Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Easter sprint relay. My time was flattered a bit by Jim's generosity as my previous runner (he walked down the chute after tagging so my time didn't start until I was halfway to the first control, giving me a undeserved fastest split), but still a run I was happy with. Felt as if I was moving reasonably well by my standards of the last few months, and only technical issue was a slightly poorly executed exit from 1. The team was Abi George, Jim, myself and Jenny; we ended up much as expected. Even once you account for the timing quirk, I think I was still within 50% of Simon, a recent benchmark.

On the way to the last control I had to negotiate Hillsong people doing whatever Hillsong people do on Good Friday. As far as I know nobody said that I was going to go to Hell for running on such a day.

Resurrected for the Family Relays were some genuinely retro fabric numbers (sufficiently old that they bore the logo of Bunnings from an era before anyone from outside WA had ever heard of them).

Today didn't count for anything substantial, but gives me some confidence going into the weekend. Bruce and Jon will be hard to match for the top two, but at least I might be competitive with the likes of Tooms and Matthew Stocks for third if things go well.

C • Numbers 1

Would have preferred to do this in a country pool, but like the NT, country WA seems to regard any day below 30 as unacceptably cold for swimming and all the pools were closed for the season, so it had to wait for arrival in Perth. Ended up going to Victoria Park, this being the closest to East Perth where we're staying. Pleasant enough, although felt as if I took a long time to loosen up. Thought there might have been more people around given that it's school holidays.

The forecasts have been promising "winter is coming" with an ominousness more normally associated with Game of Thrones. It does look like a very significant cold outbreak for the time of year, perhaps even more so further south with a realistic chance of snow on the Stirlings (and an equally realistic chance of a sub-10 maximum somewhere, which would be a first for April in WA if it happens). Hoping, with some support from the models, that the heaviest rain will pass through before tomorrow's event starts.

I was wondering if I was going to get a sighting today of a critically endangered species, but it was only posters and an office of the Environment Minister in Merredin, not the Minister herself.

A classic road trip run for me from Cocklebiddy - pick a random side track and do an out-and-back on it. (As it happens, this track ends up at Eyre, scene of one of my more noteworthy Nullarbor runs, but it's 56km away, not 12km like it was that time, and described in the notice at the roadhouse as "extreme 4WD"). Was pretty early in the day and didn't feel terribly awake, but the good news is that foot soreness vanished after the first two or three minutes and has not re-appeared.

Spent most of the rest of the day on the road, a lot more relaxed than the previous two days, getting closer and closer to civilisation before breaking out into farmland just short of our overnight stop of Southern Cross. Norseman's population has dropped by 50% from 2001 to 2016 and it looks like it, but it was still good to get some fruit for the first time in a couple of days (you can't take it across the WA border).

As it happens, an e-mail lobbed into my in-box today advertising Run Forrest: "Think undulating hills, flowing rivers, dense fern gullies and the cool, fresh air of the Ranges.". I think it reasonable to assume that this is the Victorian Forrest and not the WA one.

Not sure whether I should be amused or alarmed by the fact that the Institute of Public Affairs has called for a royal commission into my activities (not naming me personally, but it's my work they're referring to) as part of its election manifesto, along with such crowd-pleasing measures as selling the ABC.

C • Speaking of the ABC 5

There's got to be something very 21st century about being woken up, when in one of the more remote places in the country, at 4am by a sound from my phone, which turned out to be a news alert about the Notre Dame fire (probably as well I didn't actually read it or I certainly wouldn't have got back to sleep).

Today's run was a novelty for more than its location. Forrest is a significant airport with two 1500-metre runways. Historically it was a refuelling stop in the days when planes didn't have the range to get across the Nullarbor, and still fills that role for light aircraft crossing Australia, but it's also big enough to be a viable emergency landing strip for anything up to 737s. (What would actually happen if a 737 did rock up is an open question; Forrest has no stairs to unload its passengers, and I suspect the fuel that gets brought in up the track on a road train every 3 months wouldn't be enough to refuel a 737, either). Presumably Airservices/CASA pay the airport a substantial retainer to be on standby as I can't see that it could possibly be a viable business otherwise.

