Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Had a social gathering at Middle Park at lunchtime, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to join the throngs on Beach Road. This was done with a certain amount of trepidation as I knew there would be plenty of people out there who would be riding 50% faster (on bikes which cost 1000% more). I certainly felt out of place at times through (a) not having an ultra-expensive bike, (b) not wearing the jersey of a random European team (I do have an Ozmtbo one but it was in the wash) and (c) being on a mountain bike (only saw one other one all day), but there is a reason why Beach Road on a Sunday morning is cyclist central - it's a great place to ride, especially once you get south of Brighton and the lights become few and far between. It's an especially nice place to ride on a mild morning with a bit of a seabreeze. Having plenty of other people around (and not all of them were going that much faster) was a plus, if only because it means you have confidence that the traffic is going to know you exist. Most of the really big and fast packs were going in the opposite direction anyway. Ended up going as far south as Chelsea before turning around.

This turned out to be a really good session, settling into a pace a step up on what I've been doing lately (cruising at around 24-25, touching 26 at times) and holding it for the length of time I'd spend on a long Sunday run at this time of year; feeling as if I was starting to tire at times, but functioning as well in the last half-hour as at any other time during the ride, despite the annoyance of a few breaks at various pedestrian lights that were getting traffic in the late morning. (It's apparently not unheard of for motorcycle cops to ride ahead of bunches and press the pedestrian lights, especially when they were trying to hassle the Hell Ride out of existence, but no sign of such shenanigans today). Longest ride I've done since 2001.

Eastern Freeway path/Doncaster loop again. A reasonably routine ride, working hard up the hills in the first half; perhaps not fully awake at that stage. Fairly early in the morning before a full schedule for the day (including a Bush O subcommittee meeting in Bendigo, which proved to be extremely productive); this had the negative that in a couple of places there weren't enough cars around to trigger the traffic lights.

Some golf people would have been alarmed to see the headline yesterday 'TIGER QUITS', then inspected further and discovered it was about Matthew Richardson.

The seabreeze saved Melbourne from really serious heat today, and will again tomorrow, but I doubt we'll be so lucky midweek. Things will go utterly crazy the first time one of the new Code Red fire danger warnings is issued, and Thursday is a possibility if it's windy enough.

C • Tiger Quits 1

A pretty sluggish morning swim; never had much energy this morning, either in the pool or on the bike getting there. Definitely time to retire my goggles too. Nor can I think of anything particularly profound to say about anything else just at the moment.

C • Goggles 1

Today was a day when I was operating on New Zealand time. The sports medicine person I go to is even more of a morning person than I am, so I was less surprised than I might have been otherwise when she offered me a 6.15 a.m. appointment (and I wasn't even her first customer of the day). My original plan was to go for a training ride (as opposed to a coast into work) straight after that, but she didn't think that was a great idea after she'd applied something approximating a jackhammer to my heel so I rescheduled it for lunchtime - using a reasonably flexible definition of 'lunchtime' (i.e. starting at 11.15) because I had a three-hour meeting starting at 12.30.

The ride went through Fishermens Bend - lots of good wide roads as AJ and phatmax will know - then out and back along the foreshore to St. Kilda. This foreshore has that rarity, a path reserved for cyclists and skaters, but I know the area well enough to know that the local pedestrians take no notice of this (it might have been nice if the on-hand police had at least spoken to the strolling couple who forced me to take to the grass at one point). Still, not a bad spot for a ride on a day which wasn't as hot as I thought it might have been, a point of slight frustration later in the day when a maximum of 29.8 spoilt the prospects for a record run of consecutive 30-degree days (and Ballarat also got 29.8 for good measure).

The verdict from this morning is that my injury is at the lower end of the range and I can reasonably hope to be back in business around the end of this month or early next. My immediate target henceforth becomes the OA Conference race.

There's been a bit of talk of 1989 lately, but I wonder what would have seemed more unlikely in, say, August 1989 - the idea that the Berlin Wall would soon cease to exist, or the prospect of one day seeing the following sentence in a newspaper?

"Hughes was not ready for an English pace barrage, but would be more than capable of handling the less dangerous West Indies quicks on home soil".

A route I've used a bit when injured, out to the Ring Road, along it for a while and then into town from the north. There are some good long stretches here (and the first section south from the ring road is mostly industrial, ugly to look at but good to ride in - wide streets and not as much traffic as main roads in peak hour). Like Sunday, most of the climbing was early. Breeze a bit stronger (and a bit cooler) than I was expecting. Various under-employed muscles have been struggling to cope with the ramp-up in bike distance (today it was the left hamstring) but I expect a bit more practice and a dose or two of Harden Up will sort them out.

Being on the road for longer means you get more chances to see not-very-good drivers in action. Last night's highlight was the one who was turning right (somewhat erratically) on Queens Parade while holding a phone to her ear with one hand and blasting the horn with the other. I'm not sure what she was steering with.

Stat of the day: the number of people currently in Indonesia who have been accepted for refugee resettlement to Australia this year through official channels is smaller than the number of people who have won Powerball this year.

C • Steering 1

C • Falls Creek Weather 4

From home to an ultrasound scan in East Melbourne, via a somewhat roundabout route involving the Yarra (or at least paths and roads bordering thereon). This is a good route for a weekday ride as it doesn't get a lot of traffic and you can go for 40 minutes without encountering a traffic light; the Yarra Boulevard also has just enough rolling hills to increase the degree of difficulty without being too much of a challenge. Still getting the feel of significant spells in the saddle - was feeling a little sore at the end of this. Another warm morning but that goes without saying.

The scan revealed that my problem is in the tissue next to the Achilles rather than the tendon itself. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing (will know more on Thursday) but I suspect it's good.

Acronym of the day: BINGOs (Business and Industry Non-Governmental Organisations). Many of the BINGOs have put forward a strong case for being first against the wall when the revolution comes (although last night's Four Corners also raised a few candidates).

I suspect I might be doing a bit of media this week, but it hasn't really started yet. Perhaps it will happen once we have actual records rather than forecasting of records. Part of me wonders what might happen to the psychology of the climate change talks if they were taking place in Adelaide rather than Copenhagen.

A warm morning brought the swimmers out again but not too many of them were passing me (at least not all that often). A fairly standard session. I think I'll have to give up on my current set of goggles; I never like throwing things out but they're failing to fulfil their principal purpose.

It has been a good day for seeing footage of Berlin 1989 (something I'm seeing for the first time - I didn't have a TV in 1989). For me it was a time of endless clear frosty mornings, of long runs down English country lanes and coming back to find out where the revolution was this week (on the weekend when eastern Europe failed to oblige Queensland filled the breach), of spending a day walking through a German forest along the western side of a border which had three months to live, of a time when, almost uniquely in my experience, optimism reigned almost unchallenged in the public arena.

C • Optimism? 6