Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Foot improved a bit but still not runnable, so took to the water again once down at Blairgowrie for the weekend. Might have eaten a bit close to this but otherwise felt reasonable (and I don't think I'll get tired of the view any time soon, although it was a bit concerning to see the pyroculumus from the Bunyip fire.

Today's fires have alerted us to some of Victoria's quirkier placenames; the Country Fire Authority issued an advice for Dogs Grave, Flourbag and Hogtown, while other warnings covered Happy Go Lucky and Peter the Swede.

And one positive I'm drawing from the week's events is that the acres of newsprint that the Australian is devoting to George Pell Is Innocent OK articles is space that they're not using to attack us.

C • Peter the Swede is definite... 1

C • Peter the Swede is definite... 1

A bit of a late start after a birthday conversation with Cassie (which revealed that Norwegian schools have something we don't - yesterday was a ski day for Max's school). Slightly annoying at the start because someone in my lane was doing alternate laps freestyle and breaststroke and we kept having to go around each other, but settled down and ended up reasonably smooth, if not very fast.

Rode in to work after that. Somewhat to my surprise there did not appear to be any media representatives present outside the Melbourne Assessment Prison. (The return trip was one of those which gave the impression that all traffic laws are suspended when it hits 38 degrees). To cap off a busy week for Victoria's legal system, my guess as to who Lawyer X was was correct (I'd remembered her name from a cameo appearance in the 1996 election campaign), although I don't think I was exactly alone in working this out.

Foot was worse than I thought (a message I got running for a train this morning) - similar to the start of the month so I certainly can't blame driving this time. Since it was street-O championships night, I thought I'd better put in an appearance with a view to making a decision on warming up whether to run or walk. This was answered pretty quickly.

St. Helena is a hilly area (last encountered at the far end of long runs from my old place). Some good route choice, both in deciding what controls to get and in some cases on the routes in between (there were three viable routes on the leg from 5 to 16, for example - or four if you count not doing that leg at all, the best option if you were on A). Not walking quite as fast as last week - feeling a little unsteady on the foot on the rougher group - but happy with the route planning, and made it in with ten seconds to spare rather than four last week. Numbers a bit down, for which I'll blame the heat.

As someone said today, you would have been rather surprised, say, 30 years ago had you known that the task of averting nuclear war would one day be (largely) in the hands of Imran Khan and Donald Trump.

A rather unconvincing run, but loosened up eventually after the first 10 minutes to sort of shuffle around, so at least it was something to put on the board. At least it was a nice morning for it, with cool air along the floor of the Darebin Creek valley (the last morning for a while when this is going to be the case). A bit of right ankle soreness in the last few minutes, which removed the temptation to try to push it out for a bit longer.

Gave it a go but didn't show any signs of warming up inside a few minutes (in fact things were getting worse rather than better). Mind a bit elsewhere too - I've got some major IPCC work due this week which is a bit all-consuming in the mental sense, although I feel my head's more above water than below it at the moment.

It would be fair to say that a certain amount of schadenfreude was on display in my social media feeds today. Soon-to-be-former Cardinal Pell wasn't getting a lot of sympathy in the office either - it hasn't been forgotten that for a while he was one of News Limited's large stable of climate sceptic commentators (one wonders why). Our former CEO famously laid into something he'd written during a Senate Committee hearing about 10 years back.

Took me a while to get going properly (and spent time working through a variation of one of the exercises), but eventually felt like I was getting somewhere. At least I didn't blow up the way I did after last week's event, which I take to be a positive.

Then on to the pool. Spent more time than I probably should have wondering what the reaction would be at work to our latest outing on Sky News After Dark (the answer was pretty much nothing). Swimming nothing to get too excited about, but did seem to loosen me up and finished off OK.

In time, Sky News After Dark will probably be getting excited about what I was doing this afternoon too, but not for a year or two.

Little Forest. Had entered course 1 but given that it was only my second run back I had no great expectations, thinking that 45 minutes would be a good distance (probably should have switched to course 2 but that would have mucked the organisers around for no good reason). It's a nice area, with some good subtle gully spur, some very open forest and bits of regrowth (which the map hasn't completely caught up with).

In the first few controls I was far from certain that I'd get to 45 minutes, but a stop to work out where I was when I came across too high at 4 (probably dropping a minute or so) seemed to do me good, as I was running not too badly thereafter, except on the steeper hills. Got a reminder that I haven't done much intense stuff lately on the very steep climb into 12 (not runnable, but one of those ones where you have to throw yourself at the hill to avoid slipping backwards) - think it's the first time I've had a (small) mid-course spew. I'd already decided 12 was going to be the end of the day's proceedings for me.

Came up OK afterwards (unlike last week), so hopefully this is another bit of progress. Hoping to be up to doing something properly in two weeks time (will have more confidence about this if I actually start getting through runs over an hour in training).