In the last 7 days:
| activity | # | time | miles | km | +m | | | |
| Run | 5 | 3:33:04 | 21.19 | (10:03) | 34.1 | (6:15) | 160 | 44 / | 46c | 95% | |
| Pilates | 2 | 1:30:00 | | | | | | | | | |
| Pool running | 1 | 45:00 | 0.43 | (1:43:27) | 0.7 | (1:04:17) | | | | | |
| Swimming | 1 | 36:00 | 0.62 | (57:56) | 1.0 | (36:00) | | | | | |
| Total | 9 | 6:24:04 | 22.25 | | 35.8 | | 160 | 44 / | 46c | 95% | |
7 AM
Pilates 45:00 [3]
Monday morning Pilates, at the time of year when it's still more or less dark at the start. A bit mixed around today because other people were using things at the time I would normally have used them but ended up getting through most of the session. Felt pretty good doing this.
8 AM
Swimming 36:00 [2] 1.0 km (36:00 / km)
Moved on to the pool. Felt smooth from the start and ended up turning into the fastest (relatively speaking) that I've done for a long time (the extra pace needed to pass someone turned out to be a trigger). Probably made a difference coming off a relatively short day yesterday.
Also ended up as my fastest ride into work for a long time too, although that owed more to a good run of green lights and a lack of traffic (on two wheels as well as four). In general the city seemed pretty quiet at commute times today even for a Monday - maybe everyone was taking in (potentially) the last bit of summer. Productive day in the office too.
Hopefully today is the sign of something to come - I've generally felt as if I've been struggling a bit the last two or three weeks (the race days were probably as good as it got) so will be good to leave that behind.
11 AM
Run race ((orienteering)) 28:06 [3] *** 4.6 km (6:07 / km) +60m 5:44 / km
spiked:28/29c
Victorian Relays at Royal Park, running 3rd for the Yarra Valley 2nd team (with Cormac and Mel). I expected this to be fast and that was demonstrated when Callum and James came back with 18 minutes on the first leg. W weren't in that league, but I was still pleasantly surprised when Mel came back with a time in the mid-20s. Took a leg or two to get into the vegetation mapping, but mostly smooth thereafter (just one leg, 19, where I was a bit wider than I would have liked), and running reasonably well by my current standards, including up the climb at the end. A little closer to the pace than has been typical of late.
Turned out the reason Mel's time was so good was that she'd missed the map flip :-(. After benefiting so much from other people's mispunches last week I guess I was due to be affected by one this week. There were enough other mispunches that the Yarra Valley first team won, which was a bit of a surprise (and we also won the overall pointscore which was also a surprise).
9 AM
Run 1:03:00 [3] 10.2 km (6:11 / km)
Out to Waverley Park, taken there by the number 80, a reasonable approximation of the margin by which I saw Essendon beat North there in the 1983 preliminary final (we won't talk too much about what happened the next week). Spent the first half of this run doing a course from one of the Melbourne City Race races in 2022 (which I missed at the time), then a second loop out east into the more established bit of Mulgrave. Back was definitely better than the last couple of days but the run was still hard going, and pretty slow (though a bit of stair work around the stadium was relevant there). A warm day but one plus of autumn is that it takes its time warming up, so I missed most of it.
I was actually at Waverley's last game, a pre-season cup match in 2000 (it wasn't supposed to be there but the then-new Docklands stadium wasn't ready in time). One of my other noteworthy visits there was for the second part of the 1996 game which was stopped by a power failure and then completed on the Tuesday night (this means I can claim that I was in the NSW Southern Highlands - for QB3 - when the game started and was there to see the finish). Also triggering memories of that era was the music at the cafe I went to afterwards, which I associate with being the backdrop for the performance (basically using a police car as a vaulting horse) of the local police gymnastics team at the WOC 1995 opening ceremony in Germany. (This was unkindly referred to as the 'losers parade' because it took place the night before the long final in a town 40km away from where most people were staying, and with few exceptions was attended only by those who had already been eliminated in qualifying; this also means that my WOC, and as it turned out my WOC career, was over before it officially opened).
