Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Travel day, Stockholm-Helsinki-Hong Kong-Melbourne. All went smoothly and got an upgrade on the last leg, which made it smoother still.

How to take advantage of a travel misadventure: I spent a fair bit of time talking with Jeff Riseley during the wait in Hong Kong (he was on his way home from the Stockholm Diamond League - I recognised him from the event T-shirt). In comparing notes on long-haul travel horror stories (the exhibit I proferred being the Casanova + Casanova epic on the way to Europe this year), he mentioned he'd once been stuck in Los Angeles for two days thanks to a ticketing snafu. He put the time to good use - there was a race on in LA the next day, he entered at the last minute and ran an Olympic A qualifier.

A turn-the-legs-over session in Uppsala, home of one of the world's longest temperature data sets, beginning in 1741 (Anders Celsius was an Uppsala boy). Thought I'd be doing this on my own but Susanne appeared just as I was about to head off so we went together - a fairly short loop, mostly on the south side of the river around the university, and up to the top of a smallish hill which I suspect gets used a lot for hill intervals in Uppsala. Achilles better than I thought it might have been after it started to trouble me in the last 10 minutes yesterday.

The linguistic amusement of the morning was provided by the bus whose destination was Stabby (actually a small village a few kilometres from Uppsala). Don't know what the violent crime rate is there but I suspect it's low. We've had a few moments of such fun in recent days, including the big signs in shop windows saying 'SLUT' (as part of 'SLUT REA', which I think means closing-down or end-of-stock sale), and the presence of Fanny's and Willy's across the street from each other in central Soderhamn. (Fanny's is a women's clothing store, Willy's is a supermarket).

And we spotted something calling itself a "Swedish restaurant". I thought such things could only be found in Ikeas.

Now at Stockholm Airport waiting with Lachlan to start the long haul home. (For reasons too convoluted to explain here, Susanne is going to Helsinki via Berlin and flew out this morning; we converge in Helsinki before they head to Singapore and I go via Hong Kong).

C • Uppsala 4

Going nicely for the first half but then blew it on the last technical section, once again in an area with lots of little rock and not much definition in the contours, to the tune of 5 minutes on 9 - I kept convincing myself that I couldn't possibly have climbed an extra contour and thus the area of rocky ground I was above was the one below the control, not the one above it, following the Andrew Bolt relocation method of making increasingly desperate attempts to make the facts fit my preconceived (and erroneous) ideas. This turned a good run into a disappointing one.

Hit the first control right on and thus got rid of my 8-second man (the only person I saw from the chasing start all day; he briefly recaught me after 9 but I got away again), and was solid on the long climb into 2. Pretty clean from there except for a 30-seconder at 7, until it came unstuck at 9. At that point I suddenly discovered I was tired (I doubt I would have noticed this had the mistake not happened), managed to miss a bit on 13 despite the crowds, and then took a route choice on 14 (the second-last) which had me wondering - you always wonder about the sanity of a route choice at the end of O-ringen which sees no-one else around and no elephant tracks - but from the splits I don't think it was too bad. Found the energy to outsprint two people in the chute but was not remotely surprised to find they weren't running my class (at least both of them were under 60).

Starting to get a bit of a feel for running in the terrain just as it's time to go home (which I do tomorrow afternoon), but can't be happy with this result. Gained five places to 75th but I think that was all DNSs and DNFs; fell three minutes short of reaching the top half of the finishers.

Odd coincidences time: I started just over two minutes behind Christian Mittelholzer (Switzerland), who I also started two minutes behind in my first 'JWOC'*. I didn't see him this year either.

(* - officially still the 'Open European' championships in those days, but you get the idea).

That's more like it. Knee back to normal, more or less, and a decent run technically too, with no mistakes bigger than 15 seconds, and none of the mid-leg losses of confidence that I've suffered from on the last two days. Not as much of the smaller rock on the ground as the last two days (or maybe I just didn't notice it as much because I wasn't so compromised in trying to deal with it?); still not flowing particularly well in the terrain - certainly not as well as the locals - but making a bit of progress. Maybe I'll be able to run reasonably well in Swedish terrain next week; unfortunately by then I'll no longer be in Sweden.

With the short course today there was only limited scope to make up overall ground, and I'm still a couple of minutes outside the top half of the field. The chasing start tomorrow should be fun. In theory, at least, Monday's result should have put me back in amongst a bunch of people who I should be able to beat, but whether it will work like that in practice is an interesting question.

Something that's taken a bit of adjusting to, mentally, is the exchange rate: it's been in the 5s (or occasionally high 4s) throughout the 20+ years that I've been coming here, and I still find myself thinking in terms of 5:1 when it's actually close to 7 (6.99 at last report). At that rate Sweden is no longer, in general, an expensive country - grog probably still is expensive even at 7:1, but that doesn't affect me.

