Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

I'm putting a note here so people can post in comments info about orienteers affected by the Queensland floods, or anything else relevant to the situation.

C • Queensland Floods 21

Seemed to take forever to wake up this morning. Still felt half-asleep when I set out despite it being 90 minutes after getting up, and that filtered through into a struggling first section. Got into it a bit more in the second half, and even felt as if I had a bit of strength attacking the final uphill rep, not something which has been a familiar experience lately. Just made it under 10, which is still well short of where I want to be (9.30 would be respectable), but at least heading in the right direction now.

It was one of those mornings where it feels pleasantly cool until you start trying to do something (21/20). Still, humid as it is here, it's nothing compared to what is happening further north. I don't have much involvement in the current phase of the situation (although I probably will in post-event reporting), but had a lot of trouble concentrating on what I was supposed to be working on this afternoon (going through 1926-56 temperatures at Cape Otway).

Once again, a bit of a struggle to get out on a Monday morning after a long run on Sunday. Stiffness was gone within a few minutes but still pretty sluggish for most of the way. I imagine doing a run before a swim makes things worse here - normally I'd be doing it the other way round.

Started reasonably promisingly but drifted away in the second half. Will still do me some good in loosening myself up, although I'll find out how much good tomorrow morning. A couple of bits of me threatened to cramp on occasions (and one bit actually did when I was lifting myself out of the pool at the end, resulting in a somewhat ungainly exit if anyone was watching, which they probably weren't).

Sunday long run with Bruce, starting at his place but heading upriver beyond mine, getting as far as Banyule Flats before coming back past La Trobe and down Darebin Creek. Not a run that will go down in my list of classics, and thought it might have been on its way to falling apart in a bad patch around the 1.50 mark, but pulled it together and a reasonable last 20 minutes. Still, the fact that I'm finding a relatively flat 2.30 at a not-exceptionally-hard pace in not-exceptionally-difficult conditions (19 degrees, though quite humid) hard going is an indication that I still have some work to do. Hopefully once I've got another three or four of these under my belt it will become more routine.

I spent some of the remainder of the day at the soccer, spending the last 10 minutes pondering the question of whether it was more or less of a debacle than Boxing Day. It was best summed up by the boy texting after the game who asked 'how many s's are there in 'embarrassing'?'

The local fire brigade have had a busy weekend: a big factory fire just across the creek yesterday morning, and sadly a house fire with several deaths this afternoon in the next suburb.

A tougher one today because of both the course and the conditions. As has been stated here ad nauseum in recent weeks I've been struggling on hills lately, and there's only one way to do something about it - in this case involving taking on one of my traditional hilly routes, the North Balwyn/Bulleen traverse. It was also the warmest run I've done so far this summer, 27 degrees and a piercing morning sun, although it was still cool enough for the north wind to be relieving rather than searing. Felt better on the hills than I have for a few weeks (although still not particularly fast on them). Again found the conditions testing in the later stages and was definitely glad I wasn't going 2 1/2 hours today - but then if I was going 2 1/2 hours I'd have started at least 90 minutes earlier. There's a fair chance I'll escape the summer without any days a warm as this for a run of that length; tomorrow will be cooler, next Sunday will probably be cooler, and from late January onwards I'll be back in winter, leaving 23 January as the only date to worry about.

A link to a run of an earlier era came in this morning's Age, which featured a short story partly set in the grounds of the derelict Dubbo drive-in, previously noted at http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_1491/p....

The ride home last night, like a lot of Friday night rides home in recent weeks, was well into the evening (about 10 this time). A hot night definitely draws life out into the streets, and at 10 it's still lively, rather than menacing as I imagine it can be four or five hours later. It was somewhat ironic that the song running through my head for most of the way was one of loneliness in the big city:

"He’s got this dream about buyin’ some land
He’s gonna give up the booze and the one night stands
And then he’ll settle down, in some quiet little town
And forget about everything."

C • Baker Street 2

Pool running at Fitzroy. First time for a couple of weeks, on a warm morning. Felt like I was putting in some reasonable work but still good to be in the water. Feeling much better for a decent night's sleep, as is quite typical (can't say I'm really looking forward to a 0100-0230 teleconference next Wednesday morning).

As Canberrans will know, the Bogan Mardi Gras (aka Summernats) is under way this week. I saw a report which said that organisers were aiming to make the event more family-friendly this year and in particular to make it more appealing to women. Women have always been an important part of Summernats - if there weren't any there the crowd wouldn't have anyone to yell 'show us yer tits' at.

C • Miss Summernats 1

Was expecting it to be a bit of a challenge to back up after last night, on a route which, like Sunday, was hilly in the first half (out to the footbridge at Lower Eltham) and flatter in the second. Started slowly, but began to build into it nicely from about 30 minutes onwards, and coped well with the long Old Eltham Road hill. I thought this might set me up for a good second hour as had been the case last Sunday, but instead things fell rather flat - mainly because I wasn't recognising how much fluid I was losing, on a humid (by Melbourne standards) morning which would seem tame to our Territorian, or even Queensland, readers (16/15) but was a bit more than I've been used to. Took on some water about 80 minutes which fed through into a good patch for some time after that, but by the last 10 minutes I was struggling again and happy to see the end. Ended up pretty wrecked by the end of the day (I'm writing this struggling to stay awake at 9.30).

I was 4 kilos lighter after this run than I was 48 hours earlier. That's in the ballpark of what I want to lose by the start of the competitive season, but I don't think that's the way that it's supposed to be done.

We're expecting to put a statement out on the Queensland (and other) floods tomorrow, which has taken up quite a bit of my time this week. I had thought there was another flood story that might get a fair bit of attention when it was reported that a live cow had been washed out to Great Keppel Island (which gives a new meaning to 'get wrecked on Great Keppel'), but it turned out that while the cow was real, it was also dead.

It was also pointed out by someone today that if you enter 'Australian Made' into the search box on the (mostly useless) Harvey Norman website, you get the result 'The search for 'Australian made' did not return any products'.

And you know that our cricket commentators are desperate when they start mentioning George Davis. (In 1975 a Test in England was abandoned when the pitch was dug up by those wishing to draw attention to their claim that George Davis, who was in jail for armed robbery, was innocent. As it turned out he was indeed innocent, but he was back inside three years later, and this time there wasn't much room for doubt - he was caught driving the getaway car with several guns alongside him).

At Kew East for what was advertised as a 'novelty' score event. The novelty was that four of the controls weren't on the map but were instead shown on maps placed at other controls. This made it a bit of a lottery which I lost badly, having to do two long out-and-backs when if I'd run the loop in the opposite direction they would have fallen into a logical sequence (although it would have helped if I'd actually looked for a map segment at 7). Ended up doing 1.1k more than Bruce, which would have pulled the margin down from eight minutes to a vaguely respectable three or four. Wasn't sure until the end that I was going to get them all in time (and wouldn't have done but for the unusually early start, giving us 63 minutes instead of the more typical 58-59).

As with yesterday, this run felt better than the equivalent two weeks ago but wasn't a lot faster (although mucking around a bit on 3 and 20 due to deficiencies in map memory would have slowed things down a little). OK at cruising speed but no extra gear for hills (or for the finish, as demonstrated when Bruce was warming down at about the same speed as I was finishing).

Annual climate statement day today: mainly about rainfall this year, and a quieter media day than some have been in the past. I suspect I'll make up for lost time here when the global statement goes out.