Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Once again from near home to the Banyule Flats, but took to the single-track along the river this time. The blackberries have overgrown it a little since I was last here but I expect the mountain bikers will keep it passable (whether Parks think the blackberries or the mountain bikers are a greater pest is unknown). Felt much as I did last time.

The future of this area is rather uncertain as it's a potential route for a freeway linking the Ring Road to the Eastern. As someone rather unkindly pointed out in a letter to the Age recently, the local MPs promise that it would not happen while he was in office looks like being kept because he has been "dumped by the party machine" - although that is a rather unkind description of a ballot, in effect decided by one vote, which was as close to a fair and democratic preselection as you'll find in any of the political parties. He may well be wondering if his career would still be continuing had the ballot not taken place while I was stuck in Darwin. (The answer: no).

The Koonung-Doncaster loop. Didn't feel as if I had a lot of strength on the hills and felt rather sluggish generally, but still ended up only a few seconds slower than last time for a similar effort. I do seem to be going a few percent faster for the same effort than a few weeks back so the time I'm spending on the bike is clearly having some impact, although not much compared to a lot of you. (I'd be intrigued to know how much of this can be traced back to equipment and how much to the rider).

I did seem to find just about every red light in the district - the time doesn't include these, but it was still an annoyance as I was on a reasonably tight timetable if I wanted to get the train that would get to the MCG in time for the start of the cricket. This mission was accomplished.

C • red light district? 1

Very much a recovery session, on the Sorrento-Rye loop, mostly flat except for a short climb through Sorrento. Not as busy as I expected; it wasn't until the afternoon that the crowds started pouring in (by which stage I was on the way back to Melbourne). Didn't feel especially energetic, not a surprise after yesterday's effort, but a reasonably pleasant session nonetheless.

Christmas morning, another step up (stage 5 of 6), 1 min off/5 on, from near my place (didn't think I was quite ready for the Hawdon Street hill yet) along the Banyule Flats. This included the first hills of any description (i.e. a two-contour rise from the flats) since I've started jogging again. No soreness on the flat and not even really any on the "hill" either, but didn't feel quite right and I can't say I have a lot of confidence about what might happen with a resumption of more meaningful training next week. Also felt pretty sluggish but that's to be expected at this stage of a comeback. In any case all of this was a minor appetiser to the big session of the day.

Christmas Day for us often involves going from one aunt's place at Albert Park to another's at Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula. Riding between the two has long been on my to-do list, since my uncle used to do it occasionally in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it's something I've only considered when my running has been limited or non-existent. My first attempt, in the reverse direction, was in 2001. On that occasion the body did the job but the machinery didn't - puncture number 1 was fixed but I'd run out of equipment to do anything with puncture number 2, and had to call for a pick-up 10km from the end.

I don't really like leaving unfinished challenges so had this on my list for this year. The timing wasn't quite optimal - a bit too close to Christmas dinner, but if I was going to make it before dark I couldn't leave it much later. The conditions were also less than optimal, with a fresh southerly making for fairly heavy going for the first hour along Beach Road. This proved to be the hardest section; after Mordialloc the road is more sheltered, and the winds became lighter still after turning inland after Frankston (which made the one significant climb of the trip easier to take). The winding section around Mount Martha was a bit exposed but after that, turning west and then north-west, the wind shifted from hostile to neutral to friendly. For the last 15km I was starting to get a bit saddle-sore and the mind was on automatic pilot, focusing on the road and not much else (it turned out Jim Oystein was running the last 10km and I'd passed him, but I hadn't noticed).

Given my previously noted struggles with longer rides I was pleased with how this one went. It helped that I'd been building myself up to it mentally for several days, and took on more fluid and food than I have on earlier rides. The limited number of hills probably helped, too. I might have been tempted to push on to 100km had others not been waiting for me. As it was this was my longest more-or-less continuous ride (I did do 110km on Cup Day some years ago, but that was broken up with stops for, among other things, morning tea, lunch, watching the Cup, and two visits to the TAB - and it's always a good Cup Day when you have cause to visit the TAB twice). Gradually picked up speed as it went on (21km in the first hour, 22 in the second, 23 in the third, 24 in the last), although the wind had a bit to do with that.

The traffic was generally modest - the coast road was built for more traffic than it now carries so is generally a good run - and I only experienced one bit of gratuitous road rage, shortly after passing the 'Caution: Bogans Next 10km' sign*. Inebriated pedestrians were occasionally in evidence, especially at the start and end; one at Rye was wandering across the street with a carrot sticking out of his shorts in a suggestive location.

(* - it actually said 'Welcome to the City of Frankston').

Pool running at Fitzroy, swapping from Friday for reasonably obvious reasons. Definitely a morning where you wanted to be in the water rather than out of it (31 at 6 a.m., although it had dropped to 26 briefly earlier; Swan Hill set a Victorian record for December with a low of 30.1), and there were a few more people in the water than one might normally expect in the run-up to a holiday. A steady if unspectacular session.