Something else that doesn't affect me but was still interesting is that local real estate is astonishingly cheap by Australian standards - I didn't see much in the window of the local agents for more than a million kroner (about $A140,000). You can even pick up a lakeside summer cottage for A$27,000 if you feel so inclined. Presumably it's a different story in Stockholm. (Based on Cassie's experiences, Oslo prices seem fairly similar to Melbourne's).

C • Relativity 8

Ready to run rather than jog today, but not really to race (not really able to generate much power) - although how I would handle the rocky ground even without injury is an interesting question. A lifetime (or even a year) running in this stuff must count for a lot.

Started very tentatively, with little confidence navigating in the terrain - actually ended up hitting 1 and 2 more or less head on but probably lost 1-2 minutes over the course of those two legs just through hesitations. Got into it a bit more after that, especially on the more open hills, and was starting to navigate with some level of confidence through much of the second half, although with an annoying 1-minuter on 7. Again the last part of the course was technically straightforward, although this time it involved green and single tracks which were prone to traffic jams.

Felt rather lethargic before the start, and sleepy in the afternoon afterwards. It wasn't a particularly hard physical run so I hope this isn't an indicator of forthcoming illness (although there are no symptoms as such).

Lost less time to Per Ek than on Sunday (although I suspect that says a bit about his run as well as mine) and placed 71st, a little worse than Sunday. Hoping for more improvement over the next two days. After yesterday my target became to finish in the top half of the field - rather less ambitious than I would have hoped for at the start of the week. I'm currently about 5 minutes outside that.

Sunday's splits were further evidence that I'm struggling with running in the terrain. Normally the flat, open last part of that course is the last place I'd expect to do well, but they were where I got my best splits.

O-ringen rest day. Knee considerably improved today, no real issues walking on the flat although still a little sore up and down stairs. Reasonably optimistic about being able to race more or less as normal tomorrow.

Had a reasonably quiet day around Soderhamn, some of it in the company of Lachlan and Susanne, including going out to what turned out to be a packed local beach (it was sunny and the temperature had soared to, well, 22). Judging by the number of control flags on car rear vision mirrors and the like I suspect at least half the crowd there were of O-ringen origins. Going down to Gavle tonight to catch up with an old friend for dinner.

Deep down I didn't really expect to get to the start line today, so in that sense to get to the finish line was a bonus, but finishing was about the only positive to take out of today.

I didn't sleep well; 10 last night was not a great time to have the thought occur to me that in the current atmosphere, if Australia has an Anders Breivik (and various media and political identities are doing their darndest to create one), local climate scientists are one of the groups he or she might take an interest in. In any case I was getting up at 5 for a 5.15 phone hookup that ended up falling through.

Today was my early start day (everyone gets one), and I arrived at the assembly area to be greeted by very few people and pouring rain. (It was a moist unstable easterly which was dumping rain on the first bit of topography it hit, which happened to be next to us; the campground, 10km closer to the coast, appears to have had next to nothing). The rain eased and setting off for the start - after struggling to walk first thing in the morning - suggested that a jog would be possible, even if requiring the consumption of some industrial-strength HTFU (not on the WADA banned list as far as I know).

With a bad knee, the last thing I needed was lots of rocky ground, but lots of rocky ground is what we got today - almost relentless for the first half of the course. I couldn't really run in the rock at all with any sort of fluency (I suspect I would have struggled to run fluently in it even without an injury, although being able to lift your legs properly would certainly be a help).

With the difficulty of making progress through the terrain, my mind wasn't really on the job. I hit 1 and 2 right on without being especially confident about it, but 3 was straight out of my long list of O-ringen day 2 debacles, and like many of the previous ones it happened in a flat area with formlines, boulders and very little else. You'd think I'd learn after 20 years (perhaps I have learned a little bit because I only lost six minutes instead of the 20+ of the equivalent occasions in 1989, 1991 and 1998). Had a bit more confidence in the hillier areas but then totally lost confidence again going back into the flat area at 7, ultimately not going too far off line but being so tentative about it that I probably lost a couple of minutes in the process. Took advantage of a long track option on 8 - I'd had more than enough of the rock by then - and finished off a bit better, although blown away for speed by a couple of others over the closing controls (and by sundry M/W10s in the finish chute).

I knew that I wouldn't be competitive today, and even without mistakes I still wasn't going to be competitive; the only real goal was to get into the chasing start on Friday. That should at least be fun, but getting into the top half of the field is about the best I can hope for now. Past experience with this type of injury suggests that it shouldn't be too bad by Wednesday (it's improved somewhat even in the course of this afternoon).

Organisation fail of the day: whoever it was on the Bollnas local council (or whichever other body was responsible) who thought that the day O-ringen was in town was a good day to close half the access road down periodically for lawn-mowing on the verges.

