Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Another day and another rather mediocre run. Never felt especially comfortable although settled at times on the flatter section. Hills, even small ones (and there weren't many big ones on this route), weak throughout. No worse at the end than the beginning. First time for a while I've done a Thursday long run in 100% daylight (and the last time for a while too because daylight saving starts on Sunday).

The honeymoon must be over - I saw my first piece of anti-Rudd graffiti today. As it was in the People's Democratic Republic of Thornbury I suspect the PM is not left-wing enough for the graffitist's liking.

Also spotted on the way into the work - a real estate sign advertising an "Iconic Melbourne Property" for sale. The property in question is the Top of the Town - one of Melbourne's better-known brothels.

A reasonably pleasant run, although a little weak on the hills. A bit of a nothing session and not particularly fast.

Another addition to great headlines of our time: one from the Canberra Times about an ACT election promise to improve services for young children with disabilities. I assume it was meant to say 'Labor funds play therapists', but what it actually said was 'Labor funds play the rapists'.

One might imagine that current events in the U.S might encourage a certain portion of society to head for the hills with lots of tinned food, guns and ammo, so I noted with interest that the only company on the whole New York Stock Exchange whose shares went up on Monday was Campbell's. Didn't see how the guns and ammo manufacturers went. (Perhaps these people will be able to put their Y2K stockpiles to good use).

And spotted outside a pub on the way in to work: a sign 'Coming Soon: New Friendly Staff'. Not exactly a recommendation to patronise the place with the current staff.

Not one of my more glorious efforts. Vaguely promising start but fell away badly after the top of the hill, with hint of a stitch, as well as a certain amount of CBF factor once it was obvious I wasn't going to post a meaningful time. Quite windy, but I didn't slow down this much on the day back in April when the headwind was gusting to 110 km/h instead of today's 50.

Km splits: 3.35, 3.45 (uphill), 3.42, 3.42.

At this time of year I'm mostly trying to hold things together for another couple of weeks to see out the last big races of the season - on this evidence the edges are definitely fraying.

To/from the Tan.

I've been in a bit of a quandary deciding what training to do in this period. The season isn't over for us yet - we have Victorian Long and Middle Champs in three weeks' time (after which I'll have a couple of reasonably easy weeks before launching back into full summer mode). I've settled for moderate volume but fairly high intensity.

This morning was the first stage of this - a hills session based on the lower part of Walmer St in Kew (10 uphill reps of approx 1 minute, jog downhill recovery). Picked this location as I've got something on in the area after work. (I seem to recall Bruce using this location at some stage for another reason - there's a playground at the top of each rep which would make it possible, at least in theory, to keep the kids occupied and do a proper session at the same time).

Didn't feel like I was going that fast on the hills, but did manage to shrug off some early stiffness and ran a reasonably solid session. Didn't see any suddenly impoverished residents of the eastern suburbs throwing themselves in front of heavy vehicles or such like.

It was a late return last night, but not as late as the last time I flew home from an Australian Champs (2006, 2.45 a.m), and I didn't have to do a briefing for the Prime Minister on my first morning back this time either. In fact I had the luxury of a slightly late start (a relative term which meant a 6.15 alarm rather than 5.something) because of a 9.00 appointment to collect the books from the OA auditors.

Went to Ivanhoe to do a bit of recovery. A reasonably smooth if unspectacular session. There are certainly a few war wounds from the weekend; scoreboard as far as I can tell are a bruised elbow, a bruised hip, various scratches from a face-versus-lantana altercation on the way into 24 on Saturday, and a lump from an ant bite on my ankle while waiting in the changeover area to start my relay leg. If you want a pretty face or legs you're in the wrong game.

One episode from Saturday I neglected to mention was an encounter with one of the locals (of reasonably mature years) who said that it was about time young people like me did some of the work, or words to that effect. I was pretty offended by this and I think he has probably worked out that I was offended (and I was still wearing my running number so mistaken identity isn't an excuse). It was a reminder that whatever respect I have amongst the hard core that frequent these pages doesn't extend to the broader orienteering community.

C • classic 11

A fairly easy lunchtime session around the Tan in the absence of a Monday night session this week. Rather on the slow side although traffic hold-ups explain part of that; felt ordinary early but better later on. A slight variation to my usual route because of a gathering for Police Remembrance Day; I didn't think jaywalking in front of a couple of thousand police was a brilliant idea. The speaker as I was going past was expressing the apparently worthy sentiment that 'we are the people's police'. He probably doesn't realise that the People's Police (or Volkspolizei in German) was the name of the force responsible for maintaining law, order and repression in Communist East Germany.

Not surprisingly, brown and gold was much in evidence around the Melbourne CBD today.

C • ...you don't believe in res... 3

In recent years I've developed a habit of having exactly one good run on Australian Championships weekend - a good individual has meant a bad relay or vice versa. 2008 continued this pattern with a satisfying run, feeling sufficiently comfortable at speed to make me think that I hadn't been trying hard enough yesterday.