There was a certain theme to the street names around the old stadium: among those which I logged today were Croke Park, Goodison, Ibrox, Sabina Park, Selhurst Park and Westham (one word).
Continuing the theme, after spending some of the morning at a defunct football stadium I spent most of the afternoon at a current one.
1 PM
Run 41:00 [3] 6.7 km (6:07 / km)
Back was very tight this morning which scuttled plans for a longer one early. Headed out at lunchtime from work instead, back was improved but still definitely struggling, and faded away later on on a warm day. Spent most of my time in the western end of South Melbourne (almost in Albert Park), which was good as long as the shade lasted.
8 AM
Run 34:00 [3] 5.4 km (6:18 / km)
A pretty ordinary run, thanks probably to a post-midnight meeting (which had led me to swap my usual Thursday and Friday sessions) - a bit of the slowness was probably the GPS not picking up all the laneway ins and outs, but not much of it. Did start to settle somewhat in the last 10 minutes.
Spent most of this clearing up various odds and ends in the south end of Collingwood, which means passing a landmark - 50% of the City of Yarra completed. Thought I might have left myself with only one short run get to complete Collingwood as a suburb but on checking there's also one annoying node left at the Hoddle/Victoria intersection (not a place one particularly wants to linger if not in a car).
Random encounter of the day was Marc Gluskie, who I think I last saw when he was in the Tasmanian schools team 15 years or so back - on his way to work as a newly-minted Qantas pilot.
5 PM
Pool running 45:00 [3] 0.7 km (1:04:17 / km)
I had a bit of a timeslot available between a meeting at Melbourne Uni and a physio session so this was a somewhat unusual window for this. As often with this session it was reasonably relaxing and good for recovery, even if the sunglare going west was slightly annoying. Much less busy in the late afternoon than it has been on hotter days.
With the new football season upon us I'm getting my head around which players have new clubs, and which grounds have new (insert sponsor's name here) names. One of the latter is Engie Stadium (GWS Giants), although that one would be more fun if Engie still went under one of its old names (it arose from a merger between Gaz de France and the Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez (Universal Suez Canal Company)). At least none of the new names are as ridiculous as some of those seen in the NRL, which in the recent past has given us Lottoland and 1300Smiles Stadium.
8 AM
Pilates 45:00 [3]
Morning Pilates shifted from Monday, and possibly slightly distracted by the strange damp substance on the roads (there were a few more objects on four wheels on the roads than usual too, thanks to the train line being suspended). Not too bad as a session once I got going, if a little sleepy.
7 PM
Run ((street-O)) 46:58 [3] *** 7.2 km (6:31 / km) +100m 6:06 / km
spiked:16/17c
Street-O at Bennettswood, starting on the north side of Deakin Uni, on the nicest running night we've had for a bit. I knew there would be some overlap with last week's map but wasn't expecting my first control to be the same as one used last week. Headed east after that, before returning to a closing loop which took in some of the university (multi-level is hard enough on a proper sprint map, never mind a mostly monochrome 1:10000 one). Back definitely so-so but plugged away, fairly similar to last week. Seem to have got the best of the routes from what I've seen so far, which means I'm somewhat further up the list than usual (and thanks to tonight now have a full season score - slogging out in 36 degrees a couple of weeks ago was good for something).
As if I needed any more reasons not to take handicap races seriously, I saw today that at the Stawell Gift, it is perfectly legal for you (or your associates) to bet on a race you're running in (as long as you're over 18). What could possibly go wrong?
10 PM
Note
I've seen a few threads of the 'AFL teams as...'
genre lately. Sadly I no longer have a copy of the 'VFL teams as World War I combatants' list that a couple of us came up with when we were bored during a Year 9 history class in 1985.
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