C • Lawn mowing 1

First day of O-ringen. Doing this without any prior preparation in Swedish terrain at an event where my past performances have ranged from poor to horrendous, and was feeling my way a bit on the first couple of legs, not getting great lines in the terrain and losing 45 seconds in the circle at 2. Settled after that although not quite confident hitting the controls on the complex short legs at 4 and 5, and was just starting to feel as if I was getting into it properly when I fell heavily coming downhill out of 6, creating a photogenic (or possibly anti-photogenic) scrape on my face, but more significantly giving my left knee a substantial whack, enough to trouble me on the rest of the run. Struggled a bit to get into a running rhythm in the next kilometre and missed 30 seconds at 8, better on the vague and fast final section.

This was a moderate performance - probably 2 minutes dropped all up, perhaps slowed a bit by the knee later, and the late starters probably had the worst of the conditions too - but I was still pretty shocked how far down I was. I was expecting a winning time perhaps in the 42-44 range, but in fact Per Ek did 39 and I was barely above halfway.

And, as I expected, the knee stiffened badly within minutes after the run ended. Past experience suggests that it's going to be a problem for two or three days. Of course I don't have two or three days; I'm reasonably confident there's nothing structurally wrong, so it will be a question of whether I can tolerate the pain tomorrow and post some sort of a time, then have 48 hours to get it right given Tuesday's rest day. I certainly hope so; hanging around the last few days of an O-ringen sidelined by an injury (something I have past experience of, in 2000) isn't a lot of fun.

Event: Swedish O-Ringen
 

Oslo, the morning after. Woke up to the sound of thunder which seemed appropriate in its own way.

Headed out for a shortish run with Rune, a little bit later than planned because we had a bit of trouble finding each other. Started from roughly the far end of yesterday's run and headed up on a track into the forest, a steeper hill than I thought it was going to be, but seemed to cope with it OK (at least from the injury point of view). Reasonably strong uphill but not feeling quite as smooth downhill.

There weren't a lot of people out, although that probably owed something to the weather too (the rain stopped not long before we started). Later in the morning there was more activity, as people realised that they weren't going to see anything new on the news.

Headed across to Sweden this afternoon - the flight went reasonably smoothly, but a few petty irritations on arrival (including having to walk 15 minutes to another terminal because the currency-exchange place in the terminal we arrived in closes at 4pm on Saturdays), and it was a bit frustrating to be in the air when the Tour time trial was on. Am now in Soderhamn after registering for O-ringen; I have a very late start tomorrow so may not see a lot of the other Australians, at least for now.

With the amount of travelling I do, I guess it was inevitable that I would eventually find myself in the same city as a bomb, but I didn't really expect that city to be Oslo. It would be suitably dramatic to say that I was dodging flying glass or bullets on forested islands, but the truth of the matter is that I saw nothing and heard nothing (being based near the university, about 4km from the city centre) and didn't know anything had happened until reading about it when I went onto an Australian website trying to find out what had gone wrong with Cadel Evans' bike.

Even when venturing closer to the central city to change from train to bus (on a transport system which, remarkably enough, seemed to be functioning more or less normally - perhaps I should take back the bagging from yesterday), if you didn't know something had happened it wouldn't have been obvious something had happened - just a lot of people (even by Scandinavian standards) talking on mobile phones and one police car, and a couple of extra guards out the front of the American Embassy (the fact that buses were still going past the American Embassy is one of several indicators that suggest to me that the police (a) have a pretty good idea who did it and (b) don't think it's jihadists).

(Whoever did it either wasn't trying to maximise the carnage or didn't think their plot through terribly well - at 3.30 on a Friday afternoon in mid-July the percentage occupancy rate in your average Oslo government office building would be struggling to reach double figures).

After getting home it was back to the realm of the ordinary, although with a bit more to think about during the run then on the last few days - as usual here, starting downhill and finishing uphill, but more rolling in the intervening stages than yesterday. Achilles probably about the same as yesterday, definitely not right but not a huge impediment either.

And here was I thinking the main local excitement of the day would be meteorological...

A little more ambitious tonight with the Achilles continuing to improve gradually, with a circuit of the Kolsas mountain, involving some small and pretty rough tracks (which looked bigger on the map than they were in reality) across the eastern side (although this section was mostly flat to downhill), before coming back on roads and paths. Unless you climb the mountain at the start, there is no way to avoid having a 20-contour climb at some point on the way home, it's just a matter of exactly how it's done - the Galibier it ain't, but it's still pretty hard work. A reasonably steady run once warmed up and ground out the steep last few minutes.

