Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Melbourne Series at Plenty Gorge. Didn't feel as stiff as I expected (and the chafing on my left leg looked exceedingly ugly but didn't cause me any trouble), but still didn't have massive amounts of energy, particularly on the (numerous) hills. Also tentative, even by my standards, on steep slippery downhills (a result of yesterday's rain). Started to get going in the last 15 minutes. Dion was well ahead of me, which surprised me a bit; will be interested to see what Bruce does.

No issues with fine navigation, but had trouble picking good gully crossings in a couple of places, particularly on the way to 1.

Noticed this series came up as a sponsored ad on Facebook - will be interested to find out what response it generated (and how much it cost). Definitely seemed to be a reasonable number of people I didn't recognise.

Longest run since January and one I was fairly happy with. Achilles a bit sore on some of the hills (up and down) but otherwise flowed along pretty well for large parts of the run, one which went out along the Yarra to Templestowe (giving a couple of usual shortcuts a miss because of the implications of a 'minor flood warning for the Yarra at Heidelberg') before coming back through Ruffeys Creek. Climbing a bit of a struggle early but much better when the most significant hills came in the third quarter of the run; still pretty strong for the Lynnwood hill about 30 minutes from the end. Faded a bit from there, and hanging on for the last 10 minutes, but finished off better than on Thursday (and felt better afterwards too, except for leg chafing, which is troubling me a bit at the moment and was worse today).

The forecast promised atmospheric Armageddon and the radar was very colourful when I got up, but most of the action was to the west of Melbourne and didn't seem to be moving very much, so I thought I might get away without getting too wet (from above), and did, more or less. A reasonably solid session; not as tired as I thought I might have been from the way I was feeling yesterday afternoon and evening.

If things go as planned I will spend an entire weekend within the boundaries of metropolitan Melbourne (more or less). Hasn't happened since January.

C • St Helens 5

A longer-than-usual midweek long run in Canberra, on a pleasant morning for this sort of thing (sunny with a light frost). Started with a mission to perform some OA business (dropping past Grant's place to get some signatures on bank forms), then south to the lake and around the south and west sides of West Basin. Nice to retrace some old ground. Never felt brilliant, but a solid morning's work; had a good 10 minutes after seeing Jase (on bike) at Yarramundi Reach, but had to fight it out over the uphill last 15 minutes (and certainly knew for the rest of the day that I'd done a run; struggled to get to the end of my talk today without some extra water). First time for a while that I've been sub-5s on a non-speedwork run.

Next challenge will be to do it again on Saturday.

Flying out to Canberra a bit later in the morning so what worked best for the logistics and traffic-avoidance was to do a run in the northwest of Melbourne, around the old familiar turf of Essendon (including past my grandmother's now-vacant house). Largely downhill for the first half, up hill for the second. Continuing to feel a bit on the flat side. A bit shorter than planned because I was running a bit later than planned. Didn't go quite far enough west for the day's law-and-order excitement in Keilor East.

Must be school cross-country season: yesterday I saw the course being set up for a race in Yarra Bend Park, today there was a group from one of the local schools out training.

Got a bit more exercise than I'd planned on arriving in Canberra - I was led a bum steer by the ACTION journey planner, missed the bus by 30 seconds and ended up walking from the National Library to Grammar (where I was going for the first stage of next year's event advising job; unsurprisingly, there are a lot more buildings there than there were in 1988). Nice day for a walk in the sun though.

With GrantM and Sanders at Lake Ginninderra (minus the floating teepee now), mostly on the bike path around the lake but with a few deviations into slightly rougher stuff - was glad that the other two had brought lights. Finished up going up into UC for a bit. Good company but didn't feel brilliant as a run.

Went into work early with a view to doing fartlek around the Tan. Wasn't feeling that well this morning, although I think some of that might be in the mind; I'm feeling somewhat unsettled at the moment as the amount of less-than-flattering comment continues to grow slowly, with the possibility of an explosion at some point in the not-too-distant future. At least so far they're only accusing me publicly of laziness, and not (yet) fraud. The thought has crossed my mind a bit in recent days that there are 7 million observations in the data set, and they only have to find one mistake to do serious damage....

I have something of a recent tradition of lousy runs in this location and format (partly through attempting to do them in situation like having just got off an overnight bus). This one was just as bad on the first sprint, but did get somewhat better in the second half. Still not a lot of power though.

And they've fixed up the spelling on the sign with the all-time Tan top 10.

C • sign 1

To/from the Tan. A fair bit of traffic, not too surprising for peak hour.

Definitely into 'it's nice once your in' territory this morning, and it was nice once I was in. One of the better swims I've had for a while.

The Monday night numbers are dwindling as it gets darker, and the distance is getting a bit shorter too. Just Dion and Clare (whom I haven't seen for a while) tonight. In times gone by I would have done an extra loop but couldn't be bothered tonight; took a while to get going and generally a bit below what I'd hoped for after the morning.

Had a bit of trouble getting back in the house myself when I got home (after the problems Jenny had a couple of weeks ago), but nothing a bit of WD40 couldn't fix.