Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Was already thinking today was a likely rest day given the full schedule (coming down from Stuttgart in the morning for the conference start in Heidelberg), but my gearlessness made sure of that - I made the connection in Berlin mentioned in yesterday's entry (not without being part of a pack running from one end of Berlin Airport to the other in a passable imitation of the Jukola mass start), but my luggage didn't. (As of Tuesday morning I'm still waiting). I had partially anticipated this and made sure that I had some key items in my hand luggage (including my conference poster), but there are limits.

One benefit of having an international conference during the World Cup: you have an immediate conversation-starter with whoever you happen to find yourself with during a break (especially if their country is still in it).

And fun for the whole family: the database of the number of registered firearms in Victoria by postcode has been made public. I'm gratified that there are no bazookas, cannons or machine guns registered in Heidelberg (or West Heidelberg for that matter), although there are 17 to be found on the mean streets of Ivanhoe just down the road. (There are also 17 in Fairfield, although how many of these are on the Hells Angels premises is unknown). I am somewhat puzzled about what function 11 rocket-launchers serve in Chadstone, but the most obvious standout - the 18,000+ handguns in Collingwood - has a logical explanation (the Victoria Police armoury is there) and doesn't have anything to do with stereotypes about supporters of their football team.

Given that I'd been struggling to be competitive with decent runs, I was never going to be anywhere near the hunt with a poor one like today's. The most fundamental problem was that I simply don't have the strength at the moment to be able to run properly in this stuff - probably at least 50% of it was in marshes today, and while they're mostly not particularly deep marshes, I find it very draining. Some solid training in this terrain would definitely make a big difference. (I think JWOC 2015 is going to be at least broadly similar, so anyone who's serious about that should think seriously about coming over as early as they can and getting some experience in this stuff).

This wasn't a particularly good run technically, either. The main issue was 5, a long leg near the treeline; I couldn't make any sense of what had been mapped as yellow and white and lost track of my height - as it turned out I hadn't dropped anywhere near enough (which is at least better than the alternative). Hard to gauge exactly how much I lost but I'd guess a couple of minutes. Smaller misses on 8, 9 and 14 (where a wide track route didn't pay off as well as a similar one did yesterday).

Had to take off pretty quickly afterwards so I don't know what my placing was but it won't be flattering. 58 was leading when I left. Now heading to the airport - next stop Heidelberg, Germany (after a night in Stuttgart if the flight connection works, or Berlin if it doesn't), where I have a conference next week - not one I would have gone to on its own but fitted nicely into the schedule between O-festival and WOC.

There are a lot of good M40s in Norway. I certainly felt better running today than yesterday, only made one small error (a 20-30 seconder on the first, having been rather taken aback to be last of the 13.33 bunch to the start triangle), and was closer in percentage terms than yesterday (9 1/2 minutes down on the winner, former Norwegian national team member Bernt Bjornsgaard), but still finished in the bottom half of the field.

By Norwegian standards it was reasonably technically easy - lots of open marshes which were good attack points for many controls, and in the more forested section around the southern hill from 10-14 there was heavy tracking (a lot of courses seemed to have the same legs here). Still, there were some tricky legs and I was happy to nail those. Struggled again going uphill in soft ground - couldn't run much of the big climb out of the spectator control to 10, and on 17, where the straight line was 500 metres uphill through marshes, I went wide for a track option (it was one of my better splits so that was probably a good idea).

O-festival sprint, not really an urban one except for a couple of legs late in the course - it was at the Norefjell ski resort (where the downhill was for the 1952 Oslo Winter Olympics) and was focused on a couple of the ski runs and nearby terrain. Not really anything in the forest except for a few thickets to go around, but plenty of soft springy vegetation which I found it very hard work to run uphill through. (Fortunately, the fact that the start was 150 metres above the finish meant there wasn't a lot of uphill running to be done). Not as rough underfoot as in Oslo, as I'd anticipated. Only one mistake of any consequence - a 20-seconder or so at 3, climbing too high around a spur again (my 1-minute man went through me there). Ended up about halfway down the field in M40.

The Nordic summer has been missing in action over the last couple of weeks, and being at an altitude of 900 metres or thereabouts added an extra bite to it - it was only about 8-9 degrees with a chilly breeze, although at least the rain had cleared out before we started.