The route took me past the Kolsas station, which hasn't seen a train for a long, long time - the line out there has been under reconstruction for the last eight years (part of it's reopening next month), partly because of wrangling between two levels of government (Oslo city and the broader region) over who was going to pay for it. Oslo is also struggling to implement a new electronic ticketing system which is billions of kroner over budget and still isn't fully operational after more than two years. Sound familiar? (I'm fortunate in my commute to be on what appears to be one of the few routes which isn't affected by summer building works; the mainline Oslo Central station is totally shut down, as are large parts of two of the six metro lines).

Problems Australia doesn't have with its meteorological observing network: two sites on Svalbard stopped functioning earlier this year after being attacked by polar bears. I was also a bit disappointed to find out that it wasn't really -26 when I was here in February (the report I saw was supposedly for the old airport but it turns out the site number has been reallocated to somewhere inland). Will have to settle for -19 (city centre) or -23 (airport) instead.

Did this one in the early evening after accompanying Cassie and Max to the local Ikea (and yes, they sell Swedish specialties at Norwegian Ikeas too - although I didn't see whether any Norwegians were actually buying them).

Achilles wasn't as bad today (although I had cramps in my calf muscles overnight, the first time I can remember this for a long time). The first few minutes were again hard going, but while it was never comfortable after that, nor was it too bad. A flatter route than yesterday (this time to the north-west). I wasn't really looking forward to the steep final climb coming back, but handled it better than I thought I was going to. Definitely an improvement on yesterday. Spent some of the run fantasising about one or more Murdochs spending some quality time enjoying the hospitality of Wandsworth at the pleasure of Her Majesty.

Watched the final hour of the Tour (on tape) after coming home. My knowledge of Norwegian is very limited but one needed very little knowledge of Norwegian to work out from the TV commentators when a Norwegian hit the front. (They're getting quite a bit of practice in handling this).

And for those who are going to O-ringen: looks like heavy rain in the lead-up (although not as much as in Oslo, where 60mm is forecast for Friday/Saturday), showers until Monday, then fine for the few days after that.

Achilles again very ordinary today, but this is an injury I've been living with for a long time so I know now pretty well how it behaves - or at least know it well enough to know that a short run was likely to do it more good than harm.

I would have preferred to do something flat but that isn't an option when you're on a ski hill. I went looking (or rather Cassie looked on my behalf) for the least steep option available, but that still involved a fair bit of climbing in the second half, although not especially steep. The first 10 minutes were very hard going; warmed up a bit after that, although climbing was still pretty hard work, probably at least in part through upper legs doing the work that lower legs weren't. Did feel less sore afterwards which was a major objective of the exercise.

The last bit coming back makes you think that you've taken a wrong turn and ended up in Wybalena Grove. As Cassie is a past resident of that area I suspect this may not be entirely coincidental.

Had planned a rest day for today; wouldn't have fancied getting up too early after not getting to bed until close to 1 this morning. I'm in Oslo for this week, partly catching up with family, partly doing some work based at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (mainly clearing some decks in advance of an international review of my project in three weeks' time). Those familiar with Scandinavia in July will not be surprised to learn that the office was virtually deserted.

Not sure if it was flippant or real but I saw a reference to betting in JWOC discussion. Anyone betting on JWOC, like anyone betting on the NAB Cup (or on Nick Maxwell to score a goal at any time), should seek help immediately, but seeing that did prompt me to think that we don't have any procedures in place and perhaps we should (although if someone did do anything really dodgy it could probably be dealt with under 'bringing the sport into disrepute' or something like it) - one could imagine that people wanting to carry out gambling scams might be interested in an obscure and weakly-policed sport. That said, it would be very difficult to 'fix' an orienteering race if betting is only for the win/place, but I don't know if there is head-to-head betting or similar anywhere?

Achilles was pretty good yesterday but didn't like sitting at a desk today.

C • Oslo 7

It occurred to me on the way to the start that this 5-days was roughly the equivalent of an Easter, with the addition of a middle distance on Easter Thursday. It sounds hard when you put it like that; perhaps they weren't great thoughts to have before starting.

The talk before the start (which was a fairly late one for me) was that today would be a bit faster than yesterday, although this was based on the fairly flimsy evidence of an apparently fast time from a local (the only one running M21E, although I suspect most of the organisers are drawn from that demographic) whose fast time turned out to be attributable to his failure to visit all of the controls. In fact the first part of the course, in heavy karst, was slower than anything yesterday, and I didn't make a good job of it, losing 2 minutes at 4 and wobbling nervously on 5 without actually making a mistake.

6 was a long leg and featured my best few minutes of the day; I took a road option with a big climb at the end and ran it, all 20 contours of it, putting at least a minute into a Norwegian in the process. It felt strong and encouraging but it may not have been wise; it turned out I was burning the last fuel I had. I gave the minute back through a questionable route on the next leg (and it turned out the Norwegian wasn't running my course anyway), and while it was another 40 minutes before I really started to fade away, it was a grind from then onwards. By 15 I was seeing Nicholas Mulder on a crossover and realising that he had taken significant time out of me, and by the second-last leg I was pretty much gone, something demonstrated by the Danish M55 (or thereabouts) who blew me away on a not-particularly-steep uphill track.