Had my nearest miss last night for a while, realising just in time that the big 4WD was not going to stop at the entrance of the William Street roundabout. One needs to be on the ball when on the roads at 10 or 10.30 as I have been the last couple of nights. Also saw a couple of other examples of questionable driving (including someone who subscribes to the popular Mexican theory that using headlights drains your battery), and a lot of people out in front yards and on median strips on a hot summer night. I was expecting the negotiation of the street past Queen Victoria Market to be challenging this morning, but it wasn't too bad with only one double-parked object.

C • roundabout 1

Went east this time for the long Wednesday commute, hoping that the lighter traffic of the pre-Christmas week might make it an easier proposition - as noted previously there are no really good north-south options to get from Koonung Creek to Gardiners Creek. This time I tried a route based on Middleborough and Highbury Roads, which featured the good (a two-kilometre downhill and broad left lane on Highbury Road), the bad (turning off into what I thought was a side-street short cut but was actually a dead end) and the ugly (realising as soon as I hit Warrigal Road that going a kilometre down it as planned was for Darwin Awards candidates only and that I should get back into side streets as soon as possible).

Took a while to get going and faded a bit at the end, although part of that was a bit of back soreness from carrying a heavier load than I will be on Friday (lack of sleep probably didn't help). A somewhat faster pace than usual in the last two-thirds (25km in the final hour) which might partly explain that.

Various portable electronic signs advised of diversions around the impending Springvale Road roadworks; the signs were more informative than the one I saw yesterday which had the simple message 'MODEM FAILED'.

Again 1 min off/4 on around the Polly Woodside - mostly shadeless concrete which wasn't necessarily the most pleasant place to be on a 35-degree lunchtime (which turned into the second successive 39-degree Wednesday afternoon; at least this injury has saved me from a couple of uncomfortable Summer Series runs). Pretty stiff early on but loosened up by the second repetition; still felt sufficiently abnormal, if not painful, on the bridge to worry me, but OK on the flat. Handled the heat OK but probably wouldn't have wanted to be out much longer.

There seemed to be a lot of helicopter traffic today; not sure why.

From home to work via the Yarra Flats and Yarra Boulevard. Didn't feel especially strong on the hills but kept a respectable pace going.

The malt smell from the Abbotsford brewery was particularly strong this morning. In times gone by that smell would have been absent at this time of year because one of the great 1980s Australian industrial relations traditions was the pre-Christmas beer strike; others who often made their presence (or absence) felt at this time of year were the posties (who are having a re-run this year) and the aircraft refuellers.

It is the longest day of the year and I'm currently putting in one of my longest days of the year, wondering what's so special about 9.30 a.m. that 80% of the dodgy observations I found for Darwin were made then.

Pool running session to start the week, a bit earlier in the morning than I've been managing recently. (My start time recently has been governed by the arrival time of the morning paper, which has been creeping later and later but got back to a reasonably respectable 6.30 this morning). This meant more sunglare, but apart from that it was quite a nice session.

School holidays have started and traffic going into the city was fairly minimal, but not so minimal as to prevent one element of it having a deep and meaningful conversation with a William Street power pole.

Australia's headline-writers obviously aren't as well-educated as I thought they might have been, because I have yet to see any of them take the opportunity to use the headline "Something Rotten In The State of Denmark" after the disappointing outcome in Copenhagen.

C • a rotten deal 1

At lunchtime from work, taking the next step up - 1 min off/4 min on. The Polly Woodside provides quite a nice 4-minute loop for this, which I'll be hoping not to have to use on too many more occasions. The foot has improved considerably since Saturday (in any case it was more of an issue walking than running), and doesn't seem to have pulled up sore afterwards either, but the main injury still doesn't feel quite right and I don't feel that I'm making huge progress.

Use of AP for work-related purposes department: I'm currently in the process of updating the Australian long-term high-quality temperature data set (which is what has been keeping me occupied to sometimes-outlandish hours), and in particular scouring it for suspect observations. One which was flagged by one of my original checks was a maximum of 34.8 at Wagga on 24 March 2007. A look at the hourly observations showed hot conditions overnight, steady rain starting in the early morning, temperature dropping to 20 at 9 a.m. (which is the cutoff for maximum temperature - anything earlier goes into the previous day) and then continuing to fall through the day. I thought that sounded familiar, so I checked my log and it was familiar - 2007 NSW Sprint Champs day at Charles Sturt Uni. This enabled me to confirm that the 34.8 was definitely wrong.

(Another use of my training records for this purpose - my hard-copy diaries this time - was to resolve an inconsistency between a maximum of 13 and a highest hourly value of 17 for Canberra on 16 November 1988, a run I remembered well for being long, cold and very wet - it was in the middle of the HSC and one of the few occasions I ran home from school. On that occasion it was the hourly value that was wrong).

A final note on the interplay between training and weather is to note that the beach where I did the intervals session in between the fishermen and the 4WDs on 23 June is pretty well right in the firing line for Cyclone Laurence. I don't expect too much of the beach to be there tomorrow morning. Sand dunes give the caravan park (where I believe there are a few holdouts) some protection but if they get breached it could flood in a hurry; hoping for the best.