Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Better than the equivalent session last week, but then that isn't saying a lot. Didn't feel disastrous but pretty slow. Having a somewhat fraught moment in my occasionally fraught relationship with my (downhill) neighbour probably didn't help.

I'm used to some bizarre comments whenever we put something out which has something to do with extreme weather or climate change, but I was impressed by the leaps of logic of one commenter on a piece we published on The Conversation: apparently if we didn't spend so much time talking about extreme weather, Australia would be able to afford more ammo for the troops in Afghanistan. (I didn't realise an ammo shortage was the reason why we were struggling to get rid of the Taliban, but maybe I've missed something). I don't know how much additional ammo could have been procured had I not spent a significant chunk of today talking to Channel 9, 3AW, Gold FM, AAP, news.com.au and the Warrnambool Standard.

A reasonable morning run, starting on the Yarra Flats and then climbing back through Eaglemont (where I slowed down a fair bit but didn't hurt, something I'll take as a positive). Surprised how tired I felt later in the day, though.

Morning at Fitzroy. A bit wobbly for much of the way, but found a bit at the end. Somewhat more traffic in the lane than is usually the case at this time, especially in the middle of winter (not that today was doing a very good impersonation of "winter", of which more in the next report).

Traffic of a different sort was the subject of something which got my attention on the way in - a large number of toy trains and associated paraphenalia are hanging off the fence, left there in the name of those who want more trains (and don't want more freeways).

Lunchtime on the Tan, on a very atypical July lunchtime - sunny and 19 degrees. (This time in a couple of weeks, I'll be somewhere - Iceland - where 19 degrees is a midsummer heatwave). Thought it might be a bit of a struggle when the first few minutes saw my back finding another place to be tight (upper part this time), but it loosened up pretty quickly and from that point on it turned into a pretty good run - certainly felt stronger than has been the case on a lot of runs like this in recent months.

My first taste (this season at least) of the Melbourne street-O enduros. I went in thinking that I might last 2 minutes or 2 hours, and was pleasantly surprised that it was the latter - a few patches of soreness but nothing especially acute. Definitely tired in the last quarter, though - in particular I don't think I would have had anything for an uphill sprint to the finish had one been necessary - and flaked out for most of the rest of the afternoon; a bit of a worry that 2 hours at middling intensity can leave me as drained as that.

The Fairfield/Studley/Kew/Clifton Hill area makes for a good area for this sort of event, with plenty of "you can't get there from here" legs. It was long enough to make getting them all less than a formality, and in the end I didn't do it - hitting 34, with two controls potentially to go, I thought I needed 8 minutes to get both of them and only had 6 1/2, so dropped 24 (as it turned out I probably would have needed 9 or 10 minutes; even only getting one of the two, I had only a minute to spare). Some ups and downs, and even a few patches in terrain which were fun even if they slowed things down a bit.

The control format for these is a multiple-choice question based on something at the control site. This seems to work fairly well on the whole, although some of the questions could be answered from a distance and didn't require one to go all the way into the circle (I probably saved 90 seconds by being able to answer 37's from the Chandler Highway bridge and not having to go underneath it). Don't think anyone got them all, although people like Bruce would have done so easily had they been there.

The humidity was very low today despite the cloud, which probably explains the impressive post-run skin salt deposits.

Morning swim at Ivanhoe. Seemed to be going reasonably strongly for the most part, although the hip muscles were occasionally troublesome in the water too, which is a bit of a worry. Will be interesting to see how the place continues to function, as they say it will, when the development starts in a couple of months (at least our rate increase is going somewhere).

In the changerooms afterwards a small child turned to his father and said "Daddy, that man's got a really big belly". I think he was referring to the man under the next shower. With those diplomatic skills I'm sure there's a job waiting for him in future as an Australian envoy to Indonesia on asylum-seeker policy.

And Berlin is forecast to reach 37 tomorrow, close to its all-time record (which I think is 37.something). This brings back memories of JWOC relays day in 1991.