It's always a bit of a shock to the system when I venture onto Nordic terrain for the first time in a trip and today was no exception - and the hill behind Cassie and Jim's place abounds with challenges for the unfamiliar (particularly the roughness, and the hiding-lots-of-pesky-holes low vegetation). Started by running to the top of the ski run (where the start was) to warm up then did a couple of short courses left over from club training last week. Making mistakes is a good way to learn, and I made a couple of significant ones in the first five controls (both times climbing too much while contouring on shortish legs), but was navigating considerably better in the second half - though without much fluency either in terrain running or navigation. Also struggling climbing in soft ground, as was the case last year. It's been quite a dry spring (although as I write the conditions are doing their best to address this) and the marshes were more runnable than can sometimes be the case here.

I'm expecting the O-festival terrain (which is near the treeline at about 800 metres elevation) to be less rough and more runnable than this, but it's no bad thing to jump in at the deep end. Definitely felt better physically today after a decent night's sleep (slept through until about 6, which I consider to be mission-more-or-less-accomplished). One thing I certainly won't have to worry about at O-festival is heat - it's not expected to reach double figures all weekend.

Made it to Oslo more or less as planned and got a reasonable amount of sleep on the Hong Kong-Helsinki leg, then had the rest of the day to see out in that not-quite-normal mode when you've landed from a long international flight. Originally had some thoughts of going out into the terrain but decided to leave that for tomorrow (encouraged somewhat by the mid-afternoon line of thunderstorms, as well as Jim being sick and abandoning thoughts of going out himself).

The run itself was a bit of a token effort; felt very ordinary indeed, and rather clogged up as I sometimes do after a long-haul flight. Eventually hit the wall while watching the soccer and was in bed not long after 8.

The trip certainly got off to a good start - I arrived at the airport to be handed a boarding pass with 1A on it. I've had upgrades before but never to there (to be fair, on a lot of international flights 1A is first class, which Qantas to Hong Kong doesn't have any more, but I'll definitely settle for business).

With 7 hours between flights in Hong Kong I decided to link up with Troy (who's not there for much longer - he has a new job in Phuket). It would be fair to say that this run was considerably more ambitious than anything I'd have attempted on my own - I'd suggested that I was looking for 30 minutes or so to turn the legs over, and he said this was a bit longer, 35-40, and not too steep. Somewhere on the 1.5km climb at 13% early on, with calves screaming, I realised that the Hong Kong definition of "not too steep" is not quite what we're used to. We ended up climbing as high as the top station of the Peak tram; the views, as you would expect, were spectacular.

Stopping for water has a different meaning in Hong Kong - here it means dropping into a convenience store and swiping your Octopus card (like Myki but much more useful) to buy a bottle of water. I coped with the humidity better than I thought I might (30 degrees, dewpoint 25); a marked contrast with the wild and woolly conditions around Melbourne this morning (although I got out before the worst of it).

A reasonable run, all things considered, although only occasionally got into much flow - the terrain wasn't really suited for flow. Not sure if the GPS gave me quite full value in amongst the towering skyscrapers and (on the top parts) lush forest, although it certainly wasn't a fast run.

Now about to do the next leg to Helsinki and Oslo.

Threatening to be fairly wild and woolly this morning, and definitely hard work going into the headwind in the first half (even once the usual early creakiness was out of the way). The rain held off, though (and riding across the Docklands bridge later on wasn't the nightmare I expected it to be). Starting to flow much better in the last couple of kilometres, just when it was time to stop.

Tomorrow will be a marked contrast. I'm off to Europe in the morning (O-festival in Norway and WOC in Italy, with a meeting in Germany in between). If things go to plan, tomorrow's run will be done in Hong Kong (where I have 7 hours and plan to catch up with Troy) - very different conditions. (That's if I make it out - not 100% certain with the high winds forecast, although I think the worst of them will be after my scheduled departure).

Was tossing up whether to do this post-work swim at Fitzroy or Ivanhoe, but a look at the colourful line advancing on the radar when I left work was enough to convince me of the merits of Ivanhoe. A somewhat messy swim in a crowded lane.

Spent a bit of time wondering whether it would be a waste of virtual ink complaining to the Press Council about Maurice Newman's factually reckless piece in today's Australian. One of these days people might stop spreading falsehoods about our work but it probably won't be soon. (Among other highlights, he makes a big deal about us having 1962 data from Cobar Airport whose site opened in 1993, when the documentation says explicitly that the Cobar data is from a different site and doesn't use the airport). You'd think someone who is presumably making good money chairing the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council had better things to do.

