Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

The Wagga aquatic centre was conveniently close by, and on the way to the sprint, so I thought it was a good opportunity for a session, chalking up another pool swum in (apparently there are 900-odd public pools in Australia and someone's embarked on a quest to get the lot; I think I'm in the 40s). Stiff early on but got into it pretty well in the second half.

C • Pool visiting 1

I was originally thinking of sitting a day out but thought I might as well at least give this a go and see how it felt. The answer was not terribly good, which is a pity because it seemed a pretty interesting course on a small area (long since being past the stage of beating all the kids, I'd set my target time as Leith Soden's 18, after the numerous close contests we had at Sprint Adelaide). Standing up for a while beforehand worked for me at the Victorian Long but not so much today (perhaps four days in a row was asking too much).

Commentary seemed to go pretty well today, although the results feed wasn't really giving me all the information I wanted so I fell back a fair bit on old-school methods (i.e. a start list and a watch).

Later in the evening, I made a confirmed sighting of a rug shop closing down sale where the business in question actually appears to have closed down.

Australian Relays, 2nd leg in M45 (with Dion and Warwick). Expected a ferociously steep course and got one - right from the start with a full frontal assault on the escarpment. Walked up that (but so did everyone else), but then dropped a minute at the control, then another 2-3 minutes on 2. That pretty much sank this run as a going concern; the rest wasn't actually too bad, although slow except in the downhill section from 2-5, but the result was pretty disappointing. Brett caught me at 6 but then dropped back again (with some help from me having a short split).

We ended up 6th. Had I got down to 45 it would have only got us one more place, but would have been a result I was reasonably happy with. Bruce did 35 for the Australian team, which won comfortably. At least I managed to string three days of running together for the first time since July; baby steps...

Took the back roads back to the Schools venue at Borambola (I was speaking at the opening ceremony), seeing road signs which didn't look like they'd changed in 50 years, doubling the Nangus general store's daily takings (I bought an ice cream), and doing a section on the Old Hume Highway and wondering how many decades ago this winding dirt road through the hills, barely two lanes wide, was the actual Hume Highway (my guess would be pre-WW2). Also found myself for a while behind a ute bearing the best business name I've seen for a while, Licensed To Kill (pest controllers).

Weird orienteering dreams department: on Saturday night I had a dream which involved picking up a Kangaroo Crossing map with no contours or rock (only vegetation, tracks and watercourses). Hopefully the real one on Saturday is complete.

And there are enough orienteers to have a presence even in a town the size of Wagga: I started the day encountering an MFR carload at a coffee shop, and finished it by encountering Lanita, Asha and Tara (all of whom can be well pleased with their top-10 W21E results yesterday) in a gelato shop.

Australian Long Championships, Split Rock. My main objective for this week is simply to get around all five championship races so that part of the mission was accomplished. Back was threatening to tighten on any climb so I wasn't attempting to run many of them, but managed to keep plugging away on the flat and downhills, and most importantly made no significant errors - especially satisfied to nail the downhill diagonal 11. Probably close to the upper end of what I'm currently capable of, but still rather frustrating when you know that if you were fitter you could be doing this 20% faster. Probably not going to do much about that in the next week (a technical middle next weekend might be my best chance in that respect).

Ended up just missing the top 10 in 11th (and would have missed it by a bit more had Jon and Matt Stocks not led each other astray). Only had one top-ten split which says something for the consistency (and lack of pace) of this run. Carsten and Bruce 52, Craig 53, Andy 55.

Oceania Sprint Championships, just below halfway in M45. This was probably around the result I expected but still revealing as to how far off the pace I was. The first part in the buildings was pretty technical and my splits weren't too bad, but struggled more once up on the hill - mostly through not registering properly that just because it was in the bush didn't mean the scale was 1:10000 (and thus overshooting the short 11 in a fairly significant way, dropping a minute or so). Back not too bad, although threatening to cause trouble up a couple of the hills; fitness definitely well short of requirements.

At Northcote in between lots of paper-reading on what was supposed to be a public holiday Friday. Session seemed to go pretty smoothly even if the wind was knocking me around a bit.

Something we see a bit less than we did a couple of years ago is media coverage of business groups complaining about how many gazillions this particular holiday is going to cost the economy. Obviously they don't count the income of all of the establishments on Station Street which were going gangbusters.

At this stage, just getting something on the board which would have been routine not so long ago is a plus. This run was fairly sluggish and lethargic, but apart from brief hip twinges there were no injury difficulties. Also took on something vaguely resembling a hill out of Darebin Parklands without my body freaking out, although that might have been just because I was fired up after an encounter with a boisterous dog and its unconcerned owner.

First time for a while I've done the gentle descent down the path through the west side of Ivanhoe, too, seeing in the process that half of the very long-lived Carl Kirkwood For Preston sticker has finally disappeared from a power pole next to the path (if I recall correctly, the last election in which he was a candidate was in 1992). His political passion was cemeteries; I guess someone has to care about them (and, if you're a backbencher and aren't going to be a minister, finding a specialist niche which is your own isn't the worst of ideas).

Early Yarra Boulevard session. Felt rather lethargic, particularly in the earlier stages - hills were hard going, and as usual got blown away by some of the more regular cyclists; suspect running today wouldn't have worked out that well. Probably a bit better later on. At least getting onto the Boulevard is an easier process now (and will be easier still once they finish working on the old bridge).