The manager suggested I go for a run on the runways early in the morning (too early for any aircraft to put in an appearance). This seemed like a novelty worth taking up once (it would get pretty boring done regularly). The run was a bit sluggish but generally qualified as a fairly standard morning run. A little bit of right foot soreness (my standard outback driving overuse injury) wore off quickly; it's a bit worse tonight so will see how it feels tomorrow.

I didn't expect the drive out to be easy and it wasn't, although the first 5km were the worst of the lot (it wasn't just that I was getting tired and looking into the sun last night), and the last 40km into Eucla seemed a lot easier at the end than they did at the start. Car (and its tyres) held up fine. The remaining 280km of the day to Cocklebiddy seemed like the easiest thing we'd done in a long time - especially for me because I wasn't driving. (it was easier for Dad than it was last time he did it, in 1977, too - on that occasion we couldn't get accommodation at Madura and had to press on another 100km to Cocklebiddy at dusk, picking our way through the roos to do so).

C • Forrest 12

Didn't plan to go out today and wouldn't really have had time for it, as we were on the road for most of the daylight hours.

I'd gone to bed last night not really expecting to get into Forrest given the large cloudband approaching them, but they only got 2mm overnight so we thought it was a goer. We'd been warned not to expect to average much over 20 km/h on the Eucla-Forrest track, so needed to be out of Ceduna at first light to be reasonably confident of making Forrest by darkness.

The track was certainly slow going - rocky for much of the way (the occasional clay pans were a definite relief) - but probably no worse than some of the tracks we use to get into orienteering parking areas, it's just that there was 125km of it. Took us about 5 hours in from the highway in the end. Still got to get out tomorrow, and those who've been following me for a while will know that that has been known to be an issue for me in the past, but as far as I can tell everything on the car is still intact, which certainly wasn't the case at the equivalent point of the ill-fated Kalumburu expedition.

C • Contact 2

Orienteering at Pewsey Vale before a long day on the road. Both my body and my mind seemed to be elsewhere today - felt rather weak and couldn't run many of the hills, and also struggled for concentration, dropping time at 4, 5, 8 and 9 (2 minutes or so at 5 being the worst of them). Thought others might get well under my time but it looks like the kids also struggled with it (M16 were running the same course).

Headed off more or less as soon as I finished, with a target of Ceduna. That side of things went pretty smoothly; saw a lot of very dry country, and even some sand drifts left over from the duststorm a couple of weeks ago. Looking at the cloudband making its way across the south-east of Western Australia as I write makes me think that things might not be happening as planned tomorrow, though...

First full day of the road trip, mostly in familiar territory (although the climb to the summit of Mount Zero was something I'd only previously done in 2003, and it's probably almost as long since I diverted into the centre of Stawell - deserted at 8.45 on a Saturday morning, which it won't be next weekend - in search of a coffee).

The run was one excursion into unfamiliar territory - my first foray into the Little Desert National Park, in its extreme eastern tip near Dimboola - an out-and-back from the Horseshoe Bend campground along a riverside track. Quite a pleasing run once it was going - no back issues (clearly a couple of hours driving doesn't trigger it) and moving quite well in the second half with my first sub-5.30 kilometres for a whole. The Little Desert was actually the scene of one of the first major public environmental campaigns in Australia, being saved from clearing in the late 1960s by a Liberal environment minister - those were the days. (Admittedly he was "encouraged" by their losing a safe seat in a by-election fought largely over the issue).

After that it was onwards, to a day which ended in Adelaide. I would say that the drive was made to go quickly by listening in to my football team's glorious victory, but the ABC were broadcasting the Geelong-GWS game instead.

And there's definitely an election on - Boothby is the one genuinely marginal seat in SA and has accordingly been carpet-bombed with that distinctly SA form of campaigning, posters stuck to power poles. (It's not too hard to tell that Cross Road is a boundary, because all the posters on the left hand side are for someone and all the posters on the right hand side are for someone else - with the identity of the "someone else" changing part way as it becomes the Boothby-Adelaide boundary instead of the Boothby-Sturt one).

C • We use to be in Boothby whi... 6