Day 1. "T-raining"

 Almost 20 hours of travelling we arrived in Geneva.

As a South African passport holder, Roark was treated with the utmost suspicion and made to stand in the rather long "other passport" queue while Tim finally got to experience the advantages of having an EU passport.

(Not that it helped much as Roarks bag still came through 1st..)

Roark was then sent to go purchase train tickets while Tim waited for his bag. Unfortunately Roarks pronunciation of the town we were going to was "un-understandable" and he didn't manage to get tickets in time, so we had to wait 30min for the next train.

After 20min on the rather hot train (but with a pretty decent view of lake Geneva and mont blanc), we arrived in Nyon where we met up with Jan Erik (Canada) and Anton (US/Finland/Switzerland) and preceded to do a bit of sprint training.

The sprint training was a bit more technical than we are used to and we often missed the little alleyways and underpasses. After the run around the town we were all overheating so we crossed the road for a short swim in Lake Geneva.

The town of Nyon was really beautiful and the fountains of drinkable water were much appreciated.

We then wandered back to the train station, on the way stocking up on the cheapest food we could find.

The train ride to St Cergue (our home for the next few days) consisted of multiple changes between train and bus, luckily Anton (our local Swiss/Fin/American) was able to guide us through the process quite seamlessly.



Our campsite in St Cergue was extremely close to the train station which was much appreciated by all as we were carrying in excess of 25kg.



A short while later, we had set up our tents and had a quick bite to eat, so were ready to head off for our 1st forest training in Switzerland. A longer than expected walk to the start (about 3-4km), and rather warm temperatures (30degrees) meant we were already pretty tired before the session began.



Anton and Jan Erik decided to be lazy and just did part of the course (They had however been doing a lot more training than us in the last couple of days), while Roark and I headed out to do the full course (only 6km, but over quite rough terrain and rather hilly). Both of us managed to complete the training without too much incidence (Though Tim did run straight into a barbed wire fence).

A walk back to the campsite and a dinner of sandwiches and we were ready for bed. (10pm and still pretty light).

After 2 hours of sleep in the last 40hours or so, it wasn't a surprise that both of us were very soon asleep and dreaming of Swiss forests.

Moment of the day:

Losing Roark at the Geneva train station and wondering if he'd ever appear again (especially considering he had no idea where we going or what we were doing)

The Swiss train raining on Tim

Illegal activities of the day:

Anton and Jan Erik not managing to buy tickets in time and riding the train without.