Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

As a non-drinker I don't have experience of hangovers, but I suspect they're probably a bit like the way I felt this morning, after a very late night (by my standards) and eating far too much salty food. Left it as late as I decently could to get out to the Glenlyon event in the hope that I might be more awake, but went in with few expectations.

This lived down to expectations - not much energy and not really running hills (of which there were a few, although not as many as there can be here). Reasonably accurate in the first half but in the second half lost a bit of time on #8 (overshot) and #10 (didn't realise how far down the hill it was), then managed to overshoot the last control as well. Was as far down the list as I deserved to be. Area feels thicker than I remember, although Bruce's time suggest it isn't.

Didn't have much of a run the way after the 2007 election either (though I miss the days when a 38.54 10k was a bad run).

It looks increasingly likely that Labor will form a narrow majority; giving likely seats to the current leaders, there are probably eight genuine toss-ups (six Labor-Liberal, one Labor-Green) and Labor needs to win two of them. (Here I'm counting Brisbane, Bennelong, Gilmore, Deakin, Menzies, Lyons, Sturt and Moore). Early indications from counting today are that postal votes are not skewing as conservative as they have in the past (their historic pattern is factored into current projections), which may strengthen Labor's position further.

Some of the geographic sweeps are remarkable; depending on how the remaining doubtfuls fall, it is within the realms of possibility that the Liberals could hold no seats in Adelaide or Perth, none which border on Sydney Harbour, and none in Melbourne west of Eastlink. They've also lost most of their remaining moderates in the House (although there are still some in the Senate), which may or may not accelerate the process of trying to follow the US Republican lead, except that being a party that writes off most urban areas and becomes a party of regional areas and outer suburbs is going to struggle to put together a majority in Australia. Partly that's a function of population distribution (Australia is more urbanised), partly it's a function of Australia not really having the racial identity politics which mean that even in cities, large majorities of whites vote Republican in the Deep South, and partly it's that we don't have industrial rust belts on the same scale or in strategic locations - in the US, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania are crucial swing states, here it's Hunter, Hunter and Hunter...

The Victorian Liberals also seem to keep assuming that everyone else hates Dan Andrews as much as they do. There were swings from Labor to One Nation/UAP (with the Liberal vote basically static) in numerous seats in Melbourne's outer north, west and southeast, but none did anything other than turn 15% Labor seats into 10% ones (or, in La Trobe's case, strengthen its Liberal margin). I could never work out why anyone was expecting an anti-lockdown backlash in Corangamite or McEwen when all of the former and two-thirds of the latter were outside greater Melbourne.

The most entertaining result so far is that all the millions Clive Palmer spent, on national Senate vote share, UAP is currently narrowly trailing Legalise Cannabis Australia. This will be relegated to second most entertaining result if the aforementioned Legalise Cannabis Australia manage to beat Pauline Hanson to the last Queensland Senate seat (an outside chance but not a zero one).

C • It would be nice 2

C • Antony 13

A couple of random sporting takes on the election noted by others on social media:

(a) in the AFL era, every conservative government (federal or state/territory) which has stood for re-election on a weekend when Essendon has lost has been defeated itself - most famously on Preliminary Final weekend 1999. (I would like to thank my football team for their sacrifice here).

(b) the Canberra Raiders defeated the team supported by the Prime Minister on two successive weekends. (There's a bit of an asterisk on this - Scott Morrison is still technically PM until Anthony Albanese is sworn in tomorrow - but you know what I mean).

C • Election day results 1

1 - Splits

One of those days where the run was somewhat incidental to the day, and not surprisingly after several hours on my feet either setting up or handing out, it wasn't much good. Back was troublesome throughout and had to stop a number of times to settle it down.

The virtual wheel, for the second time in a row, came up with a location convenient to what I was doing (29), sending me down the road from my Northcote booth to finish off most of what I hadn't already done in Princes Hill, plus a bit extra in Royal Park. There have been times in the past when I have used election day runs to do a polling booth tour but there was only one this time, Princes Hill Primary (which must have been a nightmare for the parties to staff because there are so many entry points to the grounds). Most memorable sight here was two UAP people - absent from my booth, where even the Liberals (who got 8%) didn't turn up - sitting on the back of a ute, apparently unaware that their job was to engage voters and try to persuade them to their cause. Most likely their main interest was in getting a small piece of Clive Palmer's money (hopefully for them the cheque doesn't bounce).

Street numbers were perhaps a bit of an omen in the end - landed today on 1990, a year with a messy election result (which at one point looked like it might rest on voting delayed in north Queensland because of floods) but one which ended with a Labor win.

Felt like a routine session, but useful for loosening myself up (after sleeping particularly well). Pool was quiet today; we're getting to the part of the year where it's a place for the hard core.

Spent quite a bit of time thinking about tomorrow, as one might expect. I've been burnt before, but I think that the systematic issues with polls from 2019 (mostly undersampling low-engagement voters) have been addressed - they were pretty close to the mark in recent state elections - and am expecting a small Labor majority. As for the seats:

NSW: Reid, Robertson, Bennelong and (a bit of a smokey, because of continuing anger over the floods and their aftermath) Page.
Victoria: Chisholm, Higgins and Casey (the last of these hasn't got a lot of attention, but a respected sitting member is retiring and the margin is modest)
Queensland: Brisbane and Ryan. Don't think Labor will win Longman or Dickson (much as I'd like to see it); I expect some big swings to Labor in regional Queensland as the Adani-triggered swings in 2019 unwind, but not enough to gain any seats (just perhaps Flynn if it's a really good night)
WA: Swan and Pearce
SA: Boothby (don't think they'll quite win Sturt, although the Albanese visit there today suggests their polling is giving them a chance)
Tasmania: Braddon

I don't expect Labor to lose any seats to the Liberals; Lingiari is perhaps the one I consider at most risk (with a retiring long-serving member in a place where personal votes count for a lot).