An abortive attempt at a run - better than Wednesday but still not right, and while I could push through it if I really wanted to, it seemed better to give it a bit more time. The plan at this stage is to swim tomorrow and try running again on Sunday, although probably not the full two hours of the Fairfield street-O enduro.

Took to the pool while waiting for my body to sort itself out (something it is showing some indication of doing; certainly riding felt more comfortable than it did yesterday). A fairly standard session on a cool morning (although this time the mist wasn't deemed heavy enough to be a problem).

My body has been troubling me on and off in the last few days but today was the crash-and-burn day; the hip muscles, which have been going on strike late in long runs from time to time lately, did so after 15 minutes today. (I'm assuming it's ultimately back-related since both sides went at the same time). No point in trying to push through what had become a very slow speed session. It wasn't great on the back to and from work, either.

I'll do some rearranging of my program and tentatively shift tomorrow's run to Friday, but I have the feeling that one easy day isn't going to be enough to get this sorted.

Inspired idea of the day goes to the Guardian: they had a button on the front of their website 'Royalist' or 'Republican', and if you selected 'Republican', all the royal baby news was instantly cleared from the front page of their website.

Never really got going on a dark, drizzly morning. Back still a little troublesome although improved a bit later on. Covered up the heel this time so no newly decorated socks....

Like many people, my attention was grabbed by exciting news coming out of the UK overnight - it's not every day that it reaches 33.5 degrees in London. (This is their hottest day since 2006, in what is looking like it will be England's hottest month on record or close to it).

Not bad for a Monday morning once initial cobwebs shaken out, flowing along quite nicely through Yarra Bend. Spotted en route: someone on the bridge over the freeway with a camera, presumably there to record the likely uselessness of the proposed East-West tunnel in resolving peak-hour traffic jams (hint: not much of the traffic at that point is going where the tunnel would).

A heel blister was making a bit of a nuisance of itself yesterday. It didn't feel too bad on the run today, but a post-run sock whose colour scheme was somewhere between Sydney Swans and St. George-Illawarra suggests otherwise.

Always feels a bit strange to be swimming in the dark. Heel was stinging quite badly at the start (with a quick stop called for to make sure that it wasn't actually bleeding), but settled OK after a couple of laps. Flailing around a bit.

Joined the "Cockatoos" long run which in fact had participants from far and wide (Reuben and myself from Melbourne, Anthony Cox from France and the Hoggster just back from Oxford). I was a bit worried that in the Majura climb, once someone put on the pressure I would play the role of the 2013-model Cadel, but got up more or less OK. Tired somewhat later on, though, and back probably wouldn't have appreciated going up Ainslie as well. Lots of snow to be seen, both on the Brindabellas and on the hills SE of Queanbeyan (snow level was about 900 metres; as usual, by the time it was cold enough in Canberra the system had run out of moisture). Had a good conversation in the later part of the run on matters climate-related with the Hoggster and Anthony, who's now heading up the climate and biodiversity division in the OECD.

After experiencing the pleasures of Deli Marco, I then proceeded to Grammar to test a few route choices and suggest some consequent control placement tweaks, then had a rather icy late afternoon watching the Brumbies hang on (just). Heading back to Melbourne tonight, and will stay there for a full 12 days.

Test-running what will now not be the M21E course for the Sprint - turned out the map scale was wrong and the course was too short. If I'm doing 13 then you'd expect someone like, say, Craney to go sub-10. I think having to lengthen the course will actually be a positive - it will force a map change which removes the temptation to have nothing legs to get the distance in.

Felt reasonably good running, if perhaps not absolutely flat-chat. Got it in before it started raining in earnest.

C • Sprint distances 1

One of those days when my body refused to function up hills - not sure if I can blame this on doing the sprint beforehand. Not always confident in the navigation, partly because Bruce Ridge's already considerable number of mountain bike tracks has increased further since the map was last updated (a new one was in the process of being built today), but didn't really lose any time in that respect.

Saw Lazydave out running with a couple of Rattrays. He took the opportunity to engage in a bit of sledging - at least it related to WOC qualification and not to the fact that at the time I was being outrun up a hill by a W14.

