Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: Gauteng Short Course 3 - Tshwane University of Technology
 

Added another country (and another continent) to my orienteering list with this event, a sprint event at one of the local universities in Pretoria. The 'terrain' itself was pretty much what you'd expect of a campus sprint at home with a few more uncrossable fences (building fences is clearly a lucrative industry in this part of the world) - a decent course on the whole, with some good route-choice legs, 16 and 19 in particular. (On both of these I took reasonably straightforward southern routes; I think this was probably the best option on 16, but the straighter route on 19 was probably fractionally quicker if you could execute it). Started running OK but, as usual this year, lacking a top gear (and I don't think Pretoria's high enough to be able to blame altitude).

I expected to be 4-5 minutes down on Michael Crone and was. What was more surprising is that Michael didn't win. The South Africans are clearly excited about the prospects of their best two juniors and on the evidence of today they have good reason to be. Brad Lund's run today, if he can reproduce it in July, is, I think, a top-quarter JWOC run, perhaps more.

Probably as well this was a morning race; I only slept intermittently after 3am and suspect I'll pay for it this afternoon.

And I'm feeling a lot more relaxed about being on the local streets in the early mornings this week now that I know that a night urban rogaine was run (without incident) in suburban Johannesburg last week.

Travel day Melbourne-Sydney-Johannesburg, all pretty smooth - went further south than I was expecting, which meant seeing plenty of sea ice and floating icebergs (not quite the Antarctic coast, although we must have got within 100-200km of it). Not horrendously tired in the circumstances.

The area we're staying in looks uninspiring for running, but not unsafe. I suspect Centurion (a satellite city of Pretoria) is the only city in the world to be named after a cricket ground, which occurred in the 1990s after its previous apartheid-era name was deemed politically incorrect. (The cricket ground, however, is no longer Centurion Park, thanks to a sponsorship deal).

And I got my first hint on the road here as to why South Africa's road toll is so high - a ute on the freeway with at least 17 people sitting in the back (and I might have missed a couple).

A pretty lacklustre effort; wouldn't normally be running today but I don't expect to get any sort of training in tomorrow (except possibly a swim at the end of the day if the hotel has a pool). Never really felt as if I had any sort of sharpness. Knee loosened up OK on the run but a little awkward during the day, and my calves definitely needed the massage they got after this run.

Off to South Africa tomorrow: fly out of Melbourne at 7 tomorrow, get in (via Sydney) at 4.15pm. The place where we're staying is about 50km out of Johannesburg (a city I have no plans to see any of other than its airport), so by the time I get there I'll only have a couple more hours to last to get through to a reasonable sleeping hour. That's the plan anyway.

A somewhat patchy run up around Mount Cooper and back through the bush section near La Trobe. Felt a bit on the tired side in the last third, not for any obvious reason since the hills were out of the way by then. A bit tight early on. Still, it was (by some margin) the longest I've done since Easter, so some points there.

Run from Surrey Hills in the course of positioning myself (and vehicle) for this evening, through Canterbury and coming back past Wattle Park. Didn't feel as good as yesterday but not too upset with this as a run in the end, especially as there were more hills than on most of my recent runs. Back a little tight on a couple of the steeper climbs later on but ground the rest out reasonably well.

The reason I was out this way was because I was setting tonight's street-O at Blackburn. It's a lovely area but one you can't do as much with for a winter night event because the major parklands and the bush around Blackburn Lake aren't in play. It wasn't as long as I expected (the leaders spotted a better route than I did, but I think the map scale may also be a bit out); will have to give people a bit more distance this time. (The shorter-than-anticipated length did spoil, a little bit, a couple of the traps that I'd set).

First attempt to run fast(ish) since Easter and it worked out OK - seem to be on a bit of an upward swing, and actually felt reasonably lively at times, not a feature that my morning runs have been noted for this year. Still not exactly fast (10.23) but feeling as if there were a few positives which came out of today.

I'll be going to Norway for Esten's christening in August, and am currently looking at possible events around that (I don't plan an extended trip so won't go early enough for WMOC). One option is a bit intimidating, although I could hardly do any worse than last Saturday - Norwegian ultra-long championships, set for a winning time of 2.30 (for Olav Lundanes).

This evening I was at a local political dinner; one of the items being auctioned, which will bring back memories for those of you who were on the 1991 JWOC trip, was some East German toilet paper brought back by former local member Peter Staples from a ministerial trip. Sadly I was outbid for this (I was only prepared to part with $5 and someone was willing to spend $20). I did leave with a raffle prize - a book describing the history of the Bendigo ALP. It will be a while before I get round to reading it in full, but I did have a quick look to see if it had been published recently enough to include Jools' 1996 campaign; it was. (And just to show that there is nothing new about the media being less than helpful to Labor candidates, one of the incidents described therein was about how the Bendigo Advertiser published a picture of her, alongside another local candidate and Steve Bracks, underneath a sign which said 'Reject Shop').

Slowly starting to come good, which is another way of saying that this was a perfectly conventional Monday morning run - took about 10 minutes to loosen up properly but reasonable after that. (Not coming off as long a Sunday as I normally would be, though). Trying to run (sort of) fast tomorrow morning will be more of a test.

I now have an explanation for the slow first kilometre mentioned on these pages a few days ago: the vacant lot which the 1k mark is next to is on the market (there was a piece on this in today's Age), advertised as the 'highest point in Melbourne'. Obviously the kilometre included a lot more climb than the 30-40 metres or so I thought it had (to constitute 'the highest point in Melbourne', depending on how generous your definition of 'Melbourne' is, the block would have to be between 30 and 520 metres higher than it actually is).

Swapped sessions around this week because I don't want to take my pool running belt to South Africa (and also swapped in time because I had a meeting at Melbourne Uni this afternoon which finished by 5). Working pretty well, in fading rather than gathering light which was a bit of a novelty.

It will be old news to the locals but I heard today about a demo in Canada a few months back, on a cause which Hammer, at least, will be familiar with (in fact it wouldn't surprise me if he was there) - the Canadian government suppressing publication and communication of scientific results it doesn't like, such as those on climate change. (This is something I take quite an interest in as I see the current Canadian government as the best available template for what an Abbott government would look like). The demo's rallying cry: "What do we want? Science! When do we want it? After peer review!"

C • Canadian Scientist Muzzling 2