Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Felt somewhat better today and went out to street-O at Canterbury at least contemplating going for a run of sorts if the warm-up felt OK. It didn't, so instead I had my first venture into power walkers for some years. This gets a bit of a bagging from some people out there, but it does provide a chance to do some low-level exercise and think about route choice at the same time - unlike running street-O score events, there is no chance of getting the lot.

Key decision point for me was deciding after the first eight controls whether to be ambitious and go for a couple of further-flung high-scoring controls, or come in more directly but with the risk of finishing 5-10 minutes early with nothing else gettable. I chose the former, and there's nothing like an impending deadline to get the competitive juices going - especially when I made a bit of a mess of the passage under Canterbury station and had 90 seconds to get from one end of the carpark to the other. Made it with a couple of seconds to spare. (Another street-O regular, who shall remain nameless, was in a similarly tight position and got there with a technique which I think might well have got him the dreaded red disc on an Olympic course).

Felt pretty tight even walking, particularly in the first half, so I think I made the right decision.

C • I started 5 mins late, with... 1

Back felt a bit better than last night but still not great. Was wondering how it would respond to this session but it mostly worked out OK, with just a couple of exercises a bit awkward. Did seem to loosen up a bit during the session (at least that's what the instructor thought).

Then took to the pool. Thought it would be a more difficult session than it turned out to be, but still not great.

Back came up badly again in the afternoon. At least this gave the physio (who I was booked in to see anyway) something to look at, and work on - perhaps the one positive of the last couple of days is that bringing this issue to a head might make it easier to look properly at trying to identify and fix it.

In Sydney for work for the day - and yet another abortive visit to the ocean baths at Coogee. This time it was an unusually high tide combined with a large swell sending big waves right into the pool - it was open but I suspected I'd find it pretty heavy going. Had hoped then to get something in at the end of the day at the UNSW pool, but the meeting went on too long to get that in before going to the airport.

Back was pretty horrible sitting down this afternoon (which is unusual). Hopefully this isn't a portent for tomorrow.

Body still letting me down - at a level where I can run but not particularly comfortably. Realised fairly early on that I was going to be limited, at best, up hills but decided I'd try and press on and see if things loosened up on the mostly downhill/flat terrain in the later part of the first loop. This turned out not to be the case and I finished up at the end of the first loop. That was still enough to do most of the fun bits, particularly the butterfly loops in the granite at the far end. Made a couple of mistakes here (probably a minute at 7, 30 seconds and 11), largely through not working out properly how much was mapped on the 1:2000 enlargement.

Obviously disappointing not to feel up to doing the full distance, but at least for a first outing the terrain this gives me something that I might be able to build on. Next week will be a further test (unusual to have so many opportunities so early in the season).

It was a good event as always, and some pretty fierce competition at the front end.

C • Ignore the rocks 1

About the best that can be said for this is that I got round, pretty unconvincingly (in a physical sense). Quite an interesting sprint area navigationally, making good use of a small campus, and the course had a reasonable amount of route choice - as evidenced by the fact that I was sort of in proximity to Jenny from #4 through to #14 and we took different routes on almost every leg (usually without a lot of difference between them). I think we ended up propping up the results list on A, unless there were some late finishers who were even slower.

The Australian did run something this morning (lead story on the front page, no less), but it could have been a lot worse - created a vibe of something dodgy but very little specific (and the specific is easily demonstrated to be wrong, which means we won't have to spend a week crunching numbers demonstrating why it's wrong). It's slightly surreal that being attacked - albeit not by name - on the front page of a national newspaper almost feels routine.

C • Pathetic rag 7

Woke up very stiff this morning (just to remind me that there are reasons not to keep pushing through on days when things are playing up). Still not great in the afternoon but took to the water after the end of the workshop sessions, which did seem to loosen me up, eventually. Northcote pool not as crowded as I thought it might be on a Friday evening (albeit a relatively cool one). Might be in for some unwelcome press attention over the next few days, and spent a greater proportion of this session than was healthy thinking about it.

Was hoping to do something longer today and had the 5.15 wake-up accordingly, but it didn't work out, with back iffy and also feeling a bit sniffly - worked out within 10 minutes or so that this was not a day to push boundaries and it was time to think 'minimum viable session'. Might give it another go tomorrow (when the workshop start time is also later).