After a full 32 hours in Melbourne, it was off to Canberra this morning (mostly for Australian Sprint controlling work, although I ended up with quite a few work things to do today). There were some parallels with Darwin on Monday - very early start before a plane trip and feeling rather sleep-deprived during the day - and the run, at the end of the day, started similarly to how Monday did, but the conditions were a lot kinder and the run got progressively better as it went on - reminding me of how much I enjoy being out in Canberra at sunset in winter.

The weekend promises to be interesting; it's not every day you see a road weather alert for snow in the Adelaide Hills.

Decided to do my long(ish) run in Darwin instead of its usual Thursday slot so that I wouldn't have to get up too early on a day when I was expecting to have got in at midnight, but that bit of reshuffling failed to achieve its objective because I'd forgotten to reset my watch alarm and thus was woken up at 5.30 anyway. (Surprisingly, I haven't paid for it too much during the day).

Certainly no danger of any issues with mist today - it was only two degrees cooler (although considerably less humid) at 7am in Melbourne today than it was at 7am in Darwin yesterday. (This isn't the first time I've come back from Darwin to an unexpectedly small temperature contrast - Melbourne's earliest-ever 20-degree night in spring came on the first night back after my first trip to Darwin in September 2001, a trip which also demonstrated that it is possible to get an international story on the front page of the NT News). This was a prelude to one of the more memorable winter days in Melbourne meteorological history, in which the highest July temperature on record (23.3) was followed by a spectacular squall line and then an equally spectacular rainbow.

A reasonable session without anything too spectacular.

I can understand a lot of the frustration doing the rounds at the moment now that the WOC finals allocations for 2014 have come out. For most of you your beef will be with the decision to get rid of qualification races in the first place; once that decision (which Australia voted against) was made, it's hard to make a strong case that our men deserved to rank in the top 22 when we only managed one point-scoring run across the two individual races in each of 2012 and 2013, and were in the 20s in both relays. The positive, though, is that the new system also makes it relatively easy to move between divisions if your team is good enough, and we're carrying forward more points from 2013 than any other division 3 team except Ireland. (Indeed, hosting Oceania 2015 gives us a decent shot of having three 2015 places). Of course our chances were damaged by losing our best runner through injury, but we weren't alone in that (it also happened to Belgium, who also just missed the cut).

This was a good run in the window between when I woke up and when my body ran out of water. That covered the stretch between about 7 and 11k. The rest was pretty hard work, particularly the later part on a morning which might not be humid by Darwin standards but was for a southerner (dewpoint 20) - and especially as a bubbler I was expecting to get water at was broken. Still, I was happy to be able to fight it out and get through the distance I originally had planned, including a final loop through the CBD to make up the distance (having earlier gone out to East Point and then out through Parap and Ludmila). The bruised (or possibly worse) backside from a couple of weeks ago seems to be showing some signs of improvement at last, too.

Got everything I came to get done done, but it's a long way home; didn't get in the door until close to midnight (and making that flight was a closer-run thing than I was planning on, thanks to the taxi turning up 25 minutes late - not the first time that this has happened to me in Darwin).

A good night's sleep makes a big difference. This might not have been a spectacular session, but it was decent - a solid set of intervals on the parklands near the Esplanade - and certainly chalk-and-cheese from yesterday. Even felt less sore in the areas which were sore yesterday, too. Felt like quite pleasant conditions running; was surprised when I checked how humid it was (dewpoint 19, which you'd only see a few times in a normal Melbourne summer).

Among the quirks of the trip up yesterday were the outfits of the girls sitting in front of us - one in Smurf pyjamas and one in a pink rabbit suit. Would have been a bit less unexpected if they'd been ten years younger (at a guess they were 12 and 14 respectively).

Warm-up and down, during which I learned that the rule about turning traffic giving way to pedestrians doesn't seem to apply in Darwin. (My other traffic issue came at the other end of the day - our bus went round a corner so fast that I slipped off my seat and ended up facing backwards in the aisle).

