Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

ACT Middle Championships at Honeysuckle Creek. I was last here in 2007, at which stage I thought it was getting thick to the point of unuseability, but Craney picked the best bits of it for some good courses in manageable, though tough, terrain. (We might have to wait a while for it to become nice again - it took about 40 years for Orroral to thin out after the 1952 fire, so if history repeats itself - and it doesn't burn again in the interim - the north end of the map might be ripe for something sometime in the 2040s).

Rather hesitant on 1, a not-as-distinct-as-it-looked-on-the-map gully in a section of the map which has been a Bermuda Triangle for me in the past, but the 20 seconds or so lost there proved to be my biggest loss of the race. Settled in reasonably well and caught Martin Dent 6 minutes at 4. We were in contact with each other until 14 (unsurprisingly he was running faster - although not by the margin you might expect - but making more mistakes), a decent section for me with only small wobbles at 6 and 7. 14 was a tough uphill leg into low-vis bush - Mark Gregson caught me there but we dropped Martin. Mark then got a better line than me on 18 and got away, but I finished reasonably cleanly.

On a course like this avoiding disaster gets you a long way, and I claimed some scalps I haven't claimed in a long time (Hoggster, Andrew Barnett and Matt Doyle, and almost Grant). Ended up 7th overall, just under 10 minutes behind Leon, and probably 3-4 minutes better relative to the field than I've been used to in middle races in this type of field in the last year or two. Repeating the result in less technical terrain may be somewhat more of a challenge.

C • Some scalps? 4

Course 1 MIDDLE - Splits

ACT Sprint Championships at CIT Bruce (reportedly the fourth choice of venue after an inability to get permission for the first three options - perhaps the CSIRO people were worried that I might try to organise a demo).

Made a horrible start to this race - lost time on the first two controls in the bush, not that I was alone on #1, a 0.3m termite mound in green - not, incidentally, on the Sprint Canberra map - where the fastest split was 32 seconds but only five out of 25 broke 50. (Bizarrely, despite losing 20 seconds on this leg, it was my best split placing of the day). This was then followed by a fall, a shoelace issue, and then falling into a classic sprint trap with the uncrossable fence on the east side of #6. By then I'd already dropped two minutes or so and the rest was about getting some good practice in, which I think was more or less achieved - got through without any more disasters, at least. This weekend is mainly about getting practice in race conditions before hitting events which matter more.

Perhaps I should have expected a better result, as the latest IOF sprint rankings suggest that I should be able to beat Oleksandr Kratov, Ralph Street and Graham Gristwood (ranked respectively 325, 326 and 327 to my 323). This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I have a full set of four scores and they only have two apiece. (On the other hand, I'm one point and one place behind Nieuwy).

Course 1 SPRINT - Splits

Morning run from Royal Park (in the name of later-in-the-day logistics for the trip to Canberra). A fairly similar run to Monday - very slow start which gradually built up a bit at the far end up around Moonee Valley, but never great, and slowed to a crawl on anything resembling a hill. Back OK although this wasn't a route to really test it.

Had a rather unsettling ride back to the car at lunchtime - encountered someone on the bike path (with a wine cask next to him, much of the contents of which had probably been consumed) who let loose with 'Oy, what ya f***ing looking at ya f***ing motherf****r f***ing get back here ya f***ing c**t'. Naturally I had no intention of doing any such thing and got out of the area as quickly as I possibly could; could have been quite a threatening situation otherwise.

Switched to the pool today after last night's events; certainly didn't feel as if I would have had a lot of energy for getting out the door at 6am and going for a long run (in fact I've been a bit down on energy more generally in the last couple of days). Got into it more once in the pool and it seemed to go OK in the end.

Currently on the Guardian website: "Malcolm Turnbull refers submarine leaks to federal police". Personally, if I had a leaky submarine, the Australian Federal Police wouldn't be my first port of call if I wanted something done about it, but each to their own, I guess.

First time for a while that my back's played up - maybe it's the venue (the first time this issue flared, back in 2013, was also at this venue, in Greythorn). Didn't think there was much to be gained by trying to push through it (my tentative plans had been to use this as a fartlek session, having raced on Monday).

It would be fair to say that I hadn't been full of enthusiasm even before the start, notwithstanding the appearance of a cool change of sorts. Heat is something we'll need to get used to over the next week or two; inland southern NSW and northern Victoria look like having a March heatwave of historic proportions over the next 10 days or so, although it's still not entirely clear on how many days the serious heat will break out to the coast.

At least the unplanned early finish gave me more time to work on the papers for tomorrow night's OA Board meeting that I haven't done yet.

Something of a novelty not to be trying to come up for something long after going hard at street-O the previous evening. This felt reasonable after the initial loosening up, but was somewhat slower than I'd usually expect. Explored some new territory (albeit not far away from old territory), having noticed a couple of weeks back that there's a path of sorts on the east side of Darebin Creek (upstream of Livingstone), accessed via stepping stones near the bridge.

Calves and associated bits very tight at the moment (was shuffling the first 30 seconds each time I got up from my desk today); definitely overdue for tonight's massage.

Eventually stopped floundering for long enough to get into some kind of swimming rhythm. I think this did me some good (the afternoon suggested that it did).

Comment of the day from one of my colleagues - to the effect that Ted Cruz might be more likely to use nukes than Donald Trump, but at least with Cruz you'd have a reasonable idea of who he was going to use them against.

First time in its four years of existence that I'd been in town for the park/street championships. As noted last week, qualifying wasn't quite a formality this year, but the deed was done and so I presented myself to the outer parts of Mulgrave in the highest temperatures on this date in Melbourne this century (don't get too excited - it was only mid-20s, the last three 29 Februarys having all been cool). This is unexplored street-O territory for me - apart from going through the middle of the map on Eastlink, the closest I've been to this area was football games at Waverley (a kilometre or so to the west).

12 was obviously a control you had to get first or last, which meant almost everyone went for it first to give themselves a bit of planning time, on a course which was a bit more straightforward than I'd expected (once you realised that minimising your number of trips up and down the escarpment was important) - in particular the section on the far side of Eastlink was a good deal less nasty than it could have been. Somewhat to my surprise, I settled down well and the second, third and fourth kilometres were easily the best I've done this season (and as good as I've felt on a run in 12 months), dicing initially with Rachel Johnson and then with Bryan Ackerly. Perhaps I'd overcooked it a little, and Bryan was starting to edge away when he overshot 14; he pulled me in a couple of controls later, before we split with four controls to go. I was starting to fade a bit by then and found the later climbs hard (especially the last control to the finish), but didn't fall completely apart and knocked another few seconds off my season benchmark. No sign of any of my various niggles (at least after warming up).

Ended up third in the 35s behind Simon Rouse and Bryan (whose closing section was slightly more efficient than mine). Bruce won outright; our routes were identical (apart from one minor split) so I'm not quite sure how it was that his GPS was 300m shorter than mine.