Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

For the first time in weeks, picked a bit of a dud route for the last run of my trip. The plan was to make a fair bit of use of Lakes Entrance's section of Ninety Mile Beach, but the beach turned out to be unpleasant going (too steep next to the water, too soft further up) and quite a bit of this ended up being through Lake Entrance's not-especially-inspiring suburbs. Took a long time to get going and even at the end wasn't flowing that well. The wind started to get up in the last 15 minutes.

The police station and primary school at Lakes Entrance both had the Aboriginal flag flying alongside the Australian one. Please don't tell Andrew Bolt.

The wind was also a factor in the last things-not-going-to-plan episode of the trip. I decided to come back through the Strzelecki Ranges and got as far as Tarra Bulga without too much drama, but it was already apparent from the amount of debris on the roads that getting through might not be easy and I wasn't hugely surprised to reach a tree fallen across the Grand Ridge Road about 10km west of Balook. It was small enough that I probably could have moved it if I'd really wanted to but by then I was looking for an excuse to get out, and detoured via the Traralgon road instead (getting a good look at some Black Saturday remnants in the process).

Actually, the diversion wasn't the last thing that didn't go to script - my last stop of the trip was at the football, and watching Essendon beat St. Kilda (despite their best attempts to make a mess of it at the end) wasn't really in the plan. I'm almost tempted to log the last quarter as a training session on the grounds that my heart rate was higher for most of it than it was at any time during today's run.

Now back home. Lots of unpacking still to do.

C • Depends on the tide? 3

Spent Friday night in Mallacoota, quiet at this time of year (no surprise) - quiet enough for kangaroos to be grazing the streets. It was also too quiet for Gabo Island to be a goer - will have to come back some other time.

I suspect there are some good runs to be had from Mallacoota (but I needed a better map to be confident of finding them without starting with a 5k road run), but there was a good option nearby - Genoa Peak. This looked a good prospect on the map for a 2-hour run - looked like about 11k from Genoa township (such as it is), with a summit elevation of 490 metres.

Woke up with the Achilles the tightest it's been all trip, but it warmed up well in the first few minutes (although still tender at times). While I knew there would be 490 metres of net climb I wasn't sure how it would manifest itself. As it happened, the first 3k was pretty flat, then a steep 1.5k climb, then rolling but net uphill to the carpark 1.5k short of the summit. The walking track was then steep and rocky, although the only part which was unrunnable was the final ladder climb up some rocks (I turned off the stopwatch for this). Mostly forest roads although there was 1k on the highway at the start and end. Really happy with my strength through the first half, and the view was a great reward for the effort! Didn't roll down the second half quite as smoothly as I would have hoped, but still not a bad day's work.

One thing which caught me by surprise halfway up (given that I thought I was in a national park) was recent logging next to the road, but a check afterwards of the map showed that the road is the park boundary at that spot. There are places in East Gippsland which are sufficiently remote that you probably could just about get away with illegally logging a national park without being noticed, but next to a road to a publicised lookout isn't one of them. (The underenforcement of environmental laws in Victoria due to a lack of staff resources has been a bugbear of mine for a while now).

Did some exploring of the east Gippsland coast on my way across to Lakes Entrance; I've driven the road west from Cann River numerous times but have never been out to the coastline. A reminder that this is still a remote place came when it transpired that there was no fresh bread or milk in Cann River due to a delivery stuff-up (just in case you thought these things only happened in the Territory); I didn't need either but the locals weren't amused. Something else which reminded me of the Territory was the insect plague that decorated the front of my car through most of the afternoon. Gippsland has had flood, fire and earthquake in recent times, so I guess it makes sense for locusts to be next on the list.

The one disappointment of the evening was that the Riviera ice cream outlet was closed. They're usually just around the corner from us at the Gippsland Field Days and I've come to gain a good knowledge of their products.

It was a bit of a pity that my scheduled weekly rest day from running fell here; there's some good running to be had in this part of the world. (A search through the backblocks of my training diaries revealed that my first ever run longer than 90 minutes took place here in 1985, much of it on forest tracks now buried under real estate, but there are plenty of other options too). Instead took to the water at the Narooma pool, for a fairly standard session.

