Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

After getting through yesterday, my priority is now to get myself right for this coming weekend (and beyond), so took it pretty easy today. Pleasant enough as far as it went, and although it was a cool morning, the strength of the morning sun was a reminder of the difference between latitude 37 and 46.

It's been raining. Spent quite a bit of time today catching up on everything that's been happening while I've been away. It's already the wettest September on record averaged over the Murray-Darling basin, and NSW will probably go past its record on Wednesday or Thursday. The Stanthorpe forests are certainly going to look very different to how they did this time in 1982 or 1991 (both severe drought years, especially the latter).

Whilst checking the NRL website yesterday for surprisingly-hard-to-find information on when this weekend's finals are being played, I noted a media release for the naming of the 'NRL Academic Team of the Year'. The cynics may suggest that the qualification for this team is being able to spell "try" correctly in no more than three attempts, but in fact they managed to find 13 current NRL players undertaking, or graduates of, tertiary courses (including students of engineering and law, both at the Raiders).

C • stanthorpe forests 7

Victorian Long Championships at Chapel Flat. The cards were stacked against this one - I've run reasonably well in the past the day after returning, but this time I was sick as well (and the back was playing up a bit). Can't say I was full of enthusiasm about this one but went out after a stint working on the finish, just after what turned out to be the day's last shower.

The dynamics of this were a bit different - running M45 against a limited field with no big names, I knew that as long as I avoided disaster, if I got round I was almost certainly going to win. That took some of the pressure off. Lost maybe 45 seconds on 4 and 30 on 10 through not seeing flags tucked into small gullies, but otherwise handled the mining navigation reasonably well. Definitely started to fall away badly in the last 20 minutes, though, and that was manifested in the navigation too, not picking the start of the track on 16 and then making a significant parallel error on 17 and ending up leaving the spur to the east rather than the south - although the presence of a major track on the other side of the creek meant that this error cost me less than the extra distance would suggest.

On a better day I'd probably have wanted to go under the hour for this. Hard to compare kilometre rates as we had a much higher proportion of our course in mining detail (including two butterfly loops) than the M35/40 course did. Andrew Cameron did 77, while Ed Steenbergen, whom I haven't previously come across, dropped 20 minutes on #4 but was then only 3 minutes behind me from there to the finish - perhaps one to watch in the future. Both Andrew and Ed took a bit of time out of me on the last part of the course, which isn't surprising.

Think I'll take it easy tomorrow....

The flight home didn't start on a great note when the check-in person refused to accept the small pack on the outside of the big one (a set-up that has gone through airport of asking for years, including Geneva two weeks ago), but after that everything with the flights went smoothly - the connection at Dubai (which I was a bit worried about) proved to be the smoothest I've done there, and I got a reasonable amount of sleep on the second leg. Takes a long time to unload an A380 at the far end though...

Woke up with a few more signs of a cold and didn't have high expectations for this one, but actually felt pretty reasonable after working out Achilles tightness in the first couple of kilometres - perhaps the more invigorating conditions helped.

I'll have plenty of time to rest - about to head home, due to get home on Saturday evening (assuming things work OK with flights), then fronting up for the Victorian Long Championships on Sunday. (My one concession to the schedule is that I'm acting my age on Sunday).

Thought the conditions for this one might be interesting when a teleconference I did before the run took place to a backdrop of lightning flashes to the south, but the storm had moved away by the time I set out (to be replaced by occasional light rain).

As has often been the way in the last week or so, it took me a long time to get going even by the standards of this year - didn't really feel comfortable until about 5km in. By then I was on one of my classic Geneva routes, up the Arve to the waterworks bridge and then up through the posh, village-feel suburb of Chene-Bougeries. The run never caught alight, but was solid enough. No sign of the quad issue from yesterday, but a bit of a sore throat so I'm clearly not quite 100% well.

Feeling older moment: the discovery (thanks to a clip that's doing the rounds of the internet) that Toni Basil (of "Mickey" fame) is 72.

Wasn't finding it that easy to get myself going for this (the Achilles, as often on a long trip without a massage, is taking longer and longer to warm up), but more or less reasonable once doing the reps - until getting a twinge at the top of my right quad at the end of the 5th one. Didn't want to take any chances on this and immediately abandoned the session. It was already improving by the time I finished walking back so I don't think it will put much of a hole in future running plans (although I'll find out tomorrow).

Warm-up - no warm-down today (at least no running one).

I'm at the stage where I'm trawling a lot of national meteorological service websites in search of additional fragments of information to use in my reports. I was somewhat surprised to see that occupying pride of place on Paraguay's website was a rainfall forecast map for 12 November 2014, a somewhat familiar date (not sure why they were showing that one off because most of the forecast rain failed to materialise, at least in the places where I was). Africa has a few good ones - often from multi-country groups like the Niger Basin Authority - but also a reasonable number of countries where the national meteorological service either doesn't have a website or has a website that doesn't work (Zambia's, which last time I tried had the forecast for some date in 2006, is one of those). Nigeria's website took me to a promise to pay me US$6 million if I put my bank account details on an online form a "current" report which was four years out of date, and Burkina Faso's was blocked by the WMO firewall because they think it's a gambling site.

Bit of a nothing run this morning - slept OK but took a long time to loosen up, and lots of traffic hold-ups through the middle. The construction site for the new Eaux-Vives station (running two years later than it was the last time I was here) takes even more getting around than it did the last time I was here, which meant I ran out of time to get into the park out that way.

It's still warm in Geneva, but it's warmer elsewhere - Gravesend (Kent) got 34.4 today, a UK record for this far into autumn by more than 2 degrees, and although I haven't seen the details yet I expect there will have been more records across Europe all the way across into southern Sweden (don't think Gothenburg gets 27 in mid-September too often).