Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Warmed up at the Sunday training at Beckworth with a compass exercise on the flat country. Drifted a little left on both the long legs (although not enough to take me out of sight of the control feature), but it became apparent pretty quickly that the body wasn't playing ball today.

I decided after the first session that I was going to struggle to do much meaningful training for myself, so thought I'd at least do something useful for someone else, so shadowed Asha round the short course on a map-memory exercise. She certainly had her good sections of the course (and her strength in the terrain is good for someone of her age); the main thing which she hopefully learned today is the importance of knowing, in steep granite country, how many contours you have to climb/descend on a leg - her three significant misses all boiled down to getting this wrong and climbing/dropping significantly on a near-level leg. (First time round this can also be blamed on taking too much notice of her big sister).

I felt better on this run than on the first one, but still had enough tightness to suggest that going harder on hills would have been a problem.

Bendigo event at Lyell Forest, an open, fast eucalpyt area. Back in the day the Lyell Forest maps (and their close cousins at Kimbolton/Eppalock) were the places one went to attempt to get a kilometre rate which started with a 4 (and where it was not unusual to find a 17k course at a State Series event).

I think it's become a bit less lightning-quick in the last 15 years (although Bryan's run will tell us more on this front), but I was still pretty disappointed not to be able to get under 6s - didn't have a top gear today. Nice to get out into the terrain properly for the first time since Easter (the abortive Long-O doesn't count). Drifted a bit on a couple of legs (3 and 14) although managed to pick myself each time with maybe 20 seconds lost.

Possibly the last warm-weather race for quite a few months, although next weekend will be unusually warm for the time of year and may even give May records a shake (in Canberra this is 24.5, which equates to probably 22 at Saturday afternoon's area and 19 at Sunday's).

Pool running at Fitzroy, first time for a bit. For some reason I seemed to be "moving" a lot faster through the water than usual - normally I expect to go back and forth in the deep end 9 or maybe 9 1/2 times in 45 minutes, but today it was almost 11. Didn't feel as if I was working appreciably harder.

Distinctive Fitzroy character of the day: the person in a full black bodysuit (including hood) and with either an extremely white face or one artificially shaded white. First time I've shared my lane with a ghost.

And our national newspaper was in fine form today. As it so often does, it ran a story on the front page which looked like it was downplaying climate change, along with a linked editorial. This time the story was about an Institute of Actuaries study which found that climate change was only likely to have a modest impact on insurance premiums in the coming decades (not a totally surprising result as the types of disasters which cost insurance companies very large amounts of money, such as hailstorms, tropical cyclones and floods, don't as yet show a clear climate change signal, and apart perhaps from floods aren't really expected to). The editorial smugly declared that people with waterfront properties could stop worrying about the doom-laden predictions of the climate alarmists. Perhaps the editorial-writer should have read their own paper's news story more carefully - if they had they would have seen that the Institute of Actuaries study explicitly excluded sea level rise and associated storm surge impacts, on the grounds that damage from them generally isn't insurable.

C • Male or female ghost? 2

Rather later in the morning than a usual Thursday morning long one because of the public holiday. Normally I get an early wake-up call on this day through the dawn service at the local war memorial just down the road. I was wondering if it would happen this year as the Heidelberg RSL recently went belly-up in reasonably spectacular fashion, but I must have just been sleeping particularly well at dawn because when I did wake up it was clearly still happening.

Looped north initially through Watsonia, with the plan to come down the Plenty trail and then make a decision as to whether to go out to Finns Reserve. Calves very tight before I set out (and again afterwards) but OK during the run. A reasonable run for the first two-thirds (although there was a route change because Finns Reserve was looking like 1.50-1.55, which was further than I wanted to go). Started to fade away towards the end, particularly in the last 20 minutes - something more noticeable during the rest of the day when my feeling of being drained was more appropriate to something an hour longer (events at the MCG did provide a certain revitalising effect). I'm assuming I'll need to go 30 minutes or so longer than this next Sunday, which on recent evidence could be a challenge.

Plenty of highlights of the afternoon, as you might expect; two non-obvious items of note being the extent to which the opposition supporters vacated the premises before the final siren (their end was probably only one-third full at the finish), and the ten-minutes-late train home getting that uniquely distinctive roar from the crowd on the station platform which is normally reserved for when your team gets a free kick after the opposition has had a few in a row.

I also noticed that the sign about the MCG's heritage listing advised that it was protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the 'biodiversity' bit possibly being a reference to the number of species which can be found in the Collingwood supporter base.

C • Collingwood biodiversity 3

Sporting bodies involving themselves in things which are none of their business, #7687: http://www.espncricinfo.com/ireland/content/story/....

Set out for a second attempt on what I intended to do yesterday - 250 on/250 off around the Tan - without a hint of a twinge; go figure. Not a lot of pace either but I'll take a twinge-free run after yesterday.

Things were being set up around the Shrine and surrounding areas for tomorrow, and there was obviously a dry run happening for the ceremonies; I happened to pass while the citation for the most recent Australian Victorian Cross was being read out (impressive, whether or not you think he and his comrades should have been in Afghanistan in the first place).

Going to/from the Tan.

In a reversal of the normal state of affairs, I was feeling very sleepy in the morning but more awake at lunchtime (and still very awake at 11.30pm as I write this). Unfortunately, my back wasn't playing ball and threw its worst wobbly since Beckworth. Probably could have kept going with an easy run but was planning intervals on the Tan, which clearly wasn't an option, and didn't see the point. I'm assuming that it was something to do with the flight, although in that case it's a bit surprising that it didn't cause trouble last night. Will try again tomorrow.

Certainly did a bit of catching up today; I think 74 e-mails sent in a day is a PB.

For those who haven't heard through other channels, OA has kept its existing funding (although rebadged from high performance to "whole of sport" - which I presume means we don't have to spend it on high performance, although I expect we still will). In the circumstances I think this was about the best outcome we could realistically have hoped for; I was worried we would lose the lot, and thought there was a high risk that we could take a significant hit.

A fairly uneventful flight; slept decently and only slightly late on both legs, and not as much traffic as I'd feared coming home from the airport.

Naturally one of the first things I did after getting home was to go for a run. (This was once I'd collected my mail from the next-door neighbours, in the course of which I was greeted by their three-year-old excitedly clutching his toy giraffe, who was even more excited when I told him I'd seen some real giraffes and would show him the pictures once I'd organised them). Shook out some predictable early stiffness, and had a bit of a scare about 15 minutes in when I put my foot in a hole in the dark, a sudden jolt which my knee (the other leg) didn't like. Settled after a few minutes though.

It's cooled down a bit since I've been away; the heating got some (brief) use.

Certainly an interesting trip; the workshop went well and I was definitely impressed by natural South Africa, although not so much by urban South Africa, which is a pretty good illustration of what happens in a society with extreme disparities of wealth.