C • Ooops 1

Lunchtime swim at the Casuarina pool, very conveniently located just across the road from our Darwin office. An outdoor pool surrounded by green lawns on a sunny 32-degree day is definitely where swimming is meant to happen, but as I've noted before at this venue, 32 is clearly far too cool for the locals - there was hardly anyone else there (and it's school holidays, too). A decent swim which got better as it went on. Time is a guess.

There were a few good discoveries today, not all of them directly relevant to what I was looking for. The funniest was the 1968 inspector's comment to the effect that the observers appeared unenthusiastic but he could understand anyone who'd been stationed in Katherine for 14 years being unenthusiastic; the most bizarre was the observer who had evidently had enough of getting up for 3am and 6am observations and made them up instead (whereupon he was advised that his services were no longer required); the most poignant was the note of a 1932 site move necessitated by the premises being needed for the construction of a home for "half-caste children", what we know these days as the Stolen Generations (in fact the timing and location was such that the girl referred to in Kevin Rudd's apology speech probably ended up there).

I'm in Canberra this weekend for Sprint Champs controlling. Current forecast maximum for Saturday: 7.

It's Monday so it must be Darwin - the latest in my sequence of regional office visits, on the grounds that it's cheaper to transport 70-odd kilos of me to Darwin than it is to transport a similar quantity of paperwork to Melbourne (passengers are known in the airline game as "self-loading freight" for a reason).

My expectations of this run, done at the end of the day, were not high. I'd been up since 5 (or 4.30 Darwin time), off not a lot of sleep thanks to the cricket, and the conditions were rather different from anything I've experienced lately (although not excessively humid by Darwin standards). The run, which went along the coast as far north as the museum, proceeded to live down to expectations, only just starting to loosen up in the last couple of kilometres.

No crocs on the front of the NT News - a killer octopus (apparently found not too far away from Darwin) took the honours. To my less than overwhelming surprise, there are still occasional fireworks two weeks after Territory Day.

Melbourne Bush-O at Plenty River. Not an area on the same technical level as yesterday to put it mildly, but still a nice place to run in the bush, especially with the rain clearing before the start. Still struggling for pace and strength but didn't miss a lot, and picked up a bit later on (although I still couldn't run Janine Steer down in the finish chute). Time wasn't really competitive - Robbie did about 35, not sure what Bruce ended up with. (Fredrik beat me by 4 seconds after a big 180 coming out of 9).

Speaking of the Steer household, Asha, who will have benefited from the Czech experience, had a pretty respectable run and achieved a career milestone for any junior - first win over Dad.

Quite an orienteering collection at the Essendon-Bulldogs game this afternoon - with me were Jenny, Gareth and Kelly, and Rob and Clare Baker (being educated in the finer points of the game). Further orienteering connections were provided by virtue of one of the boundary umpires being one-time Tasmanian schools team member Mitch Le Fevre - you won't be surprised that the ground announcer made a complete hash of pronouncing his name.

Bendigo event at Kooyoora on a day with steady rain throughout. The course was out the west end, with some very fast bits at the start and the end but also some picking through very big rock in the middle. Not terribly aggressive in the terrain but not running too badly, and good fine navigation - just slightly wide on 15 and 17, maybe 10 seconds apiece? Didn't get a good line on the top-of-mountain 8-9 but I'm not sure if there was any such thing as a good line on that leg which didn't involve a helicopter - would be interesting to see a WOC field let loose on that sort of country. Toph 44 and Bruce 45, which is about what I would have expected from my run.

A fairly standard session brought to a slightly early halt when a lifeguard we could see perfectly well decided there was too much mist to see our lane and closed it down. One-way fog is a phenomenon I haven't previously seen documented in the meteorological literature but maybe I've been looking in the wrong places.

It's a reflection of the same mentality that has closed the main bike path along the Yarra indefinitely because a few people slipped on frost on the pontoons one morning - apparently after someone from Parks sprayed the path with water thinking that would clear the frost. (Those of you who live, or have lived, in Scandinavia or North America are invited to stop laughing now).

