Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Squeezed a terrain run at Nerrina in in between sessions of a controllers' workshop I was helping with - first time running in the terrain in Australia for about three months. Had some good patches, but Achilles again troublesome and lower back tight at times too - certainly didn't feel in the mood to attack the terrain, although the (relatively) long session yesterday may have had a bit to do with that.

I may not have done as many media interviews yesterday as I thought I was going to, but one of the ones I did do went as far afield as Fiji television (obviously what I said didn't incur the displeasure of Commodore Bananarama).

Went out long today because I'll be involved in a controlling workshop all day tomorrow; earlier than usual for a Saturday because of the cascading consequences of various media commitments (some of which ended up getting gazumped by ministerial reshuffles). Not going to be much time for relaxation this weekend...

Anyway, this was the longest I've done yet this year, and I felt a bit better about this than I did about Thursday - felt like quite a pleasant run at times (the conditions helped), although still far too slow. Also felt stronger on the hills (and there were a few, especially through Lower Plenty) than I have in the last few weeks. Let's not go overboard - I don't exactly feel in the shape to take on Feathertop (even if it wasn't currently on fire), but it's a step in the right direction. One thing which did hold me back on hills was my Achilles, which are definitely telling me that a calf massage is overdue.

This was the first time I've been out to Lower Plenty for ages (a couple of years?); some of the roads have been built up with gutters and some new mansions have sprouted - I barely recognised one street. This is the home ground of someone occasionally referred to in the press as a "colourful industrial relations consultant", and is also the only booth in Jagajaga which consistently votes Liberal (whether there is any connection between these two facts is unknown). The quiet, and reasonably hilly, roads are a magnet for cyclists, and the roller-skiers were also out on the bike path (including a couple of familiar faces).

Pool running at Fitzroy. Time is a bit of a guess because the clock has gone AWOL. Lots of rain overnight (and a spectacular rainbow on the way in this morning) but dry for the session itself. Company was good.

I was expecting a long day at work, and it was. Scoreboard for the day was one announcement on Australia's hottest month on record, one updated report on the heatwave, and another one on the floods (although the last won't see the light of day until Monday because no manager with the requisite level of seniority could be found to sign off on it). Next week should be a tad quieter.

Gradually starting to ramp the distance up on these runs but not finding it much easier - not the severe weakness which manifested itself yesterday, but still a struggle, and didn't pick up in the later stages in the way that, say, last Sunday did. Did get to do some renewed exploration of tracks on the east side of the river that I haven't been to for a long time (ignoring the ageing 'closed due to storm damage' signs as I did so).

As you can imagine, it's fairly intense at work at the moment, and will be more so tomorrow when monthly reports come out.

C • Blair now legal in Iceland 1

Thought I'd give going faster a try tonight. Perhaps I should have thought better of this when it was a warmer night than expected, on quite a hilly area (or perhaps I should have made a first attempt at going faster on a shorter course). Whatever the issue, it unravelled pretty quickly - going lactic on the first two-contour hill wasn't a good sign and it didn't get any better. This was very much history repeating itself - I had a similar debacle on a similar occasion when returning from injury in early 2010. That time I ran myself into the ground and didn't recover for days; this time I decided that wasn't a good idea and pulled the pin halfway through. Maybe next week (although the current forecast is somewhat suboptimal).

I'm sure it was coincidence that my route to the event took me past two big billboards for Liberal candidates - surely they can't move that fast? (and if they want to waste money advertising in Chisholm, a seat they would win only in a total wipeout, good luck to them).

Around the Yarra tracks from Clifton Hill - first time out here for a while. A bit of an improvement on the equivalent run last week but yesterday was better. Knee stiffness a little bit annoying early in runs but is loosening up reasonably well - certainly none of the pain evident when the injury was developing.

As you can imagine, today was a reasonably busy day at work, collating records broken. (My two favourites - the Burnett catchment's peak 1-day rainfall was 70% above its previous record (no wonder so much of Bundaberg is under water), and Gladstone's 4-day rainfall of 819.8 mm exceeded its previous record for a whole month).

There was an orienteering connection to one of the notable numbers, a daily rainfall of 709 mm at Mount Castle (although Upper Springbrook, with 744, did even better). Mount Castle is at the east end of the much-loved Goomburra Valley map, a steep, hard slog used for the 2000 Australia-NZ Challenge (which I'd wiped myself out of after an unfortunate altercation with a cricket pitch roller in a sprint race the previous day). It was run as a midweek event (between nationals on one weekend and APOC on the next) and, of the 30-odd starters in M21E, exactly seven finished - the six Challenge team members plus somebody from Hong Kong. Craig gets some bonus points for picking the most remote point on the map to DNF from.

And it seems we would have had some extra excitement if we'd repeated last year's Australia Day run this year: guest of honour at the Holdfast Bay ceremony was one T. Abbott (not sure with or without budgie smugglers). We could even have sniggered at his reference to Australia's convict origins, something which is definitely a faux pas in South Australia.

Session at Ivanhoe pool before heading out for the day. Felt fairly reasonable but not all that quick, and ended up with some chafing underneath my right arm for no obvious reason.

I then spent the bulk of the day down at Phillip Island, a fairly random choice as a public holiday excursion. I haven't been there since 1982, on a day which I remember best for probably the most spectacular forecast bust in modern Victorian history - a change came through earlier than expected at the end of a heatwave and 40 turned into 18. (That day set a record, which still stands, for the largest maximum temperature change between days in Australia - from 45 to 17 at a site near Yarram). The afternoon on Woolamai beach was relaxing, the traffic getting off the island not quite so.

C • Not random...? 3

There's a series running in the outer south-eastern suburbs at the moment and I decided to drop in on the way home to see where some of the ASC participation money is going. Narre Warren South is definitely unexplored territory for me - the only time I've ever ventured into the wedge between the Princes and South Gippsland Highways was a couple of years back cutting across from CSIRO Aspendale on the way to Warragul.

This was quite a pleasing night - the first time since returning to training which has felt like a normal run. Didn't get off to a great start when the first control was misplaced, but settled nicely after that. Got a nice tow from Tim Jackson through most of the first half (before he headed off his own way - he was running B). Tired a little later on; it probably helped that there were no hills of any significance. Must have got the route right as I was nearly 1km shorter than Andrew Hester and 300m shorter than Ian Davies and Rachel Johnson, but at the moment I'm not running fast enough for that to matter.