Run 1:32:00 [3] 13.3 km (6:55 / km) +300m 6:13 / km
Not the sort of long(ish) Sunday run that I'm used to. Oslo in winter is not completely unexplored territory for me, but today's conditions were somewhat different to the last couple of times I've been here - on both of those occasions, the temperature was well below freezing and had been so for some days, whereas this time, it's been getting close to 0 (or even a little above it at low elevations) for the last few days and so there has been a little melting of the surface - not so good when it refreezes.
I put my trust in Jim to lead me somewhere which wouldn't be too bad on this score, and also avoided running in ski tracks, a very serious social faux pas in Norway (I believe public floggings of people who walk or run in ski tracks take place out the front of the royal palace every Monday lunchtime). For the most part the route succeeded in this aim, although there were a few exceptions - unsurprisingly I was much more tentative on the steep donwhill chutes than Jim was and was going at about one-third his speed (though I only ended up on my backside involuntarily once). The other shock-to-the-system bit was a short stretch across a field which has accumulated thigh-deep windblown snow - my quads were screaming after about 20 metres. The lowest part of the run revealed that the extension of the metro line out this way is finally completed (it was opened at the end of last year after having been under construction, and/or stalled whilst the various governments involved argued over the bill, for more than a decade).
This felt like hard work at times (and kilometre rates are fairly meaningless in such conditions) and both back and Achilles were intermittently troublesome, but things finished off OK. Think I still appreciate these conditions more than I'll appreciate next weekend's back home.
The day continued with the somewhat novel experience of a 4-year-old birthday party, not quite as chaotic as I had imagined. (I don't even have much historic experience of these as the fourth birthdays of both Cassie and myself fell during extended overseas sojourns).
I'm now embarking on the first leg of the long haul home (slightly convoluted because I didn't think I could convince work to book me coming out of anywhere other than Geneva, even though it would probably have been the same price to fly directly Oslo-Dubai). Somewhat annoyingly, the Norwegian Oslo-Geneva flight I've used a couple of times on Sunday nights now goes on Sunday mornings and there wasn't a good alternative option by air, so the route is Oslo-Zurich tonight, then train to Geneva tomorrow morning and onwards from there.