A late-night teleconference did provide licence to be in at work later than usual this morning so this wasn't quite as early a start as Thursday long runs often are. A loop with its most distant point being the northeast corner of Greensborough, with some solid hills in the middle. Steady without sparkle for a lot of the way, but various muscles refused to go up hills towards the end, much as they had last Saturday, although I lasted a bit longer this time (it started to fall apart about 1.45) and was able to just about hang on. Starting to put a few longer runs together but not in the most convincing manner, and 2.30 still seems a long way away.

Another frosty morning, but it should be the last in this sequence. The next midweek morning long run will definitely be significantly warmer (and would be even if I wasn't going to be doing it in Darwin).

Streets bagged: Adeline Street, Greensborough, and a couple of Adiles - one at the top corner of Greensborough, the other in Yallambie. Will be a while before I make more headway on this, as the next one is at almost the most distant point possible (St. Helena) and probably only reachable on a weekend long run (unless I drive somewhere to start the run, which seems like cheating).

The election is getting closer, and a letter lobbed in the letterbox from a "concerned neighbour", one Michelle Penson, about how wonderful Liberal candidate Nick McGowan was and how she was going to be voting for him this time. It would be a bit of a worry if Ms. Penson wasn't going to be voting for him - she's chair of his campaign committee, as well as being a past Liberal candidate here (something she mysteriously failed to mention in the letter). At least she didn't claim to be a swinging voter.

And it's probably as well no-one else was around at my end of the office when the green GPS dot marked "Uppill" entered the finish circle with the clock ticking 31.32, 31.33, 31.34...

10x1 minute on the south side of the Yarra at lunchtime, having decided that I can't burn the candle at both ends too much this week and therefore that a midnight finish last night warranted a sleep-in of sorts. (The WOC rest day tonight doesn't help - I've got a 10pm teleconference, non-orienteering this time).

A bit unsure at the start but working nicely by the second half. Perfect conditions. A bit sore pushing off but not bad once up at speed.

Warm-up and down.

Got up around 1am for the women's sprint final (and a bit more technological frustration). I decided not to stay up for the men's but might as well have because it took ages to get back to sleep, meaning that my alertness was less than optimal when it came to running in the morning. Plodded through it, more or less, but not an effort I'm particularly pleased with. Still some soreness on the rear end - is only a nuisance-level issue but doesn't seem to be getting any better, which makes me wonder if I did break something?

Not really the usual later part of the day today; left work early for an IOF Foot Commission hookup from 3.30-7 (mostly discussing JWOC 2016 bids, but you'll have to wait until the Council meeting to find out a result from that), then a Labor branch meeting (with computer in tow) after that - as you might imagine there's been quite a lot in the last month to talk about. Back at home now watching the men's long final.

Definitely felt older (as well as cold) this morning - took quite a while to get going this morning and was never completely on top of things.

Heard something on the news this morning about a smoking ceremony outside Royal Melbourne Hospital this morning and had visions of hordes ducking outside the hospital doors for a quick ciggie. (It was actually the launch of what seems like a worthy initiative to encourage more Aboriginal people to enter the medical profession).

Interested to see the slogan linking to the WOC coverage on the Orienteering USA webpage, 'See The World's Smartest Athletes in Action' (a team which has Ali Crocker as its lead runner has more grounds for saying this than some). Part of me thinks this is so accurate, another part of me is thinking that promoting that angle too much might be limiting our potential market. Still think there's unexplored potential in the "nerds who can run" market, though. (Interestingly, at my school - no idea if this is typical - the distance runners came disproportionately from that demographic, too; the highest-level maths class pretty much closed down on inter-school cross-country day).

Around the Tan at the end of the day (after spending the later part of the afternoon with one eye on a paper I was translating from Chinglish into English and the other eye on the WOC sprint qualification GPS tracks, once I actually got the website to work). A run which felt like it wanted to take off at times but never did, with a few somewhat stubborn sore spots. Slow but more traffic than usual, plus a bit of a U-turn to link up with Liggo whom I saw in the later part of the run. (Some of the traffic could be blamed on the combination of a vehicle with hazard lights flashing stopped in the middle of Alexandra Avenue, and the pink stretch limo which I assume had something to do with the Pink concert at Rod Laver Arena). Had some good thinking time to come up with refined WOC starting order proposals.

