Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Out at Croydon Hills (brought to you by the number 36). Much improved on anything else this week - a solid effort if not quite as good as a couple of weeks ago, and handled the numerous hills OK. Ran an old street-O course (not on Maprun); thought I might have had a decent chance of getting all 20 controls inside an hour but settled for 19 in the end. Less humid than earlier this week, too.

This is classic 1980s suburbia but obviously isn't quite as white-bread as it looks because a sign at a local church advertised a "Karen speaking service". Somewhat to my surprise, election signs were nowhere to be seen even though this is the strongest Liberal part of a highly marginal Liberal seat - maybe Maroondah Council doesn't allow them?

C • Maroondah 2

C • Karen-speaking 7

This hasn't been a particularly good week. Drew a blank again in the morning, but managed to get myself out at lunchtime, fairly unconvincingly - this was definitely minimum viable session territory. Took the opportunity to explore the Darebin path and the Yarra trail post flood peak (a couple of bits of the latter are still under water, but you can get around them), seeing most of the expected flood impacts as well as a few large trees which have been uprooted (presumably by the force of water as they were all pointing downstream). Quite humid.

A physio session this afternoon was overdue, and will hopefully improve things for the weekend.

Needed to be up for it for what I'd planned for this morning and it was fairly evident that I wasn't, so decided to swap my plans for today and tomorrow (which in turn means probably a less ambitious weekend). Eventually woke up about 15 minutes into this session, and from there it was pretty straightforward. Sunglare a bit of an issue.

Followed up with a lunchtime session from work, not sparkling but steady enough. Set about starting to make some inroads into the CBD itself (or at least its northern fringe); one of the pluses of central Melbourne's layout is that going into the laneways means you can often get 1-2k out of a block without having to do any major road crossings (although Flagstaff Gardens got a guernsey too). As always in the CBD, getting my watch to actually recognise where I was going was occasionally an issue, although I've seen worse. (Although it's not a tall building, this is not the first time I've had issues with it around the prison, which makes me wonder if they use jammers?).

Warmest run so far this spring (about 25), although with cloud having moved in and intermittent spots of light rain, it didn't really feel like it.

Another day when things weren't going especially smoothly, although probably a bit better than yesterday. Started thinking I'd do well to manage anything much; intervals were a non-starter but did manage to get myself something long enough to be respectable. Somewhat better in the last 15 minutes which hopefully augurs well for my ambitions tomorrow. Warmest run I've done for a while.

In Canberra. Couldn't find my watch and assumed I'd left it in Melbourne (it turned out it had fallen out of my bag at work yesterday and was sitting on the floor of the Canberra office when I got in this morning), so decided on an alternative way of getting myself a track, namely running the local Maprun course (there being a conveniently located one in Forrest). I didn't have a printer either so drew myself a map on the back of one of the NSW Championships maps which was still in my bag - but forgot to draw one of the streets on which confused me straight out of the start...

As a run this was pretty dismal - at the lower end of my Summer Series-style runs, with back troublesome and needing numerous breaks to settle it down. The controls part of the exercise didn't start too well either as I never registered at the first one I went to (looking at the map afterwards I'd put it on the wrong side of the road), but that improved from there. Quite a lot of damp grass with yesterday's rain - shoes were pretty wet by the end. Obviously didn't get a particularly optimal route as I see that Oscar Brown only needed 500 metres more to get 20 controls than I needed for 16 (including the one I didn't register at), although I guess he was on home ground. (I suspect I would have had plenty of goes at a Forrest Maprun had such a thing existed in 1987).

The presentation seemed to go very well (and had a much bigger turnout than last time), but now I'm sitting in Canberra Airport waiting for a thunderstorm to clear in Melbourne...(You can't really blame Qantas for this, although some probably will).

Monday morning Pilates, although this time on the way to somewhere else - I'm headed to Canberra for work this afternoon and Tuesday (unfortunately it didn't quite work to combine this with the NSW Championships weekend). Definitely felt as if I was stiff and wouldn't have appreciated a run today, although the Pilates session itself went OK, more or less.

And because of the aforementioned trip this was done at Coburg on the way to the airport (not for the first time in recent months). On my original flight schedule I thought I'd have to do this before Pilates to get in and had therefore set my alarm for 5.15 (a big ask having only got home just before 10 last night), but woke up to see a message on my phone to say my flight had been delayed, making it feasible to do the swim after instead. (Needless to say, I did not succeed in getting back to sleep in the extra hour made available to me for the purpose).

The swim didn't feel especially energetic, but was a bit faster than recent ones (the 25-metre pool probably helps a bit there). Coburg isn't as overheated as a lot of indoor pools are, either.

NSW Long Championships, 3rd. Not as good physically as yesterday - back wasn't brilliant, particularly in the first half, and generally found it a bit of a slog with all the fallen timber (although I wasn't exactly alone in that respect). Pretty much clean, although at my pace I would want to have been. Anthony Nolan had a very good run and I don't think I would have beaten him even with a much better performance. Steve did 46 (and of the W45s on the same course, Jo did 53, although I did finish ahead of Belinda and Tracy).

It was a long haul back, of which the first four hours back to the Hume were as much of a slog as the course, with potholes in considerable abundance (which didn't come as any great surprise). The NSW government will no doubt throw money at this - it's an election year, after all - but I can't imagine workers (or equipment) will be any easier to find for this than they are for anything else in regional Australia at the moment.

C • Looks like a rather bland course... 6