Somewhat surprisingly after a mediocre run at best, it was my best placing of the week (14th) and lifted me to 16th overall. One of those I overhauled was Greg, who started 43 seconds ahead of me (a chasing start might have been interesting); he must have had a bad one. Like the last couple of Easters, I wasn't able to finish it off on the last day, but this was probably tougher (both because of the extra day and the significantly longer last day) so there may still be signs of progress.

Left in a bit of a hurry afterwards as I had a 5.45 flight out of Zagreb and wasn't sure what the motorway traffic into the city would be like on a Sunday afternoon (minimal as it turned out - the Croatian summer holidays haven't really got going yet). Made a connection in Zurich I wasn't particularly confident about and ended up in Oslo, late enough to see tangible evidence that it does get dark there occasionally in midsummer. (I also saw my first rain of the trip).

C • Amnesia 2

Yesterday's map had a special symbol for living places of brown bears. As far as I know no-one saw one, and the bears may have good reason for being shy: among the offerings at the place where I ate last night was 'bear paw with dried fig' (not something I would have expected to see on a menu this side of Guangzhou).

Over the last 18 months my confidence in my ability to handle long races has not been what it should be, mainly because I haven't really run a good long (90+ minutes) race since the 2009 Australian Championships. My confidence was particularly lacking coming into this, the longest day of the Croatia Open (and with an expected winning time of 80-90) - I can't remember the last time I was as nervous about this for a race, in a 'can I really do this?' sense rather than a 'can I get the result I'm looking for?' sense.

The warm-up, with soreness in both Achilles and hamstring, didn't help - although at least the conditions were again kind - but a wide track route choice on the first leg helped to settle me down (on a day when in general the long legs seemed to work reasonably well for me) and from then it turned into a reasonably normal race. It wasn't, though, to be a great navigational performance, with 2-3 minutes lost on a short leg at 7 in vegetation I couldn't quite make sense of. I got another boost around 10, a crossover point on the most obvious route choice, when I saw both Greg and Jamie and concluded I was close to the former and well ahead of the latter.

14 was a long leg with one major climb before the short final section. By now the muscles weren't quite right - they weren't quite right all day - and there were a couple of small mid-leg technical wobbles, but the engine was running reasonably well and for the first time in a while I was finishing a long race off physically. The disappointment was that I couldn't finish it off technically with a silly 2-minuter at 17, mistaking a cliff line for a track. (We don't often run on 1:15000 these days, especially in technical terrain, and I think my eyesight is starting to revert from well-above-normal to normal).

I can't call this a great run - no run with 5 minutes of mistakes is a great run (although Annichen Kringstad still managed to win WOC at Kooyoora despite exploring large parts of the state of Victoria during the course of her run) and my placing was only marginally better than on the earlier days. It will, however, do something for my confidence in being able to handle more races like this - especially as I didn't feel as shattered afterwards as I did after, say, Mount Ainslie.

The organisers do a good job of mixing the terrain up here. This time it was depressions again, but this time in largely flat terrain with no rock, and few features larger than a contour. I've come horribly unstuck on flat technical terrain on numerous occasions in Europe and was therefore very cautious, particularly early before I gained confidence in the mapping of the green and yellow (both excellent and both good features). Never really felt like I was being aggressive but there's something to be said for running at the speed you can navigate; my only mistake of any size was a 90-seconder when my plan to run along a track to its end fell foul of the elephant track off its end being as prominent as the original track. A little further up the list than on the first two days; running against the big boys is definitely a challenge, although I suspect at some point tomorrow or Sunday (both long days, particularly tomorrow) I'm going to wonder whether I should have run M40. Achilles starting to get a bit troublesome in the absence of calf massages since being away, although so far it's been OK once warmed up.

The heatwave broke today and running conditions were quite pleasant, particularly at 750m altitude - low 20s.

There are numerous assembly area features you won't find in Australia. One was the flying fox extending right across the assembly area, unsurprisingly a massive hit with the under-12s. Another was the beer tent (I doubt the concept of a 'liquor licence' exists in this part of the world), and a third was the music over the PA system - not so much the fact that it existed but what they were playing, including the version of 'Living Next Door With Alice' which includes the chant 'Alice! Alice! Who The F*** is Alice!'. I last encountered this, of sorts, at the (in)famous Australia-Iran World Cup playoff in 1997 when, in the dying moments, the Iranian supporters started chanting 'Allah-e-Akbar' (God is Great) and Bay 13 responded in its inimitable style with 'Allah! Allah! Who The F**** Is Allah!'. I'm surprised it didn't start a riot.