I was reminded in the early stages how much of a waste of energy the Crown fireballs are; I was feeling hot when they went up, even at ground level.

C • Happy birthday! 1

Melbourne bush-O at Wellington Chase, an area towards the south end of the Dandenongs which I haven't orienteered on for about 15 years (I think we lost access to it for at least some of that time). As with most near-Melbourne forest, it's pretty rough - even the more open bits of forest have a fair bit of fallen timber and long grass - but good to have an area close to town for newcomers (there were a pleasingly large number of people there who I didn't recognise). The bonus of this area is that it has a few patches of quite substantial granite.

I expected to be tired after yesterday and was, but was disappointed with my lack of fluency in the terrain. Lost about 30 seconds at 2, coming in a bit high, and then hit some unmapped green regrowth cutting between tracks between 4 and 5. The major problem, though, was 7 - the map showed a boulder cluster and cliff on the point of a large spur but there was no rock on the spur at all, and it took about 4-5 minutes of mucking around before finding it, about 100 metres around from the spur. Strange piece of mapping - all the rock is right relative to each other but the contours don't match at all. The last control was probably a bit too high, too, but I wasn't complaining about not having to go down another 50 metres through green and bash back up again (and I doubt anyone else was either).

Not sure what the results ended up like as I left early (passing, on the way home, the Tecoma McDonalds protest site). Definitely potential for someone good to get under 50 if any of the big guns came (but then if you got 7 without losing time then you're probably not reading the contours properly).

Now to a bit of multi-tasking: the opening bounce of Essendon-Port and Susanne's start time at WOC are both 4.40. The laptop will be coming with me to Etihad Stadium.

A Saturday long run (as I sometimes do when there's an event on Sunday but it's not particularly important). Started out in a reasonably promising manner, although never as good as last week, and the time seemed to be going quite quickly. However, I fell away badly in the last half-hour, particularly up hills (quads seemed very weak, although haven't become sore afterwards) - clearly still have some work to do before 2 hours becomes routine, especially where hills are part of the equation. Pretty tired afterwards and slept through most of the first half of the afternoon football match (something I had in common with most of Richmond's team).

There was a farmers' market at Westerfolds Park - didn't go too close for fear of being sidetracked (although I had no money with me anyway).

After a bit of a hiatus (mainly because I've barely been in Melbourne, but also because the next on the list was a minimum 11km each way from my place) I resumed the Banyule alphabetical pursuit, with Adam Crescent on the east edge of Montmorency (a circuit infamous for 'you can't get there from here' control sites at Montmorency street-Os), and then added Adamson Street, the first really local one - only about 1k from my place.

And the dangling participle of the day goes to http://www.smartcompany.com.au/media/056370-clive-...:

"Lang Hancock actively engaged the press and started two newspapers, as megaphones for his political views in the 1960s and 1970s, both of which are now defunct".

I know the 1960s and the 1970s have been defunct for 43 1/2 and 33 1/2 years respectively, but I assume the writer actually intended to refer to the newspapers :-).

C • political views 1

A CD of low-level aerial photos for Victoria, taken in 1946, fell off the back of the proverbial truck at work today. Haven't been through it yet.

First time at Fitzroy for a while (as a prelude to the first weekend for a while which I intend to spend entirely within the borders of Victoria). Reasonable morning's work; pool seemed a bit cooler than it normally is (Queenslanders certainly wouldn't have coped) but didn't worry me so much.

Cool water may not have been a worry today but the standard of driving in inner Melbourne was, both on the way to work and the way home. Also a potential worry is that, after a quiet few months, I've once again attracted the attention of Andrew Bolt (although as of last time I looked, the post where he gets stuck into me has been replaced, possibly on legal advice, with one where he links to someone else getting stuck into me). Only a serious problem if it makes it into his print column on Monday.

