Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Run based on the Studley singletracks with Bruce and Dion (whom I haven't otherwise seen for a while). Sort of passable on the flatter parts but feeling much as yesterday on the hills (which were numerous but short). Had originally had 90 minutes in mind but wasn't too upset when our route took us pack past base at 75. Definitely a run which left me with a sense that this week is one of two steps forward, two steps back, rather than two and one as I'd been hoping.

Quite slippery on a lot of the tracks after overnight and morning drizzle - the sign at the start of one of them 'hazardous area' was actually meaningful for once.

Mark Textor's notoriety has spread far and wide: a poll appeared on the website of a Manila newspaper today asking readers to nominate which of three 1970s Filipino porn stars most closely resembled the Indonesian Foreign Minister (it must be said that all three were reasonable matches).

And the ads at the bottom of Attackpoint pages were well-targeted today: I saw one advertising a book which promised to bust "climate denier myths". (No, I didn't have anything to do with writing it).

Event: Sprint Into Spring Race 6 LaTrobe University Bundoora
 

Ran as badly as I did last week, and this time navigated worse too - falling into the bridge trap at 17, losing probably 30-40 seconds, and a few other minor wobbles, mostly involving garden beds. (At least I didn't fall into the bridge trip as badly as one competitor - a fairly inexperienced one, I think - who somehow managed to find their way out a door onto an overhead bridge, had the door close behind them and then was stuck up there for 20 minutes before someone could be found to open it). Lost a bit of motivation after 17, and as the rain became a bit heavier, was pretty tentative on the brick pathways around the colleges in the 18-21 section - I do, after all, have some unfortunate history when it comes to slippery surfaces in campus sprint events (and I suspect it costs more to break your arm in Australia than it does in New Zealand).

Haven't seen the full results yet, but fully expect to be even further down than last week.

My mood today was perhaps not helped by reading this in this morning's paper. A few days in Neerim South was a regular feature of late March for me for several years (and I'm assuming that the reference to "Neerim" was actually about Neerim South - Neerim barely exists) and I always enjoyed being there, not least the running in splendidly bucolic surrounds - perhaps my best training run of the 21st century was there, in 2005 - even if there was always a sense of having absolutely nothing in common with the locals other than having one head, two arms and two legs. Apart from passing through briefly on the way home from Baw Baw, I was last there in 2010, but it sounds like it's a very different place now (and a small town full of ice addicts is not a place where I'd be wanting to be wandering around after dark, or even perhaps before it).

At Fitzroy. Hamstring felt a bit on the sore side this morning, although in a much more generalised sense than when it was causing serious trouble a few weeks back. A reasonable session in the pool, but felt pretty tired during the course of the day (not surprising when I'm in almost full-burning-candles-at-both-ends mode; hopefully not a precursor to getting sick).

Not quite a Proper Thursday Long Run (tm) but getting closer to one - linking two football venues of old, Princes Park to Windy Hill. Still not that easy to come up after running hard on Wednesday night and found the first two-thirds a slog (the first kilometre was especially stiff), but gradually started to come good in the later stages. Seemed to be a fair number of traffic interruptions today, even for an inner-suburban run (and some people need reminding that the road rule about turning traffic giving way to pedestrians still applies when you're more than two kilometres from the GPO). As with last week, this took as much out of me post-run as rather longer runs have in the past (right down to the traffic-light cramps on the bike riding in).

Found this gem on trawling station information today (in this case, Birdsville 2005) - a report from someone in the Queensland office. (A Metconsole is a terminal used for transmitting observations, UPS is (allegedly) uninterruptible power supply).

"Phonecall from Observer - No power to Metconsole PS. Ascertained that a faulty UPS was the cause. The UPS began making loud cracking sounds and began smoking during our conversation.I advised her to step away from the unit, turn off the mains power at the switchboard, then remove the unit from the building. Donna called back 10 minutes later to advise that UPS had caught on fire and that a QBuild Officer had effected its removal.The Metconsole was reconnected to the mains".