Jenny started on the journey home this morning. Hopefully it will be less of an epic than the trip to Europe, the likes of which hasn't been seen since 1991 and Grant's attempts to get home from JWOC - he was supposed to be on Yugoslav Airlines which was grounded by UN sanctions, and ended up going through Jordan (where he almost got arrested for going onto army land during a run).

C • Singapore is where I am currently... 2

Sprint in the town of Krk. I'd looked forward to this sprint - a good Mediterranean old town sprint is something pretty special. This one was a bit easier than I expected and only spent half the course in the old town (mainly because it wasn't very big), but still good fun, despite once again not having much uphill strength, and didn't miss anything although one of my routes was a bit questionable. Again about 2/3 of the way down the field.

We had a fair idea only half the course was going to be in the old town before the start because all the control descriptions were issued in advance (a blast from the past) and could see the spectator control was 10 out of 20. Comparing notes before we started, I noticed that Laura Robertson had a common stretch with me from 4 to 7. I hit 4 not too far behind her and wasn't gaining much, if anything, at the time on running speed, but she didn't quite register where the common stretch ended because she did a brief stunned-mullet imitation when I turned off to 8...(Like most of the substantial NZ junior contingent here, she's doing very well).

It was once again hot (mid 30s) and humid and I was glad it was only a sprint, but there is a lot to be said for an assembly area on the beach, which was an open invitation for people to spend time in the water before the race and after the race and, in the case of one of the Edinburgh Uni contingent, during the race. (The IOF Event Adviser in me was thinking of the various grounds on which he could have been disqualified, the spectator in me was thinking it was the best entertainment of the day).

Event: Croatia Open
 

First day of the Croatia Open and a challenging one it was, in what was described as 'extreme karst' - heavy limestone rock in many places (many of the spurs were almost unrunnable) and lots of depressions and cliffs. Hard to go much under 15 min/km in the midst of it; there were tracks but they were often obscure (I even lost one on the way to 6). Started to open out a bit more in the second half, which was also mostly downhill.

I had no running fluency in the terrain at all, and also struggled for any sort of uphill strength, but gradually got into it and even more or less enjoyed it. Running M21E this week and was about 2/3 of the way down but not totally embarrassed (the winner was just under 35).

Slightly more pleasant conditions because of the 700m altitude - probably high 20s.

As an act of tourism this was a very interesting run, along the shoreline into the old town of Zadar, taking in the town's most unique feature - the 'sea organ' (where a system of pipes has been set up in the seawall to produce musical notes depending on the movement of the water). Quite stunning. As a run it was very ordinary; the heat is still proving a struggle. I'm glad the Croatia Open is mostly at high altitude (except for the sprint).

Most of the rest of the day was spent on a neighbouring island (or in its adjacent water, which was very pleasant).

The World Junior Sailing Championships are in town and we ran into a couple of teams on the bus. My T-shirt (the one with the climate charts on it) seemed to attract quite a bit of attention.

The Plitvice Lakes National Park is as stunning as I'd been led to believe from those who had been there before WMOC - sinkholes, lakes, waterfalls, and above all the most stunningly clear water (and the greatest quantity of visible fish) I've seen anywhere. This might have been a very promising scene for a run but wasn't - the park trails were largely boardwalks and not really suitable for running, and getting anywhere from where we were staying would have involved 3km on a busy highway, so I decided to swap a planned rest day from tomorrow to today.

It's clearly an attraction of largely foreign interest (perhaps the locals stay away in peak season). In the car park (amongst the trees and reminiscent of orienteering events) probably no more than a quarter of the cars had Croatian plates and a lot of those would have been hire cars. I couldn't even get away from Australians in the restaurant; on another occasion I might have been tempted to get involved in the conversation at the next table, but I didn't come to Croatia to get into an argument about the carbon tax.

We finished at Plitvice around lunchtime and spent the rest of the day travelling on to Zadar, through an increasingly stark landscape. It seemed a routine drive of a couple of hours and it was hard to imagine that less than twenty years ago, this is the region that gave the world the expression 'ethnic cleansing' (first when the Serbs, who were the pre-war majority, threw the Croats out at the start of the war, then when the Croats repaid the favour with interest at the end). The only real sign of those events was the occasional abandoned building.

Scored nicely in the accommodation department at Zadar - after a couple of attempts drew a blank, we got an apartment with two bedrooms and, perhaps most importantly, a washing machine. Our next fallback was going to be the nearby youth hostel; perhaps we did well to avoid it as later in the evening we saw a Contiki bus parked outside.

Early morning through the northern suburbs of Zagreb, out mostly along a ridgeline (which is clearly a posh part of town judging by the number of embassies sighted), then back along a valley. Some pretty solid climbing in the first half. Started out with Jenny but she was struggling a bit today and turned around after 20 minutes, so I was on my own from there; feeling pretty good at this point but faded away quite badly in the last 15 minutes, by which stage it was starting to get quite warm.