I'll go for three new independent wins, Goldstein, Curtin and Nicholls, with Kooyong and Wentworth falling just short, but I won't be surprised to be wrong. I don't expect the Greens to win any Labor seats, but they could possibly win one or more of Higgins, Brisbane or Ryan instead of Labor.

C • Booth work 16

Lunchtime run from work, continuing to clear up Docklands loose ends when the GPS wasn't doing strange things (particularly in the vicinity of the prison, which may or may not have been a coincidence). Quite a reasonable run by lunchtime standards once I got rolling.

A bit of left calf tightness before the run, but not an issue once I was going.

1980, a year when Labor lost an election they thought they had a decent shot at winning, may not be the best of omens either.

A bit of a struggle today as well. Originally had plans for the hills of Eaglemont but decided 20 minutes or so in that it probably wasn't the day to push boundaries (and I hadn't really left myself enough time to do the areas I wanted within about an hour anyway), so settled for picking up one of the unclaimed streets on the Repat grounds - the other one will have to wait until the Covid testing site is gone - and then down Darebin Creek. Did settle into a reasonable rhythm in the second half, and had a stretch of over 30 minutes without traffic stops, as long an uninterrupted run as I've had for a while.

Only added one to my tally today. This takes us to 1976 and the first sighting of the Fraser government's "razor gang", presumably named by journalists who were old enough to remember the original razor gangs - it was the weapon of choice for those fighting over control of the cocaine trade in the inner east of Sydney in the late 1920s and 1930s. (Not a lot has changed in 90 years as far as the epicentre of that particular trade is concerned, although the ABC seems somewhat confused as to how much cocaine is actually used in Australia).

And while we may not miss Goerge W. as a President, we certainly miss him as a speaker; he was back today, pronouncing about "the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq" - "I mean, Ukraine".

C • Cocaine usage 1

Currently doing the annual update of the long-term Australian temperature data set, which means going through site inspection reports for the last year, which means looking at the list of all the wildlife found at observation sites last year. 2021's list: spiders, ants, wasps, hornets, a frog and a snake.

If yesterday was good, today wasn't - felt sleepy and disengaged and quickly realised I wasn't in the right mood or shape for intervals. Set about making a virtue of necessity by heading off to check out the booth I'll be working at on Saturday and scout good places to put up signs, having first passed a house which had posters up for just about every anti-vax candidate in existence, moving on quickly in case I caught something. (Maybe having a base nearby is why they picked Northcote Plaza as one of their riot sites?). A better run in the second half but never felt especially comfortable.

I was in an IOF working group meeting tonight where we started talking about social media channels and I went looking for any other WOCs which could potentially give rise to hashtag conflict for, say, #woc2022. This led me to discover what happens if you enter WOC into certain Chinese systems.

C • Where will you be at Saturd... 6

Morning session from near Westgarth station (in the name of logistics for end-of-day physio session), which meant heading west to fill in some more pieces of Brunswick East. A bit disorganised beforehand (I forgot to load the bike in the back of the car and had to go back for it), but the run was pretty good once I got through the first few minutes, on the sort of fresh morning you get when it's sunny after overnight rain. A bit slow but I think a bit of that might have been the GPS missing some of the more convoluted bits in laneways; completed the block south of Glenlyon and between Nicholson and Lygon. (Glenlyon Road is the Melbourne-Wills boundary, a bit further north than I thought it was; an enthusiastic Labor supporter on Glenlyon Road had signs on their fence for both the Melbourne and Wills candidates).

Taking the tally up to 1975 was possibly not a good omen for the weekend (maybe I should try and arrange to be sitting on 1983 on Saturday?). 1975 is within my lifetime but not really my memory for much, but I'm told that the family contribution to that year's events was that Dad's Apex club hitched up their food van and headed for Parliament House to sell the demonstrators sausages and beer (I'm not sure if the latter was entirely within the interest of maintaining public order in a potentially volatile situation).

Probably as well I didn't find out until after I finished my ride home why the police had blocked off King Street.

Monday morning Pilates. Didn't sleep that well last night; felt reasonably awake by the time I started this but back a bit less comfortable than it sometimes is - don't think trying to run would have ended terribly well. Improved through the session though.

News of the morning is that One Nation (who else?) have a how-to-vote card in Hawke which, if followed, would be an informal vote (two 10s, no 8).

A bit of a nothing swim - didn't feel as if anything was actually going wrong, but pretty slow. Still waiting for the clock to be fixed (I think I might be waiting a while).

Something I've occasionally taken note of is outdated Covid signs. Melbourne tends to be a bit more on the ball here than other places (we're used to things ramping up and down), although there are still plenty of no-longer-necessary QR codes in evidence (including on park benches). One highlight in this respect was seeing a sign last week in the building our Canberra office is in telling people not to enter if they've been in a state/territory with any cases in the last 14 days - hate to tell them this, but I think that ship has sailed. (You'll also see a reasonable number of signs around the place - Queensland had plenty - of March 2020 vintage saying not to enter if you've been overseas in the last month, which all of us know to ignore but must be offputting to any visitors).

C • International travel 1