Needless to say, I haven't really started packing yet.

Melbourne Bush O at Plenty River South - first time I've done an event on the map that starts from this side of the river (although I've had controls on this side before from the northern start). It's certainly flatter than the other side of the river - only limited areas of bush (and a lot of what is there is pretty green, something not reflected as faithfully by the current map as it might be), but a maze of small tracks which keeps you on your toes.

This was a pretty easy course on the whole - my only technical errors were briefly going onto wrong tracks exiting 2 and 8, a few seconds apiece - though I did make the mistake of trying to crash the green going into 8. Running-wise it was much as I would have expected after doing a long run yesterday, i.e. well off the pace (and beaten by most of the same people who beat me on summer Wednesday nights, which gives you an indication of the nature of the course).

Good turnout again - haven't seen the final turnout but from the number of cars there must have been close to 200 again, a lot of them young families.

Long run on Saturday with a Melbourne bush event tomorrow (and also because it was my last real window for a long run before going away). Given that I'm going away on Tuesday, I had no need to go food shopping on Saturday morning, thereby also missing the public stoning of adulterers to death which has been a regular feature of Saturday mornings at the Preston Market ever since a mosque was built nearby.

The run was a bit of a grind - certainly never got to the levels that the middle section of last Sunday did - but it was a step up on Friday, and good to get this under my belt in a week when I've been somewhat below par. Wouldn't have fancied another hour on the end of it, but it's good that 2+ hours has become routine in a way that it certainly wasn't for most of last year.

A bit more progress on the streets front: two Almas (one in Lower Plenty, one in Bundoora) and Almay Grove, the closest yet to home - just a couple of blocks away. Bundoora is cars-on-front-lawns territory and one house had a Datsun 120Y for sale out the front for which they were, somewhat optimistically, asking $3750.

And a dead-heat for dumbest criminal of the week this week: one to the person arrested in a posh hotel in South Yarra who reportedly took selfies of herself with cash and drugs (I'm not sure whether these were posted on Facebook/Twitter or not), and one to the person who led police on a high-speed chase through Canberra during the week but neglected to check before doing so whether the car they'd used (or stole) for the purpose had a reasonably full tank of petrol.

This was certainly a major improvement on Wednesday (which wouldn't be hard), though still far from stellar - was certainly feeling creaky (as opposed to weak) in the first couple of kilometres, but it improved after that and a few good patches in the second half. Still not a lot of strength on the hills, such as they were.

Despite expectations yesterday, I don't seem to have got sick. Perhaps I was too busy to get sick; last night was bookended by an OA Board meeting which went until after 10, and another teleconference which started at 5am. (No, I didn't get up for the soccer in between - I recorded it and watched it after the end of the teleconference, having e-mailed the group ahead of time to ask them not to mention the score during the call). Furthermore, in the 55 minutes between arriving home and the start of the OA meeting, I managed to do three lots of cooking (one for last night, one for a function I was going to tonight, and muffins for a work morning tea this morning), eat the first lot, and do a load of washing. (The dishes are still waiting, though).

(The function in question, which took place tonight, was a BYO curry local Labor fundraiser, with the shadow Treasurer as the star attraction. Thanks to the luck of the draw I ended up sitting next to him at dinner; the fundraising events you hear about involve people paying four- or five-figure sums for such privileges, but the price tonight was $15 plus, in my case, a container of red pumpkin curry).

As mooted yesterday, I decided to back off on the training for a couple of days and scrubbed any plans for a long(ish) run this morning (finding a suitable timeslot to watch the game was also a bit of encouragement for this decision). Ended up a fairly standard session in Fitzroy pool, on just about the first genuinely wintry day of the year.

Arrangements for the upcoming trip are starting to occupy more of my mind. I won't be arriving at Lavarone until about 10pm after the WOC sprint (after getting an overnight train to Venice from Germany) and was wondering whether everyone would be asleep. Not much danger of that - had a look at the World Cup draw, and if they get that far (which, having beaten their biggest danger in the early stages, England, they should), Italy will probably be in the quarter-final that starts at 10 that night.

C • Masterchef 1

This was a horrible run - one of the worst I can remember having. Felt weak almost throughout - not really muscle stiffness, just no energy. Had the feel of the sort of run that happens when I'm about to get sick, but no real signs of that yet. Hoping this is a bit of a one-off, but feel that perhaps my body is in need of something a bit easier this week than what I had in mind, so will do a bit of rearrangement of the next couple of days.

