a sprint race on an ISSOM map.