Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Finally took properly to a section of the coast (although only a smallish one, from Bronte to a bit past Clovelly), after going up through Queens Park. Thought I'd run out of time to get as far around as Coogee. Certainly an improvement on Wednesday, although the climb back from the coast was still fairly hard work; no sign of injury trouble though. More humid than it has been, and got to see some evidence of the June 2016 storm - having to divert up through the cemetery because the track below it was taken out by a landslide.

This will be the last humid run I do for a while, because I'm off to foreign fields again - Geneva (with a bit of Spain and Norway on the side). Flying out of Sydney tonight, assuming the light show currently visible doesn't throw a spanner in the works.

I'm also indebted to Claire Davill for sharing with us a selection of the names which were used exactly once for South Australian babies last year. I'm not sure which parent(s) is/are the ones most likely to come to the attention of child protection authorities - those who called their daughter Fizza, those who called their son Meth, or those (presumably not of Vietnamese origin) who called their daughter Khe-Sanh.

C • A regular run 1

Plan A was to go to Wylie's Baths, an oceanside sea-water pool at Coogee. I've had a somewhat cursed experience with this pool and it was to strike again: my 2012 attempt to swim here was scuttled by a storm and in 2015 it didn't open in time. This time it was a new one - I arrived to learn the pool was full of stingers. (Don't think a run this morning would have gone well - felt sleepy for a long time, which might well have been trying to get up early the morning after the conference dinner).

Not feeling especially like being stung, I switched to plan B, which was the rather less scenic surrounds of the UNSW aquatic centre after the end of the day's conference proceedings. The swim itself was reasonably routine, but had a couple of short-lived episodes of knee soreness later in the swim - not sure why.

Definitely not one of my better running days. Started out towards Maroubra with the intention of coming back along the coast and aiming for 90 minutes, but felt pretty awful from the start, even on the downhill sections, and by the time I got to the beach settled for coming more or less straight back. Felt a bit better after a bit of a break before coming up from the water, although it was still one of those days where the traffic stops were a blessing rather than a curse. Suspect I'm fighting off an illness of some kind - have been feeling a bit congested although without a lot of other symptoms.

My route did take me past the scene of yesterday morning's incident. Looks like the errant driver drove straight through the end of a T-intersection and through the wall.

10x1 minute on/1 minute off down at Centennial Park. Felt a bit out of sorts when I started - and I don't think I can blame this on being nauseated by being exposed to 10 minutes of someone from the IPA talking on ABC News Breakfast - and pretty sluggish through the session as a whole, but picked up a little bit in the later reps. Calf tightness not an issue during the session, but again appeared a bit during the afternoon.

Nick Earl (aka the World's Fastest Climate Scientist - he's done mid-29s for 10k) was doing a supposedly identical session just down the road, but I suspect his 'off' minutes were faster than my 'on' ones.

Warm-up and down. Coped with the steep bit of the climb back better than I thought I would.

A bit of excitement in the neighbourhood this morning - someone managed to drive/roll their car into the Randwick cemetery. You will not be surprised to hear that a breath test (allegedly) returned a positive result.

C • Headline 2

Given how tight my calf was yesterday afternoon/evening I was in two minds about whether I should go out (it was still a bit tight this morning), but there were no issues once running. Headed for the flattest option available in the local area, essentially a lap of Centennial Park, which was perfectly satisfactory, and did manage to handle a sharpish climb back to base without any dramas. Not humid by Sydney February standards.

The conference sessions today weren't on my specific areas (that's tomorrow and Wednesday) so I was able to go around talks and focus on whatever looked interesting. The last time I was in this part of the UNSW campus was in the vicinity of control 14 at the NOL race in 2015, and I was able to put my navigational skills to good use in the morning in identifying the fastest route from conference room to coffee (it was conference coffee so nothing to get too excited about, but at least I didn't have to wait for too long in a queue for it).

Ended up a letdown after yesterday. Started with the intention of 2 hours, and the first 40 minutes or so were encouraging, if not quite as good as yesterday. This time, though, instead of starting iffily and warming up, the Achilles started flaring up about 40 minutes in and got progressively worse - not that it was excessively painful, but I was clearly limping and didn't want to do further damage. I sometimes think that I'm giving it away too easily in these situations at the moment, but there was enough post-run tightness in the calf to suggest that pushing much further would have been more trouble.

Hopefully it will be more settled this week, although it will be tested - I'm at a conference at UNSW this week and there aren't too many options around the local area which don't involve some sharp ups and downs: Centennial Park is perhaps the best of them.

A bit of a change of scene today: my parents were keen to go to a nursery in Mount Evelyn to check out plants for the new place (among other things), so I dropped them off and then went for a run on the Warburton rail trail, turning around somewhere between Wandin and Seville. I expected, and got, long gradual hills, and a decent amount of shade on a warmish day (about 25).

The first 2km was downhill (with obvious consequences for the finish), which was good for settling down, and from there it was a pretty solid run - had a decent amount in hand for when the hills did come, and handled them reasonably well. Achilles a bit sore in the first 10 minutes but fine after that. Not sure it was quite as good as the time suggested, though - it's the first time I've been under 5.30 pace on a "normal" training run for more than a year. (Perhaps being more awake counteracts being warmer). Still, I'll definitely take it as a positive.