Back to the world of the running - out at lunchtime. First part to the Tan was a bit faster than I'd planned on because I linked up with Bruce, who was on his way to do an interval session (he then proceeded to blast past me on several occasions on the Tan itself). Early quad stiffness worked itself out but this was never an especially sparkling run; at various times today (running and otherwise) I felt like I might be in about-to-get-sick mode but nothing has yet happened.

A bit of a rush job which became even more of a rush job when I realised a few minutes of the way to the pool that I'd left my bike lock behind and had to go back to get it (had an 8am doctor's appointment, partly a now-that-I'm-getting-older-it's-time-for-a-routine-checkup, partly to get the medical certificate you need to compete in Italy).

The main function of this session was to loosen myself up. I haven't come up too badly from yesterday, although my quads still feel a little funny on occasions - not too upset not to be planning to run today.

Sea to Summit. I came here in pursuit of a better Six Foot qualifier than the one I had from Two Bays and that mission was accomplished - 3.14 today equates (according to the calculator) to about 5.04 for Six Foot, which should get me into Wave 2 with a bit to spare. Not sure I'd have fancied another 12.8k by the time I got to the end of this one, mind....

There was a mishap early on - around 3k coming off O'Halloran Hill, I missed a turn in a fog patch (or to be more precise, I followed three people ahead of me who missed said turn). Ended up picking it up further down the hill with a net 150 metres extra - better than it could have been. Once that was sorted out, I settled down reasonably well, managing the big climb into Flinders Uni OK. The next 6k was largely on singletrack - nice as it was, and would have been nicer still had it been less slippery (drizzle was a regular companion, especially on the higher ground).

I then had an excellent patch around 15-21k, from about Blackwood to Echo Tunnel. Through this section I was passing quite a few people (hard to be sure exactly how many, since by now we were in amongst the slower 15k people), Lauren being one of them, and was starting to think that getting close to 3 hours might be possible. The couple of kilometres of rough track beyond Echo Tunnel, and consequent slow splits, quickly disabused me of that notion, and from 23k I was gradually fading away; the big climb on Sheoak Road around 26k was hard work, as were most climbs in the last 5k from Crafers. By then cramp was threatening on the various gate crossings but never quite struck, and I couldn't find enough to run much of the final climb, but even at its worst it was never as bad as the last 5k of the last two Two Bays.

I'd been hoping for sub-3.20 so was pleased with this one, though getting close to 3.10 might have been possible with a better finish. Got a lot of things right that I didn't get right in January, not least eating and drinking (took three gels, which did their job well). Certainly know that I've been for a run now; pretty stiff and drained, though not as drained as after Two Bays, and certainly not the disaster-area quads that followed my last two marathons.

In Adelaide for this weekend for the Sea to Summit - in pursuit of a better Six Foot Track qualifier than my existing one from Two Bays (and because the idea of running from the coast to Mount Lofty is quite appealing, although it may be less appealing somewhere around the three-hour mark tomorrow).

This was a turn-the-legs-over session up through Pasadena, though still with a hefty climb into an area with some mountain bike tracks over the top of the railway line, before coming back through Centennial Park (which, unlike its Sydney namesake, is a cemetery - now that would be a fitting venue for Spooks in the Park). Felt tight through the back and hips for the first couple of (gently uphill) kilometres but grinding away OK on the big climbs, of which there will be a few tomorrow.

Signs of orienteering influence: my younger nephew spoke his first sentence today, "det er den" (there it is), said on sighting a control on the string course. I'm impressed, and I'm guessing our resident linguist might be too.

C • Nice. How old? It's impress... 2

Regular Friday morning session in the pool, a bit earlier than usual ahead of a long day at work. Nothing unusual about this session, either positively or negatively (although I did get an unusually good run with the lights and traffic riding into the city from Fitzroy).

Part of the long day at work was preparing yet another reply to yet another piece of correspondence to the Minister from a climate change sceptic about Australian temperature data - these seem to be coming in almost weekly at the moment (many of them from the same person). Part of me thinks that somehow if I'd done something differently these wouldn't be coming, the more realistic side thinks that the only thing I could have done which would satisfy these people is produce a data set whose trend had a minus sign in front of it. Dealing with this one took most of an evening.

