Training Log Archive: jennycas

How green was my valley - greener than this year's Scandinavian summer, anyway. They've finished the pedestrian bridge across the creek alongside the road bridge at the far end of the caravan park. I passed by people out walking their goat and Shetland pony.
Legs a bit hammered from AOKTM (ironically, I suspect that I will have told the masseuse more about my trip than I'm likely to tell any of my 100+ colleagues at work) so afterwards I actually had a hot bath!

C • Welcome back! 1

Home, sweet home :)
It's kinda wintry around here though. My legs were twitching uncomfortably in the night but I didn't want to get out of bed to go find the magnesium tablets because it was too cold...
Still, it's a far lesser temperature differential than going straight from 35 degrees in Croatia to the frostiest morning of the year in Adelaide, as I did in 2011. Also, the decision to lose only one night's sleep on planes (rather than two as in 2011 and 2015), is a definite winner.

Thought I should get some exercise before the flights home, but it turned out that my legs (which have done some sort of running 26 days straight) weren't really up for a trail-and-sometimes-terrain run around the forest near where Cassie lives. I was having to watch my feet all the time and not really noticing anything around me, so it's a good thing that Blair was reading the map, but I kept being afraid that if I got too far behind I'd become lost in the forest and miss my plane...anyway, in the end there was plenty of time to meet up with Cristina & Lukas for some quote-unquote "sculpture ogling" in Vigeland Park which does indeed have a couple of sculptures. A couple of hundred, that is, all of humans in various lifelike poses and conglomerations and completely naked because the hole in the ozone layer hadn't got to Oslo yet and so the subjects didn't have to fear sunburn.

Down from Montana, around the little lake so someone could get up close & personal with Bergen's weather station, and back up the mountain via the lovely lawn cemetery with a whiff of linden trees in the air. A run which begins with 11 minutes straight of descending results in 170m of elevation gain on the way back up, so I was definitely ready for breakfast, but not so ready for the hostel's buffet options to include:
- smoked mackerel
- pickled herring (I shuddered as B sampled the curried version)
- brown cheese
- sheep sausage
Mind you, at the waterfront fish markets where we dined last night (mmm, steamed mussels) it was possible to buy sausages made from reindeer, moose, whale...

Long day of travelling to Oslo over the mountains was broken up with a stop at the impressive Voringfossen waterfall and many photo-opportunities by little lakes in the high country. The road goes up to 1250m and there were views all the way across to remote glaciers. Also at one point the road spiraled right back above itself due to a sequence of tunnels. Speaking of which, I lost count but Blair says there were 53 today. I was most impressed by the fact that a couple of them included underground intersections, at roundabouts lit up like a blue light disco!

C • Buffet breakfast 8

Suburban run from Montana hostel, which sits partway up a slope above Bergen, so this was mostly down until it became mostly back up. At the very top of the slope is Ulriken, @643m, conveniently accessed by a cable car - the base of which is within walking distance of the hostel. Less conveniently, it only has one cabin each way, containing approx 15 people, and a cabin only comes along every 7 minutes, so if there are 100 people in the queue...we probably spent the same total amount of time waiting at bottom/top as could have been spent hiking up & down, but this wouldn't have given the same great views on the way up & down out over the city with "7 mountains and 7 fjords". At the top we walked away from the hordes to the summit cairn, and were rewarded with alpine views out towards a distant glacier.

Today's tunnel count: 11, including a 7.8km undersea one which went down to 260m below sea level. I preferred the 2 drive-on drive-off ferry crossings!

Slow stiff suburban stagger past some nice houses, around a small lake, and up to a bonus hilltop lookout, from our apartment near the central waterfront; which location was very convenient for catching the ferry to Tau this morning (the ocean was like glass, and there were dolphins) in order to walk to Preikestolen - along with a few thousand other people, as it turned out.

A truly beautiful hike, both below and above the treeline (reminded me in parts of the Overland Track) and amazing views both across the mountains along the way and, when we got to the top, out over the fjord 600m below. I couldn't believe how many people had brought their dogs of all shapes and sizes - their doglegs must have been very tired by the end, as mine certainly were. And just as I was thinking "I wonder how many other orienteers there are around here" we bumped into Toph & Jacqui!

BTW, tunnel count for today was only 6, but yesterday was 25...

Really nice run with Blair through the forest plantation to the south of the hotel, finding the start point for the permanent course but sadly no maps in the box (my brain was up for the challenge but legs wouldn't have been) and then singletrack through the dunes across to the beach, north up the beach with a stonking tailwind (I'm not silly, I planned the route that way) and back along the road, putting a bit more effort in at the end. Couldn't believe how much this coastal area reminded me of Waitarere and The Strip.

Hard to say goodbye to Denmark :( after 10 wonderful days here. Catching the big ferry Hirtshals --> Kristiansand, and then finding somewhere to watch the soccer, took up more than just the afternoon so it was 10pm by the time we got to Stavanger - very grateful that B was doing the driving so I could watch the beautiful scenery, because I've never been to Norway before.

C • Never??? 8