I'm now continuing to explore southward along the coastline, taking in lots of nice rocky points and beaches, with Merimbula as tonight's target. The forests are more open than I'd remembered them, although a lack of detail probably makes them more promising for rogaining than orienteering. They're also dry, which might make for some interesting fire weather if Sunday really is a windy high 20s day as seems possible.

Long run round Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra - another nice place for it. Didn't feel that great on the run but was moving reasonably well, and coped with the hillier part later on without too much difficulty. Finished off with a loop around the back of Cook to take it up to two hours (this also meant I did the last few minutes in the company of the Hoggster on his bike).

I'm moving on today, down to the South Coast (after dropping into Parliament to see if I can spot anyone under 60 at the climate sceptics rally, other than the bull and Barnaby Joyce), then to Melbourne by Sunday. Not sure if I'll update between now and then.

Ths climate sceptics rally was as thinly populated as I thought it might be (there were 44 people there - I counted them - and no bull), so moved on fairly quickly towards the coast. I've done the Clyde plenty of times (although not for some years) so instead went further south, through Captains Flat and Araluen. This isn't a fast route - not much bitumen after Captains Flat - but quite interesting, particularly in the Deua river valley from Moruya onwards. Kept my eye out for interesting rock east of Captains Flat but didn't see a lot.

There were a surprising number of small bush blocks in the remoter parts of this trip, especially between Araluen and Moruya. Obviously the demand for lifestyle properties for recluses is larger than I imagined. They certainly wouldn't be viable properties for any sort of (legal) agriculture (I'd guess there's a certain amount of illegal agriculture in the darker corners of the hills).

Discovered in Captains Flat that one of the grand homesteads along the road has a sporting connection - Thomas Wentworth Wills was born there. The other one offers a sporting connection of a different sort as it was once owned by "colourful racing identity" Pete McCoy, whose formline includes a role in the Fine Cotton fiasco and being the other party to Robbie Waterhouse's 500-1 bet on an even-money horse.

(For the benefit of younger readers, a horse which purported to be, but wasn't, Fine Cotton was disqualified from a race in Brisbane in 1984. The plotters obviously weren't very bright as their better-performed substitute horse was a different colour; they might have had more chance of getting away with it if the paint hadn't started falling off on the way back to the scales).

Ended the day in Narooma, catching up with some old family friends in the process.

Had to take my car out to Fyshwick to get serviced in the morning. I've learned a bit about skilled labour shortages in regional Australia on this trip, and one manifestation of it is that it's almost impossible to get a car serviced there on less than a month's notice; the 5k service has ended up being at 8k.

I'd thought about using that downtime to run, but Fyshwick is not the most inspiring environment for it (in addition to the XXX Megastore that everyone knows about, it's Canberra's home of car yards, furniture stores and building supplies), so instead I turned to an old classic afterwards - the Red Hill ridgeline run. The only thing that was different to the 1980s version was that I was starting it from Flinders Way instead of outside the science block.

The first couple of kilometres of this are past lots of expensive, largely diplomatic, real estate on Mugga Way, with premises proudly flying the flags of India, Canada, Turkey (still with police box outside, even though it's 25 years since it was fashionable for Armenian extremists to shoot Turkish diplomats), the Netherlands and the West Coast Eagles. The climb to the ridgeline follows - the gradual way, not the full frontal assault - and then the stretch along the top, which has some of the best views in Canberra, especially on a clear day (which today wasn't). Gradually built into this run and felt excellent on the last couple of kilometres, most of which was downhill.

One thing that's changed since I was last here is that most of the tracks have names, but most of them are highly imaginative ones like 'Mugga Way ACTEW Track' and 'Powerline East Track'. I have some ideas for alternatives but an obstacle would be that as far as I know some of the people involved are still with us (you normally have to be dead to have something named after you in the ACT). There is a 'Gandalf Trail' which suggests a Tolkein fan somewhere.

And one thing hasn't changed - judging by the number of butts nearby the rock in the pine trees next to Flinders Way is still the place to go for an illicit lunchtime or recess smoke.

Late afternoon session with Eric from his place on the western fringe of Canberra - mostly tracks out the back of Belconnen, with some suburbs coming back. Wouldn't have been too exciting if it was a regular haunt but a lot of it was new for me. Never really got going on this session though.

Dinner was definitely one in the 'only in Canberra' category - I went out with my parents and the surrounding tables featured three ministers and the PM's chief of staff. Didn't overhear any good gossip (there probably would have been more gossip to be had if we'd been to a Liberal hangout).