Didn't sleep well last night (got home very late from work, and then my mind was still running too much from work), so I didn't expect a lot from this run and didn't get much - eased back on the distance somewhat as I get ready for this weekend. Started to improve a bit in the last half-hour. Not really reading a lot into this.

Never really got going this morning. As with last night, a little bit of base-of-foot soreness (though nothing on the scale of Six Foot); I've concluded that trail shoes, hard tracks/roads and my feet are not a happy combination so will use my usual runners on Sunday (hopefully I won't live to regret this).

A reminder to myself that I'm not always quite as useless in the pool as last week's session suggested. Could have been forgiven for feeling somewhat nauseous after the coverage of Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper telling each other how fabulous they are, but was actually feeling OK.

C • Nausea 2

After a few false starts, managed to join Rob's night training session at Studley Park - a fartlek session, partly on rough tracks, partly on the road underneath. It's the first time I've run with the light, I think, since the NT National League race in 2012 and I was lacking a bit of confidence on the rougher stuff (which may or may not have had something to do with having put the light onto its lowest setting rather than its highest), so really only stretched out on the road sections. Still feeling better than I expected coming off three days of racing.

Warm-up and down from the session - short warm-down as had to take off immediately afterwards.

Middle day of QB3. Another day where I couldn't quite finish it off technically, spoiling a clean run with a late mistake (45 seconds at 19 this time). Not running quite as well as yesterday (and back wasn't great today); in particular fell away when speed was needed at the end.

Caught Rob Bennett at 4 after he made a mistake there; we were close to each other for the rest of the course, only separating significantly when we traded mistakes after the spectator control (16 for him, 19 for me). Just held onto 4th overall against Greg (by 5 seconds) - this must be the first time in recorded history where I've got a multi-day result by getting a jump on someone in the sprint and getting enough breathing space to survive losses on the middle and long days. Shep won with 36.

The name of today's map was South Central. Unlike its LA namesake, there were no muggings or drive-bys witnessed as far as I know.

Annoying ancillary problem of the day was a pair of underpants whose elastic had gone - eventually got them into a position where they stopped moving. They were subsequently donated to science*.

So ended an enjoyable three days of competition on some great terrain - it was a long haul home (10 hours or so) but definitely worth it.

Random homeward observation #1: some of the signage on the Newell is less than accurate - between West Wyalong and Narrandera the signs take 100 off the distance to Tocumwal, and there's one past Narrandera which gives a distance to Finley which is actually the distance to Jerilderie.

Random homeward observation #2: one could be forgiven for entering the Narrandera-Jerilderie stretch with some apprehension - at one end you will find Poison Waterholes Creek and at the other end Turn Back Jimmy Creek.

(* - i.e. they were dumped in the rubbish bin at the car park of the CSIRO Australia Telescope, a.k.a. The Dish, where I stopped for lunch and a bit of sightseeing).

Day 3 Hard 1 - Splits

The long day of QB3, returning to Sappa Bulga for the first time since 2008 (at least for me). I had forgotten just how magnificent this area is - there are plenty of places where you have to work hard, but there are also plenty of places (especially the hanging long gullies with the cypress pines, and the plateau that the later part of the course spent a fair bit of time on) where it is difficult to imagine more enjoyable terrain to run in.

It took a while for me to get my running going this morning, but built into it on the first long leg at 3, where I went left (Shep went through me here from 4 minutes back). Got through the technical section up until 10 quite nicely, and then set myself the goal of getting through the whole course with no time loss. Steady on the two long legs, was probably overly conservative with my route choice to 13, and then finally made a small mistake at 16, 15 seconds or so (I clearly wasn't alone because in percentage-behind terms 16 was actually my best split of the race). Nailed the dangerous 17, lost 15 seconds in the circle at 18, and then dropped another 30 seconds overshooting the second-last, which was annoying (and cost me fourth against Greg). Still a decent run. Shep won with 77.

You know you're in the country: pride of place in the regional art gallery was a photographic exhibition featuring women and guns.

And it's nice of Telstra to send me a text reminding me that I've used up 50% of my monthly data allowance, but I would have preferred them to do it at some time other than 5 on Sunday morning.

C • Probably wasn't 1

Hard 1 Day 2 - Splits

QB3 sprint at Brummagen Creek, essentially one eroded side branch valley from the Macquarie River - a travelling stock reserve which could have done with a few more travelling stock (it's the worst area I've been on for seeds since Easter in Queensland, though I didn't suffer too badly from the tiger pear). It's on the Narromine side of Dubbo.