And a headline I never thought I'd see: "Highrise development shortage in Gold Coast". (Admittedly, it was an article largely spruiking the interests of someone who wants to build even more high-rises on the Gold Coast).

Street-O at Mont Albert. Not quite baby steps in the Jules sense, but a small step nonetheless in that it was a tiny bit quicker than last week (on a slightly hillier area, though in better conditions). A more even performance than last week, and actually felt like I was attacking the hill up to the last control, the first time I've felt as if I've been attacking a hill for months (perhaps even this year), though still lacking pace - something which was most noticeable in the poor man's Jukola start experience which was the run to the first control (there was an obvious first control; having a main road crossing 50 metres out of the start was perhaps not the best piece of setting, although the course redeemed itself several times over before the end).

It took a few controls for the group around me to thin out, something which happened when I went from 2 to 18, a control most people dropped (I dropped 5 instead) - the one person who went with me to 18 went in one street too early. More or less on my own for a while, then got onto the back of Rachel going into 7 - and was rather taken aback when she didn't punch it. I mentioned this when I caught up a control later and she said she'd already been there (it turned out she'd tried to go 7-14 but didn't notice there was no railway crossing at that point, and had had to go back through 7). Also turned out she got an extra control so it really wasn't her night....

It was a bit too much to ask the others to give me 600 metres' start for the third week in a row; this time several people had distances around 9.2.

A rather sleepy session, not quite as bad as it looks from the times as I spent a fair bit of it on the Yarra Flats singletrack (lacking in mud, somewhat to my surprise), but still won't go down as one of my great sessions.

Somehow I think there might just be some particularly vigorous police crackdowns on drunk and disorderly Australians in Kuta in the next few weeks. I'm guessing the Indonesian authorities won't be going out of their way to stop boats, either.

Didn't feel that great (muscle-wise) this morning but OK once I was in the pool; still not entirely happy with the way my pace (such as it is) is drifting away in the second half, but did at least find something for the final lap (even as it felt like it was taking forever). I think my goggles might be just about due for the rubbish bin; as anyone who knows me will tell you, I do have a tendency to cling onto gear long past its use-by date....(This pair, from memory, were acquired on one of my Geneva trips in early 2011 when the strap on the previous pair snapped in mid-swim).

Muscles of a different sort were turning up in my Facebook feed, as they sometimes do, in the form of an ad with a picture of someone with arms looking like several blown-up balloons, and the wording which started: "A new, safe Steroid alternative that boosts muscle growth by 500% was recently discovered by a group of Doctors. Discovered by a celebrity athlete...". Gee, what could possibly go wrong? Seriously, if stuff like this is turning up regularly in the feeds of people who post about sport (and I've sometimes wondered whether I get ads for this stuff because I post about sport, or because I post about Essendon), I'm not surprised that some who don't know better get tempted.

(Even more bizarrely, there was a link underneath 'Create an ad like this for AMOS'. I'm pretty sure there is nobody in the Australian meteorological or oceanographic sciences who looks remotely like the person in the ad, but I'm prepared to be proven wrong).

MFR Monday night from my place for the first time in a couple of years - I've often struggled for turnout as potential participants are daunted by the prospect of venturing into suburbs which are on the border of zone 2 and don't have any trams, but it was a pleasingly large crowd tonight on a warm night. I came to this needing to let out a few frustrations after a largely fruitless day thanks to an ancient computer which won't do what it's told (I can only assume that the reason why it hasn't yet been replaced is that the National Trust has declared it to be a historic ruin).

Started out showing the others the remnants of yesterday's driving epic fail, then headed north through Macleod and back through the Rosanna parklands - always a nice way to finish a run. Pretty slow but I wouldn't have wanted to be trying to go much faster tonight - was definitely grinding the gears at times, especially early.