Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Parents are in town at the moment (based in Albert Park) so today's run involved heading over to link up with them. The last time I tried to do a one-way run to that destination (on Christmas morning last year) it ended up falling apart towards the end. There wasn't a repeat performance today, although it didn't quite live up to the promise that it showed in the second half-hour and I was eventually not too upset to see it over, despite the lovely morning (frosty early on, but that's no deterrent to a Canberran).

After spending the first half of this run largely along the river (passing in the process the setting-up for a trail race in Yarra Bend), the second half took in ground more typical of the further end of longer runs from the years when I was living in Albert Park, crossing Toorak and Armadale to East St. Kilda, through St. Kilda (not at its best at 10 on a Sunday morning), crossing at the Espy footbridge and then finishing along the waterfront. Plenty of other people taking advantage of the good conditions (as I've noticed on other occasions recently, a large majority of the runners out were women).

Post-run pancakes at Middle Park definitely hit the spot.

I found out through this morning's paper, in the process of reading a piece about Bill Shorten's background which seemed to be based around the concept that if you quote someone who's dead they're not going to complain about being misrepresented, of the recent passing of George Seitz - it would be fair to say that this didn't attract as much public attention as that of Joan Kirner. Mr. Seitz was noted as being, against stiff competition, probably the ALP's champion branch-stacker, his career highlight being the 497 people who supposedly joined the party at a meeting held in his electorate office.

Bendigo Saturday event at Mosquito Creek. Struggling a bit for concentration at times and almost paid heavily for that with a classic gully-spur parallel error on 4, but picked it up more or less in time and managed to get out of it with the loss of a minute or so. Not entirely confident at times reading the map in the vaguer parts (how much of this was me and how much was the map is not entirely clear); running got better as it went on. Went through Martin and Asha at 8. Asha, in particular, was still close at 9 and I knew I was going to have to work reasonably hard to the finish to stay in front of them, which I was able to. (I knew I'd caught a couple of minutes on Martin, but wasn't 100% certain who'd caught who between Asha and myself).

The winning times will have come back a bit with no Bryan and no Bruce. Simon Rouse was the best when I left, in the high 41s. Don't know if anyone will have advanced on that.

C • The map 1

Slightly absent-minded this morning. My normal procedure on Fridays is to drive to the pool with the bike in the car (the flotation belt is too bulky to carry on a bike), leave the car there for the day and ride in to work. I realised once I got to the pool that I'd forgotten to load the bike. (At least this meant that I got to listen to Lachy and Matt on the ABC online while I was on the tram). Reasonable session once in, the last 10 minutes of which was spent collectively lamenting the state of Australian governance with one of the other regulars.

OA news is that our share of the ASC's found-it-down-the-back-of-a-filing-cabinet money is $20K for various Eventor developments (mainly making it more user-friendly). Toph's live coverage proposal didn't get up, though we'll be able to have another crack in the main funding round a bit later.

Other news of the day is that Tasmanian police carried out a series of raids on bikie gangs. Amongst the items they seized were 25 firearms, four tasers, quantities of ammunition, cannabis, ice and speed, two turtles and a snake. One wonders what they will do with the last two items.

Thoughts of going out into the terrain were put on the backburner because I needed to be at work early which in turn meant going out before it was light. As it turned out I wasn't in much shape for anything - this time next week all of me will be on strike, but today it was just my back which was (and even without that I was feeling horribly sluggish). Started to approach some vague respectability in the last couple of kilometres. (Saw Grant through the window while going past, but was already running late so didn't drop in).

The rest of the day was probably at the better end of expectations - certainly challenging, but at least it was civil. It helped that the MP I was most worried about didn't turn up. (Having learned some time ago that a good way to win brownie points with MPs, especially rural ones, is to express an interest in their electorate or places therein, I made a point of compiling a list beforehand of which sites were in whose seats so I could use them as examples when the time came).

This was a run in my best traditions of logistical optimisation. My flight to Canberra was at 10.30. On the one hand, traffic across the northern suburbs gets pretty bad from 7 onwards, on the other hand, traffic going to the airport is at its worst around 7. The solution to this was to go part way to the airport and then go for a run.

My chosen starting point was Airport West (the 'airport' the suburb name refers to is Essendon), and the target the Maribyrnong in Brimbank Park and points south. I think the last time I did the Maribyrnong path as a run was a Christmas morning run with Jim in 2004 starting from my grandmother's then place in Essendon.

The first 3km wasn't greatly attractive (and getting across the Calder and the Ring Road somewhat complicated), but once in Brimbank it was well worth it. The river path feels remarkably rural for Melbourne with the Whitten Bridge (which I've always thought to be slightly ironically named, given that its principal function is to make it easier to avoid going to Footscray) the only real sign of civilisation in about 7km. Was running very well in this section, perhaps a bit less well once I climbed out of the valley - ran out of time to do the whole river path down to the Avondale Tea Gardens - but still a pretty decent session.

I'm still feeling somewhat sniffly but it's having no impact on my running. A good morale boost before tomorrow's festivities.

Feeling a bit more sniffly today but it doesn't seem to be impacting much on my running (at least not yet), so decided to continue with my plan of doing an intervals session of sorts - experimenting a bit with venues and this time tried a 10x1 minute session in All Nations Park (although not venturing onto the hill). Didn't feel as if I was really opening out properly but still not the worst of sessions. Not too wet underfoot considering the overnight rain.

Going to/from All Nations.

I'm about to go on a bit of a flying visit to Canberra - mainly for the potentially daunting challenge of providing support to our Director when he addresses a meeting of Coalition backbench MPs (including some very vocal climate scpetics) about Australian climate data on Thursday morning - my job will be to handle the more technical questions. I certainly haven't presented to such a challenging audience before, and am bracing myself for everything up to and including being openly accused of fraud on the floor of the meeting. The straight bat which once brought me eight runs in two hours is likely to come in very useful (metaphorically speaking).

(My running plans for Canberra are confined to getting out into the terrain behind our place for as long as the time window allows between first light and having to go into the office on Thursday morning, but I wouldn't be averse to, say, collective Origin-viewing on Wednesday night if anyone in the vague general vicinity of Aranda feels so inclined).

C • good luck! 10

Earlier in the morning than usual, which meant that (a) it was more crowded than usual and (b) I was starting this in the dark, which always feels a bit strange at an outdoor pool. Also a bit stronger and faster than in recent swims, which probably had a bit to do with the relatively easy weekend, notwithstanding a lousy night's sleep (I think I drank coffee too late in the afternoon yesterday).

Lunchtime around the Tan. Felt reasonable but a bit on the slow side (with a certain number of traffic holdups). Not as much street theatre on Southbank as there sometimes is (perhaps the quota had been used up by the town crier outside the Commonwealth Law Courts this morning to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta).

I've felt a bit sniffly and sneezy today, but no sign of a running impact (yet).