Shorter than I'd normally do on a Thursday, but made up in toughness for what it was lacking in length - this was the toughest 14k I've done for a long time which hasn't involved finding controls. In two visits it's the first time I've really put a Bardon base to full hill-running advantage - starting by going through the saddle to The Gap, then a flatter section before starting on the big hills up to and along a sort-of-ridge on the west and south side of the suburb, before climbing Mount Coot-tha from the back side. That climb was one I'd anticipated but the ridge sections had a lot of sharp ups and downs to, best symbolised by the point where I saw a sign 'Steep descent 16%' - I expected this to be repaid with interest and it was, because the 'Steep climb 20%' was 400 metres down the road. Once on the hills, a mixture of fire trails, single track and a couple of road sections. As I think I've remarked before, no wonder some of the Queenslanders are so strong on hills if this is what they train on regularly.

I can't pretend this was a particularly comfortable run, but I coped better than I thought I might given how ordinary the last three days have been - backside soreness easing in the second half, and didn't have the back issues I thought I might have had on such a hilly run.

That set the scene for a rather hectic day as I tried to fit everything I still wanted to get done into what was left of the day before heading for the airport (made more challenging by some eccentric public transport timetabling - 50 minutes between trains at Cannon Hill in mid-afternoon?). This wasn't quite achieved but I got fairly close. Ended up making the train I was aiming for for the airport (not without a bit of with-full-pack running towards Brisbane Central); I suspect I'll sleep well tonight.

Had a go at an intervals session - the original plan was the rugby field, but it was still very wet underfoot so I switched to the car park. Still struggling, though - in addition to soreness I'm worried I might be getting sick again - and this ended up being very much a case of going through the motions. Hoping for some improvement tomorrow.

Warm-up and down. The less said about this the better.

Quirky discovery of the day - the best excuse I've seen for an instrument fault - a broken minimum thermometer after the observer was startled by a large green frog jumping out of the screen.

Another fairly ordinary run - the bruised backside was troubling me a bit, more so on the downhills (still don't think there will be any lasting issues). Fairly slow although I'm not 100% convinced the GPS keeps track of all the bends on creekside tracks in subtropical forest. Headed out through Ashgrove into The Gap more or less along the creek, before coming back through the saddle into Bardon - probably the best part of the run despite the steep climb.

Slightly down on sleep after watching the JWOC long distance online (with occasional distractions from spectacular Corsican scenery on TV). Lots of solid midfield results although I'd hoped someone might have been able to break through for something a bit better - still more races to go, though.

The Monday morning duathlon in a different venue - starting from the pool in Spring Hill on the northern edge of central Brisbane. As is often the case for inner-city runs, my basic route was determined by whatever was going to involve the smallest number of major road crossings - which here usually means heading for water (in this case, north to Enoggera Creek).

Yesterday's effort clearly took quite a bit out of me - more so than I would have hoped for what was a good run by 2013 standards but would have been a routine midweek long run in, say, 2008 - and today felt pretty dismal, perhaps a bit less so in the second half. It also turned out to be a somewhat longer run than planned, because I had about as much success in finding a route through the Kelvin Grove QUT campus as I did on the first leg of last year's NOL sprint race, couldn't get onto a footbridge across the freeway I thought I was going to be able to get onto and ended up having to go back around near the Children's Hospital.

Followed the run with a swim at the Spring Hill baths - unlike any other pool I've swum at before. It dates from 1886 and looks like its layout is largely unchanged since then, with the little individual changing cubicles at the side of the pool (and a sign at the end where the ladies' ones are saying 'Men must not loiter in this area), the wooden grandstands above, and the partial-but-not-quite roof. Unsurprisingly it's heritage-listed and has a lot of character.

The swim was decent. Not too many locals around - it's too cold for them (for the second day in a row, it's 16 and drizzly). The moisture was to cause me a bit of trouble later on - my shoes clearly had enough moisture on the soles for me to end up making an abrupt downward excursion on a set of car park steps a bit later, leaving me with a rather sore backside but (I think) no substantial damage.

During the day I found some good prospects for long-term rainfall sites, and some not-so-good ones. Falling squarely into the latter category was the north Queensland site where I found an inspector's report: "I have previously visited this station...in 1985 and during that inspection the observer appeared in a somewhat intoxicated state and continued drinking from a stubbie while we serviced the pluviograph at 8.30am".