The start list offered a certain amount of ego-damaging potential - Alistair George, running up (and fresh from knocking off his father, always a landmark in any junior career, in the NOSH last weekend), was starting a minute behind me. I'm not quite ready to get beaten by M14s yet*. (As it turned out I never saw him, but he ran well and would have been about 1.30 behind me had he not punched the wrong last control).

Jock was starting a minute in front of me. I lost 15 seconds or so at 1 (running to a wrong control, but realising immediately); he lost more, and I was on him at 2. From there he was in sight more or less the rest of the way, gradually edging away from me (I caught him again briefly at 11 when he stopped to extract a tiger pear, but lost that ground again when I had to do the same halfway on the next leg). It was a lively contest for a while and I actually managed to win a split at 4 - which may be a first for me in a sprint race (maybe one of the old town legs in the WMOC 2008 final?), but was running a bit harder than I've been used to of late and was going a bit lactic by the end. Still, this was a decent result (6th in M21), 4 minutes down on Shep but 2 back on the next couple.

Biggest disappointment of the day was that the sign near Parkes which I remembered for 2007, 'You Are Now Entering The Bogan Catchment', no longer exists.

And it was impressive to see Hermann Wehner compete (and get round a course in a respectable time) on his 90th birthday. I'll certainly be pleased if I can still manage that come July 2061.

(* - I think Patrick Jaffe beat me in a Melbourne Bush-O in his M14 year, but it was one I was treating purely as a training run after 2+ hours on the Saturday).

Hard 1 Day 1 - Splits

I had a meeting at the airport today (prior to hitting the road for the first stage of the trip to Dubbo). I didn't want to spend $39 for the day on parking (nor did I want to take the bus that was organised from the city - had I done that, I wouldn't be getting out of Melbourne until close to 7), so chose the cheapskates' option - leaving the car at Gladstone Park and get the 901 bus to the airport for the price of a Zone 2 Myki.

I also wanted to get across town before the traffic got heavy, so also thought Gladstone Park would be a base for a run - definitely not familiar territory. The original thought was to do some terrain running in the middle in Woodlands Park (about 3.5k away from where I was starting) - however, the gates in the (high) southern boundary fence to Woodlands were locked, so I couldn't get into the bush and had to settle for a track run on the boundary. In the Woodlands part that was still pretty nice, although some of the country between Gladstone Park and the Woodlands boundary gave me an indication of where Melbourne's stolen cars go to die. (I also saw an advertising board for possibly Melbourne's cheapest property: a two-bedroom unit for $285,000, in the last street on the airport side of the suburb, right under the east-west flight path).

The run was nothing to get too excited about, although nothing was hurting.

One thing I was keeping an eye open for was whether it is possible to run from the airport across to Woodlands (not something I'm likely to use unless I move away from Melbourne, but might be useful for others transiting there). There is a road/track marked on the Melway which would be less than 2k from the terminal to the bush (you'd then need to find a usable gate to get into the bush), but it's uncertain from the map (and on the ground, at least from the Woodlands end) whether it's publicly accessible.

Felt fine this morning, just had the swimming technique of a drunken elephant. (The plan was rearranged again yesterday - a meeting which I had thought was on tomorrow night was actually tonight, clashing with the MFR night terrain intervals session which I will get to eventually).

Interesting discovery of the day; working out, from the small print of the national accounts data that the ABS released this week plus a few calculations of my own, that the benefit to the Australian economy through the lack of cyclone-related disruption to the mining industry this year was somewhere around $2.5 billion. Since a lot of the usual cyclone-related costs come through precautionary shutdowns (especially on offshore oil and gas rigs), it doesn't need a lot of imagination to work out that the cost:benefit ratio for investing in improved cyclone forecasting is pretty good.

I wanted a proper long run at some point before the Sea to Summit, for my confidence if nothing else, and today was the day. If the objective was to build confidence it succeeded. Unlike a lot of my early morning runs lately, I felt non-sleepy in the early stages of this one, and while the first hour wasn't sparkling by any means, I was getting up the hills with enough in reserve to suggest that this was going to be reasonable.