Up to the Plitvice Lakes in the afternoon.

The morning after the day before, and it was ugly. It was already 30 degrees by 8.30 am when I headed out, and the thought did come to mind that I've taken in probably 5 litres of fluid since finishing yesterday, and very little of it has yet come out the other end (just as well there was no drug testing yesterday). It showed. The first half was generally uphill to the northwest, finding the shady side of the street where I could, then downhill and back into town. Had been planning 40 minutes but couldn't really be bothered, and this was really about loosening up (maybe it would have been better done in the pool).

Having had a collective lousy night's sleep, Pecs didn't seem to have much collective energy on display this morning. You get the same sort of feeling in Melbourne when it's been a 28-degree night.

I think I'll have trouble convincing Jenny that European travel normally works smoothly. Pecs-Zagreb should have been a reasonably straightforward trip with one change. Instead it had four. The first was when the conductor told us we should get off and get the fast train behind. When we did get off I was a bit worried because there was no trace of said train on the timetable, but it turned out to be an earlier one running two hours late. Then on the Croatian leg we had to do one section by bus because of trackwork. All of this was done on a 37-degree day and in vehicles which ranged from very warm to hot-enough-to-melt-toddlers-in-parked-cars.

And it's as well that I have company on this leg: my credit card has been problematical in European ATMs over the last year (because of incompatibility of different generations of chips), but in Croatia it doesn't work at all as far as I can tell, as either an ATM or credit card.

Things you don't get at an Australian event: the local fire brigade deploying their hoses to cool people down after their runs.

You can't ask for much more in a race than giving it everything you have, and today was a day when that happened. 13th in the long final was the absolute best I could have achieved and it's what I got.

We were sort of expecting a train to form around our start time, with Liggo 2 minutes ahead, and behind at 2 and 4 minutes the fast but erratic Russian Nikolay Sytov (who was in Australia a while back) and Bulgarian Ivaylo Ivanov, whom I considered a good top-five prospect who had run a bad first qualifier. I wasn't, though, expecting it to start so early when I saw Liggo halfway between 1 and 2, looking as if he wasn't quite sure what he was doing. We were sort of together for the next three legs; I got a bit of a lead on the long climb into 3, but he got ahead again when I took a drink on the way to 4 - early in the course, but water opportunities couldn't be passed up today (34 degrees, probably the hottest I've run a long race in).

5-6 was the big route choice leg, 2+ km across the width of the map. I thought the right route, missing most of the climb, was obvious, but it wasn't so obvious to Liggo and Nikolay (who had almost caught us by then) because they went different ways. I never saw Liggo again (he ended up blowing up and had to walk most of the last third), and Nikolay got enough of a jump on me to get clear. Ivaylo also caught me at 6 (which was close to half-distance) and was going faster than I could really handle.

By 40 minutes I had the feeling I was in a bit of trouble. In conditions like these you can lose a lot of time very quickly if you blow up, so I dropped back a gear, walking some of the steepest hills (although we were through the worst of them by then) and concentrating on making sure I hit every control, exactly. I seemed to find a pace that I could maintain; it wasn't easy but I didn't get any worse, and was continuing to hit control after control. By 17 I was starting to go through some of the early starters (and thought I'd seen Ivaylo behind me but was obviously mistaken from the splits), realising that I was on the verge of achieving the rare feat of an effectively technically perfect run, and switching into 'don't stuff this up now' mode. I wasn't that quick at the end but it didn't cost me anything.

I got pretty much everything out of myself that was possible today, both physically and technically. Obviously there have been times in the past when I would have been able to do much more physically - although the clock would, I think, need to have been turned back quite a few years to find the six-minute gap to the top ten - but there's no point in agonising over that. Perhaps I'll get back to an earlier level, most likely I won't, but for now this is a result to be satisfied with.

We leave Hungary tomorrow. Susanne (who, as most of you will know by now, won silver) and Lachlan go back to Budapest and on to Norway, Jenny will be joining me in Croatia for a few days before heading home. My next competitive stop is the Croatia Open, starting Wednesday.

C • Congrats! 7

Spent my last day as a thirtysomething doing not terribly much with the pre-final rest day, but did find the time to take to the water in the local pool, which was unsurprisingly well-patronised on a 32-degree day (although the wave pool had more crowds than the still pool where I was). Felt like the session went for a long time but smooth enough and will hopefully have relaxed some muscles. Time is a guess.

