Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Things are improving a little bit with each passing day, though I still look like I've been sliding down a recently-burnt slope sans trousers. It still wasn't the most comfortable of runs but managed to get through something a bit more than what I was doing on the weekend, mostly orienting myself and getting a feel for Bermagui. A decent NNE breeze, a coolish wind here because it's coming off the water, though still felt a little humid when it was a tail wind.

The rest of the day was very relaxing, which was the idea (although I'm now finding out about exactly which bits of the body I missed with the sunscreen), spending time on the beach and time on the couch and time near the pool, and getting through some of the less intellectually demanding parts of my book collection (Christmas presents from a couple of years ago). A reasonable number of people on the street but few on the beaches; I suspect the local population has dropped by at least 50% in the last 36 hours.

Can't say I was too upset to be here as the number next to Melbourne on the Bureau front page read 40, then 41, then 42....

I had planned to do an afternoon session in Bermagui's Blue Pool, an iconic oceanside baths of the sort you'll find a few of in Sydney. The atmosphere wasn't quite playing ball - the place was deserted (the locals having presumably realised that 35-knot NNE winds, straight down the pool, were suboptimal conditions for here), the water was choppy, and I thought that trying to swim here alone in tricky conditions and with the tide coming in perhaps wasn't the smartest of ideas. Maybe tomorrow.

I do wonder what the winning time would have been for the Sydney-Hobart if it had started yesterday. Don't think it would have been that far over one day.

Final day of Sprint Canberra at ANU. Still feeling just as sore as the last two days (and if possible it looks even uglier), but the swelling must have gone down a bit because I felt less impeded on the run than was the case the last two days (the lack of hills probably helped). Still a bit below par, though, and was gradually drifting back amongst the group I started with, being pulled in by Jase and Richard Goonan, and dropping back from Oliver Mill and Jimbo. Also fell into the trap a bit at 13 and dropped 20 seconds or so. Felt I was making a bit of progress, and am still hopeful that I should be up to doing some proper training by midweek.

I thought I was making a bit of a habit of having close sprint races with Lanita (we were five seconds apart today), and a check of the results proves it - in eight meetings since October, we're 4-4, with only two of the eight margins (one each way) greater than 37 seconds, and four of the eight (two each way) 11 seconds or fewer. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, suspecting that she'll have left me behind by this time next year; in a way it reminds me a bit of having a series of close battles in Canberra in 1987 with Jenny Bourne (then the leading Australian woman, who should have had a decent shot at a top-10 place at that year's WOC but had a bad run on the day, and in those days there was no middle distance or sprint to have another go).

This was an excellent series of events - thanks to all those responsible (and especially to lazydave). Will probably be hard to do something similar next year with Oceania taking up a big chunk of January, but the basic concept - both competition-wise and having a training camp combining seniors and juniors - appeared to work very well.

I'm now down in Bermagui for a few days. I was thankful that I was going down the Clyde and not up it - the seasonal migration of the Yogi was in full swing and traffic in the reverse direction was in great abundance (although moving, most of the time). There were also more people than I've seen for a while either in the midst of a deep and meaningful conversation with the NRMA, or waiting to do so. (The upper reaches of the Clyde Mountain used to be a good place to find such people, but today's victims were more evenly distributed).

(And, apropos of the thread that's going at the moment, unsurprisingly the Bodalla dairy outlet does seriously good chocolate milkshakes. Don't think it's going to be on the way home from an event any time soon, though).

Day 5 ANU Elite - Splits

In the bush (partly) at Remembrance Park behind the War Memorial. Didn't feel any better than yesterday - as expected because from my experience bruising-related swelling peaks at 24-48 hours before easing fairly quickly - and it's particularly painful going downhill, which made legs 10 to 14 rather unpleasant experiences. Still, unlike yesterday, I hit all the controls OK, and wasn't too rattled at having Brodie and Hanny barrel through me. The last part of the course was around the War Memorial; I wasn't totally sure if we had approval to be there (and if we did, whether that message had got through to all relevant parties) and was wondering if the soldier out the front was going to start yelling at me, but he didn't.

Day 4 Remembrance Elite A - Splits

Stage 3 of Sprint Canberra at CSIRO. Given how painful things were last night I was reasonably certain that the bruising was significant enough that it was going to mean 2-3 days of swelling and discomfort, and the way it felt today was consistent with that. I wasn't at all sure that I was going to be able to run - for this sort of injury, you're not going to do it more damage by running on it, the questions are whether you can tolerate the pain and whether it impedes you too much. After a warm-up - and noticing that it hurt less at running than jogging speed - I decided to give it a go, notwithstanding the fact that the swelling was sufficient that I could feel it bouncing around on the run, especially uphill.

Despite all this, I felt as if I was running OK in the first few controls, but the fact that Rob Walter caught me a minute inside the first five minutes suggested that my speed was noticeably below par. I then started to struggle on the uphill sections to generate power, and made a couple of silly errors - overshooting a termite mound in the small bush section at 14, then running into a dead end at 18 (a building I worked in intermittently for a few months). Almost got onto the back of Peter Hobbs at 11 but he gradually pulled away from me up the hill; ended up getting him by three seconds after he lost a bit of time on 20.