The first six or seven all went out on the second leg within a couple of minutes. I went out second, but had the long split on the first control where I also wobbled slightly, then lost a bit of time trying to get across the crrek into 2. This didn't work out badly as it then meant I was attacking the packs from behind (apart from Grant, who slipped through at 1 without my seeing him). On a course with little splitting, I then settled into a nice rhythm while working through packs, first edging clear of Nino Calabro by 6, then pulling in James Bradshaw and Steve Todkill by 10, and getting a little ahead of them when they missed 11 slightly. They were then reasonably close for a while, but dropped back a little over the closing controls (James never dropped off totally, but was far enough back for me to be able to withstand his sprint). By then, though, Ben Rattray came through on a flyer and passed me en route to the last control; I couldn't hold him and neither could anyone else. We ended up fourth after Rob Preston went through Bruce on the last leg.

It was a memorable sprint finish between Rob Walter and Simon Uppill, but the result was decided on the first leg when Lachlan Dow came back with the leaders, a result which should give him a lot of confidence about his ability to compete at this level (we ran exactly the same time, which may or may not end up being a symbolic result), and John Nieuwenhoven was four minutes down when it could easily have been ten and left the Arrows out of range.

"Interesting" trip back home from Queensland. Like, I suspect, a fair number of other readers, I was caught up in the shambles when someone (from the past history of such incidents, probably a clueless pensioner) entered through an exit and therefore caused the entire terminal (and planes, like ours, that were on the tarmac) to be cleared out for re-screening, a process which took a couple of hours. It was a bit disappointing that the assembled multitude didn't get the opportunity to throw rotten tomatoes at the offender...

On returning to Melbourne, I then had the misfortune to have a taxi driver who had been working continuously for 20 hours (one would have thought there was a law against that, but apparently there isn't). He was friendly but clearly exhausted and erratic, and I was seriously tempted to offer to drive it home myself (and probably should have done). He also appeared to be seriously navigationally challenged; I was half-expecting to see him still circling the block this morning after being unable to find his way out of Heidelberg. Eventually made it home in one piece just after midnight.

C • Security Breach 2

A pretty disappointing day in the race that I was building for in the second half of the year. It was particularly disappointing because my problems were more mental than physical - most obviously in my worst mistake in a major Australian event for fifteen years, a four-minute parallel error on 13, but also in thinking that I'd horribly misjudged my pace when in fact I'd probably got it close to right.

I took the first part of the course reasonably conservatively but didn't have any real glitches, other than a fall at 1 when I hit the elbow I broke in 2005, which was fairly painful for a couple of minutes. (It's swelled up quite significantly since; had it been my knee I probably would have struggled to run the relays). The first glitch was at 9, a knoll in the green, which I overran and lost 45 seconds at. It was here that I saw Liggo. This really rattled me. I knew he'd started six minutes after me, and also knew he was in excellent running form; two minutes wouldn't have alarmed me too much, but six? For the rest of the day I was thinking that I was running much too slowly, but couldn't lift my pace much further. (It turned out it wasn't surprising he'd got there six minutes faster than me - he was running a different course).

After the mistake at 13 I spent most of the second half thinking I was on a catastrophic run, when in fact it was merely mediocre. Held the pace OK on a warm morning, and was reasonably smooth for most of the second loop, before blowing another minute or so at 22, something which had a turnover-in-the-backline-when-30-points-down-at-the-27-minute-mark-of-the-last-quarter feel to it.

I ended up 11th; a couple of those ahead of me probably benefited from a train, but this didn't deserve to be a top-ten run and wasn't. I think 105-106 would have been a good time for me; Craig's 102 for third was probably out of reach. Had a reasonable amount in reserve at the end which did give me some optimism for tomorrow, but today was an opportunity lost, and at my age one's conscious that there may not be many more.

The rest of the day was devoted to Grand Final watching, three separate selection meetings, a presentation and dinner and my second-last passage through Maryborough. I still haven't worked out what keeps the place afloat (other than Centrelink) and none of the Queenslanders seem to know either, other than that it's there because it's there and used to be important.

Australian Sprint Championships. I may have done some significant things in sprint races overseas but today was never likely to be a repeat performance except in the unlikely event that somebody had set up a replica of a medieval European town centre at the back of the Maryborough Showgrounds. As it happened I felt very flat and produced a performance which was disappointing even by my sprint standards. Also wobbled and hesitated on the way into 6, a greenish flat gully and the one difficult control on the course. Not a day to be happy with - hopefully I got it all out of the way today and tomorrow will be a fresh start.

Afternoon session at Hervey Bay after the Schools Relays, out along the waterfront to its eastern end, back through the inland. A stiff south-easterly wind, pleasantly cool but hard work to go into on the way out (and with the close proximity of the ocean I'd acquired a bit of salt on my face by the end). As is often the way with mid-afternoon runs, didn't really fall comfortable but kept plugging away steadily.