WMOC 2nd long qualifier. A better run technically today with no errors of any significance (a couple of 10-second hesitations was as bad as it got), but still lack the strength needed for the soft ground - every contour was hard-won today. Not pushing extra-hard in terrain where you need to be aggressive in the terrain. Not sure how much of an extra gear I'll have for the final but I guess we'll find out on Friday. (With 34 degrees forecast, Friday will be an endurance test too; having managed to dodge all the significant heat of the Melbourne summer, it will be the hottest day I've experienced since early last year). Stayed 11th, gaining one place and losing one (I thought I might have moved up a bit as it was a better run than yesterday, but it didn't happen).

This was a nice technical area - lots of depressions and not huge amounts of track running. There was a steep descent through green over the last few controls but to no-one's great surprise a big elephant track had developed by the time I got there (one wonders what it would have been like for the later starters).

Managed to outsprint a Swedish M70 in the chute (just), although Sus and Jenny still had faster splits than I did...

Liggo also qualified 11th from the other heat, which could make for an interesting battle on Friday. I think I get to chase him (by virtue of being in heat 2) but won't know for sure until the start lists come out.

First WMOC long qualifier, in what was essentially gully-spur terrain with some intensely eroded gullies - a bit like some Victorian mining areas, but perhaps more like the JWOC 1996 terrain in Romania, or the 2000 World Cup on Mount Fuji.

This didn't get off to a good start when I blew two minutes on the first control, not quite sure where I was alongside an erosion gully and overshooting. Took a couple of controls to settle myself down after that but eventually did, at least technically speaking, and didn't have any more significant problems other than a 15-seconder at 9 and a possibly suboptimal route choice at 8. Not happy, though, with the run physically - I shouldn't be tiring in a qualifier, although it was hilly (hillier, and probably greener, than the final will be) and quite warm. Particularly unhappy with the last 10 minutes.

Ended up 11th in the heat today, although our heat seems stronger than the other one (run on the same course) - would have been 7th there. This won't make any difference to me other than giving me a slightly earlier start for the final (no bad thing given Friday's forecast), but you wouldn't be too pleased if you were a marginal qualifier in my heat - the cut is currently 90 in ours, 102 in the other.

Today's assembly area was on top of a rehabilitated uranium mine, so if you see lots of older Australian orienteers glowing in the dark at the Oceania Championships this year you'll know the reason why.

Resy day between the sprint and the long qualifiers, most of which was spent at an IOF Event Adviser's workshop. Seemed to do more talking than all of the other workshop participants put together (although that may have been partially due to English not being the first langauge for anyone else other than Jenny).

C • Rest 2

C • climate change 2

WMOC sprint final, 17th. More of a running race than yesterday, run mostly in typical Eastern European (or Scandinavian) housing estates in the town of Komlo (which wasn't as desperate-looking a place as I'd expected somewhere whose economy was based on defunct-for-the-last-20-years coal mines to be). Not a lot of fine navigation, and not really that much major route choice either - some of the other courses I saw were considerably better in that respect.

I was a little bit slow right at the beginning but then got into it - certainly couldn't be upset with my mental intensity today, and ran pretty well. Didn't miss anything of any significance, the only wobble being a slightly iffy route choice on 12, right at the end, which cost me 5 seconds at most. Ended up about 2 minutes behind Janne Salmi.

I'm fairly encouraged by this as far as my long distance prospects are concerned; a top 10 should be within range if I can have a decent run in the final (although a lot will need to fall my way to get into the medals).

Susanne was the best of the Australians with a (very close) 5th. Hermann was 6th although the result lists claim him as British - as far as I know Hermann's only connection with Britain is that he was a POW there.

Jesus obviously didn't pray hard enough before the start - he missed qualifying by one place in M40-1, being squeezed out by Attila the Romanian.

WMOC sprint qualification in Pecs. A bit rough around the edges and lacking a bit of running sharpness but did the necessary, coming 9th in heat 1.

The first two legs were straightforward (the second was a complete-waste-of-space 400m road run which I should have used more for planning than I did). Got more complicated after that, although mostly in the form of solving you can't-get-there-from-here route-choice puzzles than the rapid decision making that can be called for in some European old towns. Avoided major mishaps, although took one wrong staircase and started up one dead end.

Tomorrow will be the big day. A result in the teens, which is what today's time points to, would be a par result for the sprint (although below par in the long).

WMOC sprint model, on a Communist-era housing estate on the south edge of Pecs, running a course which Amber set for us. Took a while to get much in the way of pace going but this was useful for getting my brain into sprint mode, doing a consistent job of looking for dead ends, awkward walls and fences and the like. Did start to go around a butterfly loop the wrong way but not huge amounts of harm done. A nice hit-out.

Jog back from sprint model area to base with Jenny, taking us through some of the less attractive bits of Pecs (featuring assorted factories which, I suspect, ceased to operate fairly quickly after the point at which they actually had to find customers for whatever it was they were producing). Enjoyed the fresh north wind, something that won't be with us next week.