Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

State Series at Two Kangaroo Creeks, one of those classic moderately hilly central Victorian gully-spur areas that I used to expect to do low 6s on back in the day. It's not quite now what it was then; there have been several fires on various parts of the area in the last decade, which have produced a certain amount of (unmapped) attractive-looking but evil-feeling regrowth - something which made its presence felt on 3, 4 and 5. (Bryan still managed to get close to 6 min/km, though).

Started as badly as last week, overrunning 1 to the tune of 45 seconds or so (after the slightly odd run to the top of a hill for the start triangle and then coming straight back down). Settled technically after that, never feeling especially strong (and wasted a bit of time getting across the monster erosion gully at 6 and 7), but picked up a bit towards the end. A couple of minutes closer to the pace than last week, which is probably a fair reflection of the respective runs. Ended up 4th (albeit a distant 4th).

Those who remember a certain era in Melbourne may be interested to hear that Franco Cozzo's Footscray premises are up for sale. (Looking at this story saw me detour to visitfootscray.com, a website which, I think it can safely be assumed, has nothing to do with either Tourism Victoria or the City of Maribyrnong). These days most of the annoying TV advertising seems to be our taxes at work, in the form of the thinly disguised Victorian Liberal Party ads that appear at least once in every Commonwealth Games ad break.

Same old same old for the first half-hour, but hit my stride after that and probably felt as good aerobically in the second half as at any time in the last month - actually hitting the hills (and there were a few, this run being centred around the Yallambie rollercoaster) with some level of confidence. Still a bit creaky, though the Achilles I was worried about yesterday stayed under control today. Amaroo Way, Yallambie is the latest to be ticked off the list.

Possibly inspired by the Tour, there was a fair bit of footpath chalkwork in Banyule which appeared to be associated with a recent run (probably a school one), starting with 'Run like a zombie's chasing you!'. 'Almost' may have a different definition in these parts, as '3km. Woo hoo! Well done!' was followed within 50 metres by 'Almost 4km. Go you superstars!'.

Got a few things done today on a fairly rare day without other commitments (among them being sorting out a couple of things with my bike, and getting the IOF Foot Commission minutes done while watching JWOC).

Pool running at Fitzroy. Some of the regulars thought the water was a bit on the cool side but it seemed OK to me. A reasonably mundane session.

There was no trace of it during the session, but had occasional flashes of sharp Achilles soreness while sitting during the day. Not sure what it's about but will have to see how it behaves once I get out and run tomorrow.

The Australian (which only yesterday was on the receiving end of an adverse finding from the Press Council on their coverage of climate change matters) was up to one of their classic tricks today. This time it was a front page story about a new paper which had found little or no warming in the very deep ocean, then went on to feature numerous quotes from our very own Hoggster about how this wasn't a surprising result (and was entirely consistent with other observations of climate change) because the response time of water as deep as that was centuries or millennia. So far so good you say - except that the "No warming!" part of the story was on the front page and Hoggster's explanation was buried in the continuation of the story on an inside page that nobody ever reads. This is a routine tactic of theirs.

Not for the first time in the last week or so, we woke to news of a plane crash somewhere. I noted with interest that the plane in this one was leased from Spain's Swiftair. Swiftair must have a lot of spare planes because my Oslo-Berlin flight a few weeks back was also one of theirs (operated by Air Berlin in this case), and it was the dodgiest plane I can remember being on since SCAT Airlines in Kazakhstan.

From Fishermens Bend prior to what proved to be an expensive car service (and the most expensive problem hasn't even been fixed yet). Longest run I've done for a few weeks, down as far as Elwood and then back along the shoreline (the reverse of what I often do down here, partly in the name of seeing the beaches, and the damage to them from the storms a weeks ago - not as much as I expected - in daylight). Never sparkled but kept plugging away, though there will certainly be sterner tests than this. A bit of early Achilles soreness eased as the run went on.

250 on/250 off round the Tan. First time for a while I've done this; didn't feel very fast but otherwise not too bad. Saw Bruce leaving as I was arriving. Tan not as busy as it usually is at lunchtime, though I was a little on the late side. Plenty of people with badges for the AIDS conference evident once you got close to the Convention Centre.

Going to/from the Tan. Achilles started to hurt a bit in the very last bit but didn't show any sign of trouble afterwards.

A steady run though nothing to set the world on fire - continue to feel as if I'm on the edge of a cold, but at least didn't seem weak today (still slow uphill though). Starting to enjoy myself in the second half. Lots of fog again (it persisted all day in some parts of Melbourne, with some very low maximum temperatures to match).

Spent a bit of time this afternoon/evening battling with the JWOC website - hope it's better tomorrow. Can't complain about the men's results, though (and obviously very pleased for Tim).

Streets collected: Amanda Court, Yallambie (the small pocket of it on the southwest side of the army base), after a bit of a map-memory false start.

Morning swim at Ivanhoe - rather slow as I got back into it. As noted previously, the pool is under renovation which means the changerooms are portables outside (I haven't braved the temporary showers yet - went back home for that). A rather foggy morning so Fitzroy might not have been a goer even if that had been my original plan (they close it if the lifeguards can't see across the pool).

The morning's papers carried some well-deserved derision for Athletics Australia (as someone pointed out, it must be in the constitution of the Commonwealth Games Federation that every Commonwealth Games has to feature an officious official making a fool of themselves). Alex Rowe's reported public reaction showed a lot more good grace than I think most of us would have mustered under the circumstances (not that I'm especially surprised, having met him when on the way back from Europe last year - he was someone who it was apparent was going to become a friend inside the first two sentences). In orienteering, we don't have the money to do as much for athletes as we would like, but I'd like to think that we at least have a better working relationship between athletes and officials than a lot of other sports seem to.

Monday evening runs have become a somewhat unusual feature in the last year or two but that was when I headed out today (from home while dinner was in the oven), lunchtime having been otherwise devoted to sending off my Brazilian visa application. (I wanted to get this off as soon as possible - it's apparently far from unknown for them to take a month or more to get processed). This run was of the sort I'd expected of Monday nights; took a while to get going, but feeling quite nice later on in the valley as the fog threatened to settle in.