It wasn't really a beach day but there was still plenty of evidence of school holidays; in a place with Hervey Bay's demographics (and where you could fire the proverbial cannon down the main street at 9 p.m. and not hit a soul) this will probably prompt an outburst of outraged letters to the local paper from that portion of the local citizenry who think that it should be an offence to be under 30 in a public place. The MP for Maryborough (independent, ex-One Nation) has already got in on the act by calling for the reintroduction of corporal punishment in schools.

Wide Bay may have a political reputation as a redneck haven but Gympie even more so, so I was interested to see in today's news that one Ron Owen, the most infamously rabid of Gympie's collection of infamously rabid gun lobbyists (and collector of something like 120 votes in all of Queensland when he ran for the Senate some years back), had been ordered to apologise to the 'homosexual community of Gympie' as a result of an anti-vilification case. I suspect said community is pretty small; it's the sort of place where one could easily imagine anyone known to be a bit queer being run out of town at the hands of a pitchfork-wielding mob.

Finished the day at the Schools presentation dinner (as OA representative). I left before there was time for any potential scandal (there's usually one about every five years and the last one was in 2003). Most memorable moment was seeing a certain prominent South Australian elite orienteer who's a lot closer in age to World Masters than she is to JWOC successfully passing as an under-18 to avoid having to join the signing-in queue at the RSL.

Off to Fraser Island for the day tomorrow.

Not quite up to the level of the weekend races. Schools Tuesday is never an easy one for me to race well on; my focus is on other things for a lot of the day, and the faster terrain wasn't quite as much to my liking as some of the thick stuff on the weekend. My principal objective on this day is to beat all the kids, something I haven't managed since 2001. This time, like last time, I beat all of ours but got beaten by one of the Kiwis.

One 30-second mistake, coming over the top of 11 (which seemed to be very low), and a couple of other minor wobbles, but the big problem today was not being fast enough in an area where that counts for a lot. May not augur well for the weekend as those areas are supposedly also pretty fast.

A body was found in forest near Maryborough on the weekend, but it was nothing to do with us. I also saw a sign on the way into Maryborough "Baby Shoot". They do like their guns in these parts, but I think this particular sign was a reference to photographs.

Didn't expect a lot of this session but it turned out to be a really nice run, flowing along well after initial warm-up. Particularly nice along the Hervey Bay esplanade in the second half of the run (spent the first half inland, partly in the name of exploration). No sign of stiffness from yesterday; only lingering issue is some itchiness where my arm encountered an air-borne nest of fire ants while pushing through some green yesterday.

C • dust storm on radar 2

Queensland Championships. Another day, another fifth (and another close race with Darren Ashmore - after a dead-heat yesterday he beat me by 5 seconds this time). Probably a better run than yesterday, but a long race in the heat was a tough proposition and for much of the second half I felt like I was on the outer edges of what I was capable of sustaining physically. Only one mistake of any size, 45-60 seconds on 9 in the green.

The area was greener than what I was expecting before the start of the week, although not as bad as initial reports from the early starters suggested - in particular light green on the creek flats was quite runnable.

A lot of people struggled today. Thought I was going through Eric out of 14 but it was actually Steve Todkill; also caught Bruce (who's coming off a long layoff) towards the end. A bit frustrating to narrowly miss the placings again, but if the breakthrough comes next Saturday I won't be complaining. Thought Simon might have been a bit more than 6 minutes ahead of me. It was a good day for the old men again, with four of the top five eligible for M35 (Grant, Craig, Darren and myself).

Had a glitch at the start - picked up two maps and hurriedly dropped the second. I don't think I can claim it cost me 5 seconds.

Did a bit of scaring of small (well, mid-sized) children on the way to the start, by telling the group of Queensland W16s I was running to the start with stories of Kapamahunga. This was prompted by someone commenting on a brief downhill en route - I responded that they didn't know what a downhill trip to the start looked like. (Kapamahunga's was something like 200 metres descent in 1k).

C • Telling stories of the old days, huh? 2

C • Was it just me ? 8

Event: 2008 Australian Championships
 

Australian Middle Distance Champs. Not the best physical race I've ever run - was feeling the heat (28) despite the modest distance, and certainly appreciated the drinks control. A reasonable race technically; a few wobbles (some of them not entirely unintentional in an area where aiming off when heading for the creeks and erosion detail wasn't a bad strategy), but nothing bigger than 15 seconds or so. A more interesting area than I was expecting, with lots of low visibility around the creeks. Reasonably happy with the result (5th); only 32 seconds away from the placings, and will hopefully have a few shots at minor placings in the longer races (although Simon looks untouchable).

Travel day up to Queensland, first Brisbane and then Hervey Bay (via a visit to our Brisbane office). We're used to bumping into familiar faces all the times at major orienteering events once you get to (insert whichever small town is the host), but I wasn't quite expecting to see any at Brisbane Central in the middle of the day (the Doyles).