If I got through today I should be able to get through the rest of the weekend, but the extra things I had in mind will probably be off the agenda. Hopefully should be fine by midweek though.

Day 3 CSIRO Elite - Splits

A pool session down at Belconnen. Nothing to get massively excited about but not too bad either. Got this in before my latest session with Cathy, who seems reasonably happy with my progress on the things she'd originally identified to fix up, but found a few more things which needed fixing too (even before my afternoon misadventures).

2nd stage of Sprint Canberra at Radford. A mass-start sprint race is hardly a format well-suited to my abilities (although one advantage of falling off the back quickly was avoiding the worst of the congestion at the early controls), and my principal objective was not to come last. I was, however, feeling a lot better than yesterday, and settled into a good scrap in the grupetto - the (mostly) old men's bunch also featuring Jim, Jase, Eoin and Matt Purcell. A couple of slight wobbles through being not quite sure what was and wasn't legal, and had trouble getting used to just how quickly things came up on the 1:2000 section in the middle, but was really enjoying myself - until taking a big stack on the stairs coming into control 22 and landing on my backside. (I have a somewhat unfortunate history with sprint races in the wet in that respect, although I'm pretty confident that, unlike Auckland 2005, there are no broken bones this time). Took me most of the next leg (the third-last) to get back above jogging speed, taking away any chance I might have had of making a late attack on Jim and Jase, but did beat a few home on time (as well as the DNFs) and was nowhere near as far back as yesterday, even allowing for the shorter distance. Lanita didn't seem too pleased that I'd got her by two seconds (the women had the same course, though not at the same time).

You had to be young and crazy to do well today - juniors filled the first three places.

My rear end was pretty painful for the hour or so post-run, and still isn't great; it seems to me to be a slightly more severe version of the injury I did in Brisbane in July, in which case I should still be OK to run, if not necessarily comfortably. Will have to tell David Mulford sometime that I stacked it on the front steps of the building that's named after him. (He's the former principal at Radford - was a teacher at Canberra Grammar when I was there, and while I never had him as a teacher, he and his wife became family friends when Mum was working at the primary school there).

Day 2 Radford Course 1BA - Splits

Event: Sprint Canberra
 

It's a slightly odd few days: I want to do the Sprint Canberra races, I want to do more training than 20 minutes a day, but don't want to spend the time sprint training (which is what the camp is about). Not sure if what I'm doing is quite the optimum when I'm trying to build endurance, but I'll see how it goes.

It was good to get back onto Black Mountain but the run itself was fairly mediocre, particularly uphill. Had a brief encounter with Al and Belinda going the other way; not sure too many sets of 30-second sprints will be in my Six Foot preparation (though it was the end of a session of mostly longer hard bits for them).

First stage of the Canberra Sprints, at AIS. I have good days and bad days; yesterday was a good day, today wasn't. Never really loosened up properly and struggled for any speed and power, and was even less competitive than I expected to be.

I think my route (northern) to 5 was marginally better than the southern route since it was one of my least worst splits. Best stretch was through the more technical legs between 8 and 13; Jarrah had not long gone through me there and the detail (mostly fences) helped keep me sort of in touch. A slight wobble coming out of 1 when I briefly misread 21 as 2.

This is, I think, the first time I've run twice in a day in more than a year.

Elite - Splits

First time in the bush for a couple of months (since the last time I was in Canberra, in fact), at the summer series event at the place which I used to refer to as Ainslie Transfer Station. (The only remnants these days of what used to be the tip are a couple of incongruously-placed bitumen roads and an elongated clearing).

Wasn't quite sure how my rusty terrain-running skills or my rusty navigational skills would function. The first control was a bit of test of the latter, a small termite mound in the middle of nothing much, and I was a bit hesitant on it but got it with only marginal time loss. After that I was clean, and although the climb from 7 through 11 was hard work, from then onwards I was really starting to enjoy myself, at a pace which was a little higher than jogging but not pushing too hard (there will be plenty of opportunities for that over the next five days). Even appreciated the "support" from some of the local talent at 17. Haven't enjoyed myself on a run this much in ages.

Our efforts over recent weeks are attracting some attention (some of it from people who are helpfully copying their correspondence to the Minister). One of these correspondents started out by demanding a retraction of a statement one of our people had made about Canberra never having had four 40-degree days in a row (it still hasn't), and quoting some data from 1939 which failed to contain four consecutive 40s, then followed up the next day by claiming we'd left something out of one of our reports which was in fact explicitly in it. I'm presuming it's not the done thing for Ministerial correspondence to read: "Your correspondence of 20 January demonstrates that you can't count to four and your correspondence of 21 January demonstrates that you can't read; now nick off and stop wasting taxpayer-funded time" (although I bet plenty of ministers have fantasised about sending such letters to their more vexatious antagonists).

C • Ministerial Correspondence 3