And there were plenty of hills - none of them big (the largest climb in one go was maybe 50-60 metres), but from 1 to 19k, on a loop which went through Viewbank, Montmorency, Glen Katherine, St. Helena and Greensborough, there was barely a flat section longer than a couple of hundred metres. The run gradually built as it went on, and once the route finally flattened out after Watsonia, I was ready to step up a gear (even putting in what passed for a sprint to get across the main road 1.5k from home while the railway crossing gates were closed). Felt a bit tired for the first time on the last hill before home, but still had quite a bit of distance left in me.

The wall came later; it wasn't my most productive day at the office. (At least I didn't have to handle too much of the backlog from two weeks of the public feedback form on the Bureau website not passing on material as it should; in a hotly-contested field, the craziest item received via said form was probably the correspondent trying to recruit us to the cause of the campaign for Schapelle Corby's innocence).

A few niggles (both foot and Achilles) surfaced at times, but never lasted for more than a kilometre or two. A couple of streets bagged, both at the far end - Allipol Court and Allumba Crescent - last really remote ones for a while.

Came across my local state MP at the station on the way into work. He doesn't know how things are going to turn out either.

And clear, still mornings in June aren't supposed to be warm....

This didn't quite happen as planned. I had a 5am teleconference today, and thinking that it would go for an hour at most, my original plan was to shift my long run to today so that I had only one really early morning this week (and to give myself a chance to go to the Thursday night terrain session for once).

As it turned out, the teleconference went for nearly two hours (not that I was feeling that awake for most of it anyway, so the long run might not have gone that well had it happened), and I only had time for a more normal Tuesday run, which was done around the Yarra in the Studley Park area. It had some good patches (and is better than it looks because a lot of the tracks were very greasy and slow in the drizzle), but was starting to fade a bit by the end.

News of the day is that a poll has found that Tony Abbott ranks fourth in the list of most favoured Liberal leadership contenders, behind Malcolm Turnbull, Someone Else and Don't Know. (Just like the Gillard years, such polling results are driven largely by the views of people who would never vote for the party whoever was leading it, but it's nice to see this particular media boot on the other foot).

Swapped Monday and Friday sessions this week (in a week when there's going to be quite a bit of reshuffling from the usual - yes, I know, dangerously radical thing to do) because I'm not sure I'll find deep enough water for pool running where I'm likely to be for the Friday session. All fairly standard; not as much stiffness to work out as usual given a lower-volume weekend than usual.

I'm doing the Adelaide Sea to Summit in a couple of weeks (partly in pursuit of a better Six Foot qualifier than the one I already have from my dismal Two Bays performance in January). I entered last night and was impressed by the vast array of titles on offer in the drop-down menu on the online registration form. Tempting as it was to call myself a Monsignor, a Rear-Admiral or a Wing Commander, I settled for a mere Dr (and hope this doesn't make the organisers think that I have the capacity to do anything about it should anyone suffer medical misadventure on the course).

Lunchtime on the Tan. Par for the course for this session. No horse calling cards to dodge this time, but plenty of meandering pedestrians on Southbank.

Content-matching algorithms on social media sites can produce some strange results, but I was still rather bemused that a Facebook link to the latest NSW Stingers blog post had as its "related sites" (a) something about drought in Walgett (b) a nine-year-old doing a 540-degree turn on a skateboard on a half-pipe and (c) a rugby league player being acquitted in a Queensland court of assaulting another player. There's a very tenuous connection for (a) (albeit less tenuous than the connection between the 70th anniversary of D-Day and the abolition of the carbon tax), on the basis that the Stingers post mentions QB3 at Dubbo which is sort of near Walgett (what's 300km between friends?). There's an equally tenuous connection for (c) because the assaultee is a former member of a NSW sporting team (no, the reason for the acquittal wasn't on the grounds of it being legal in Queensland to thump NSW Origin players), but I'm struggling to see any connection whatsoever for (b).

C • 540 degree half pipe 1

Melbourne Bush-O at Plenty Gorge. Felt a lot better running than I did on either Thursday or Saturday, but still a bit surprised by just how far down I was (and some of the people who claimed my scalp). Reasonable technical run in the first half; a slight wobble at 9, then dropped 30 seconds to Jim (who'd caught me at 6) on a route choice 9-10, then an annoying 45 seconds or so at 12, where I couldn't work out whether the control was in the depression inside the knoll and climbed it to no avail.

Impressed that we got 128 entries on a wet day; my usual rule of thumb is that rain knocks 30% off the numbers, suggesting that we might get close to 200 next time if the weather is decent.