The last beach intervals session of this trip, at Plantation Point at Vincentia on the Jervis Bay shore. Once again 10x1 minute. Felt pretty sharp this morning, although hints of a stitch at times (perhaps leaving a bit close to breakfast). The tide was coming in and I thought the rock shelf I was using as a marker might disappear beneath the waves, but it held out long enough.

I was in the NSW bit of Jervis Bay, but made a visit later on to the Territory bit (to be pedantic, it is now a separate federal territory, having split off from the ACT when the ACT got self-government in 1989). It's a legal anomaly which was responsible for one of the more interesting bits of legal argument I've heard of. The case was a defamation case over comments made on a Wollongong radio station and was being brought in the ACT (presumably because the law was more favourable there). The defence had gone to great effort to amass technical evidence that the allegedly offending broadcast could not have been received in Canberra and therefore no libel had been committed there, but were floored by the question "haven't you ever heard of Jervis Bay?". I'm not sure what the final result was; it was a long time ago.

Warm up/down. Took a while to loosen up, it being early in the morning. Felt a few spots of rain as I started but that quickly stopped. At that stage I hadn't experienced measurable rain since Shark Bay in mid-June, but that state of affairs was to alter on the way up to Canberra, and more so in Canberra itself which was on the end of a fairly impressive thunderstorm.

I came to Canberra via Nerriga. This was a slow route today because of extensive roadworks (the road doesn't get a lot of traffic so they don't have any qualms about holding you up for 20 minutes while they do something), but once they finish sealing it next year it will become a major route from Canberra to the coast - it's considerably less mountainous than the Clyde. If someone felt so inclined there would, I think, be a good business opportunity in opening up a roadhouse and/or cafe in the currently minuscule settlement of Nerriga - a good chance to get in cheaply before the traffic arrives. (Were it not already well and truly in Sydney's weekender orbit there might also be good real estate investment opportunities in the Jervis Bay area before people realise it's only 2 hours away from Canberra instead of 3). I hope, though, that someone in the responsible council(s) has a plan to do something about the rickety one-lane bridge across the Shoalhaven at Oallen, because I don't think it will cope too well with the (insert large number here)-fold increase in traffic that it's going to get soon.

In Canberra now for the next couple of nights.

This was definitely a swim with a difference. I stayed with some friends at Moss Vale (one of Cassie's bridesmaids and her partner) on the family property, which is a fairly impressive bit of property to put it mildly. There was the large rambling old house, the slightly newer house next door - and the indoor 25m lap pool alongside.

I've not swum in one of these before. The turbulence took a bit of getting used to - collected quite a few mouthfuls. A nice session though, and loosened me up nicely after yesterday's efforts (which took the expected toll on my quads).

Next move after this was in reverse to some extent, to get down to the coast at Stanwell Tops and along the Illawarra escarpment. (My original plan was to do this yesterday on the way out of Sydney, but I left the city too late for this to be an option in daylight, and I didn't want to miss it altogether). I wasn't tempted to go for a run at Jerusalem Rocks, one of the numerous thick Sydney sandstone areas we got to run on in mid-1980s NSW Championships, although in M14 we didn't see the thick stuff (at Jerusalem Rocks two of us did 7-7.5 min/km when Maurice Ongania won the open race in 11s). After that it was Kangaroo Valley and then Nowra, in preparation for the next chapter...

C • jerusalem rocks 3

This was a run born of frustration. I'd hoped to get to Point Perpendicular (number 82 on my list of 103), but it is on Navy land and I arrived at the entrance to discover that the Navy were dropping bombs on it for the next week. Will have to try my luck some other time, perhaps during the 5-days.

With that mission not accomplished I decided to drop into one of the beach settlements on the north side of Jervis Bay, Callala Beach, and see what it was like. The answer was that it has a stunning white beach stretching into the distance. I thought this would be a good place to run and it was. Loosened up very nicely and no sign of the early Achilles soreness of the last week; had to work a bit harder into the wind coming home but still pretty good. This was a pretty good consolation prize.

One oddity of this run was that at its far end I was about 50 metres in a straight line from the major local settlement of Huskisson - but there was an estuary between me and it. It's about 40km around by road.