Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

First of three outings on the Hill End map. Technical mining through significant parts of the map, quite reminiscent of Castlemaine terrain - certainly needed concentration throughout. In the end, though, my most significant error came on one of the easier legs, making a parallel error on the gully-spur 8 - picked it up before it got too catastrophic, but still dropped 1.5 minutes or so. Also 45 seconds or so at each of 4 and 22, losing my line a bit on both. Felt a bit stronger than I have for most of the last month, but still not competitive on speed - can't imagine I'll run too many national championships at elite level.

Rob Walter caught me 8 minutes at 13 (not so surprising after my indifferent start), but took a while to get away properly - he kept making small mistakes and I kept getting within sight of him. Also dicing at various times with Brian Poon, Richard Goonan and Rob Bennett (who threatened to emulate Bryan Keely's Rowdy Flat effort a few years back of passing me eight times in a course).

Think it will be bigger hills and less continuous detail next weekend, but we'll find out in due course.

Hill End is an 1870s gold mining town with a lot of historical plaques, and I noticed one which showed a chemist's ad for "Holtermann's Life Giving Drops". Unfortunately, there was no information provided on whether any of the ingredients in said drops were on the WADA prohibited list. I am also somewhat sceptical of some parts of Hill End's Wikipedia entry, which states "at its peak in the early 1870s it had a population estimated at 8,000 served by two newspapers, five banks, eight churches, nine adult book shops, thirty seven hot chip shops, a dagwood dog stand, four roller coasters and twenty-eight pubs". (Wikipedia does say (citation needed)).

C • Valerian 2

Event: Australian Orienteering Carnival 2017
 

Australian Sprint Championships at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst. Not competitive for speed (three from the bottom), but a reasonably smooth run - only time loss was perhaps 5-10 seconds at the second last where I started up a set of stairs I didn't need to. Also felt like I was pushing it reasonably hard compared to recent weeks (having Ciaran to chase through the middle part of the course helped). A course which kept you concentrating without being super-technical. No injury problems which was a plus after the preceding week.

As those who were there will know, this was also a very significant day in NSW's climatic history, and Bathurst was one of the most significant of all: the 31.5 degrees there was 2.1 above the previous September record, so far the largest margin of the day at a long-term site (although I'm still waiting for final numbers from Kerang). In all it looks like 22 of the long-term sites (16 in NSW, 5 in Victoria and 1 in Queensland) have set September records, with records set over around 80% of NSW.

C • Brodie 1

A little bit of ankle soreness still today - certainly would have given it a go had it not been the day before a race, but it is so I didn't. Hit the road this afternoon (a bit later than some) to Bathurst, with Gundagai the Friday night target, and lots of temperature variation after dark to keep myself amused (ranging from 20 on top of Kyeamba Gap to 9 in the dips before Tarcutta only 20km or so later).

Hasn't been an ideal couple of weeks leading in with two nuisance-level injuries in rapid succession. This weekend I'm hoping only for respectability, but next Saturday is the one where I'll really be aiming for a result; will do pretty well to match my third from last year.

Might have been a bit of a token session but it was good to get out running again. Ankle at nuisance-level discomfort (perhaps improving a little as the run went on), and no sign of a flare-up afterwards, so I think this one might be behind me (in the nick of time). Didn't feel great as a run but that's often the case for the first run back after an injury. Made a brief stop en route to drop my Yes in the postbox.

Continuing to improve and would have gone out if it was a competition day, but it isn't, so left it another day. Felt unusually good on the ride in this morning (probably partly because it was such a nice morning and partly because I'd had more sleep than I usually do).

Ankle has improved significantly today and is hopefully only a day or two away from being properly runnable (there's still discomfort walking on it, but not the I-don't-really-want-to-be-doing-this pain that there was yesterday). Fine in the pool, if a little uninspired. I'd got word of another attack in the Australian before starting (the message I got about it suggested that I might have been named personally in it, but that wasn't the case), but that didn't seem to rattle me very much.

Watching the forecasts for the weekend closely. Still looks like record or near-record temperatures in Bathurst on Saturday (probably 28-30) but a change on Saturday night which should take fire danger out of play for Sunday. A good chance of the first ever September 40 in NSW on Saturday (coincidentally, the nearest miss previously - a 39.6 at Wanaaring - was the last time we were in Bathurst for a national carnival, in 2004). Looks like a nasty fire weather situation for northern NSW and southern Queensland on Sunday - extreme fire danger is something rarely experienced in southeast Queensland, and I don't think Brisbane is prepared in anywhere near the way that Melbourne, or even Sydney, is for something really big, so hopefully it doesn't happen.

Swim at Northcote, not too inspiring but not too bad either.

Running hadn't formed part of my plans today in any case, but just in case it had, some quite sharp soreness had developed overnight at the front of my left ankle - sort of feels like it would warm up, but it isn't great (quite painful to walk on, especially in my work shoes). Hopefully it sorts itself out fairly soon, but it might put a bit of a hole in this week's plans (or, to put it another way, create an enforced taper). Reminds me a little bit of the injury I had at the end of the Easter 2011 carnival (which I attributed at the time to overuse of the accelerator pedal in a hire car without cruise control, not relevant here).

Woke up to hear on AM someone saying that the Gold Coast was becoming a free-for-all for property developers. I was under the impression that the Gold Coast already was a free-for-all for property developers, and had been for about the last 50 years.

C • clarification 2