Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Oh dear. Having had a decent run (apart from one dubious control) and a decent result yesterday, today went pear-shaped in spectacular style as my body did its best to shut down inside an hour. First started feeling ordinary on the (interesting) long leg, and through 9 and 10 quickly got to the stage of struggling to run one-contour hills. Knew I was in trouble at 11 (the drinks) when I was feeling dizzy on bending down for the water container; hoped that getting some water into me there would help, but things got no better (if anything they got worse), indicated by Bruce (who'd caught me at 11) putting probably close to a full minute into me on the 600-metre leg to 12, and when the (small) hill in the early part of 13 felt just as bad I decided this was more than just a bad patch and called it a day. The way things continued to feel in the process of jogging in did nothing to suggest I would have suddenly revitalised myself for another 35-40 minutes.

I'm assuming this was primarily a question of getting my hydration badly wrong; first warm day of spring syndrome (and with hindsight, the main problem was probably one of going into the day depleted after an afternoon yesterday which took out more than seemed to be the case at the time) - an indicator of this was that it was well into the evening before any replaced fluids came out the other end (just as well I didn't have to do a drug test). Better to (re-) learn this this weekend than in something more important, but it's still disappointing to come out of today with no result. It could be warm in Perth (hopefully not as warm as this coming weekend, which is currently expected to have near-record temperatures for this time of year, around 30), and it certainly will be warm in Brazil (although probably not Canada).

The trip home was long, but I wasn't doing much of the driving (in contrast to the equivalent trip on the same weekend in 2007, which I did solo), just 250km or so between Renmark and Ouyen. There was a certain amount of history repeating itself on this one - Bruce drove a fair proportion of the first 2000km of one of my earlier new cars (the one I drowned in Kalumburu), and I returned the favour this time. Not sure how the quantity of dust the new car has acquired in its first week will go down.

SA Middle Championships at Twigham. A decent run for quite a lot of it but, like most of the rest of the field, lost significant time on 7 (about 3 1/2 minutes in my case) - thought something was going on when I saw Bruce (2 minutes ahead) there. Initially we thought it was a misplaced control but I think it was actually a map issue on the spur above and potential attack points (people on other courses who were coming from different directions didn't have problems). Lost a bit of edge after that but managed to hold it together through to the end.

Ended up 4th behind Simon, Bruce and Matt, but closer to the lead than I would have expected - don't think Simon was well. (Might be a decent ranking score). Saw quite a bit of Matt out there as he lost time a few times and then passed me again.

Slightly different venue today, in the outdoor pool at Northcote because that best suited the morning logistics - not a bad spot for it actually (lots of greenery) but never really got going. Hit the road to South Australia this afternoon (in the company of Bruce, Mason and Torren),

A bit of a nothing session, drifting out of it later on and constrained in time by a massage appointment. Also lost a bit of time early on, but that was my decision - having seen via the radar that the downpour which accompanied my planned start time was only going to last for a few minutes. It rained somewhat less seriously for most of the first half before fining up, never enough to cause any real trouble.

Spotted en route was a sign on one of the Merri Creek path bridges was a sign saying the council was going to replace it with a new bridge above the 1:100 year flood level. Under normal circumstances I'd consider this a highly laudable aim, but it does seem slightly pointless in this case because if you actually did get a 1:100 year flood the Merri Creek path would probably be flooded in at least 50 other places. Also spotted en route was a classic old-style corner shop with a (fading) Streets sign out the front which reminded me of the video for Moving Pictures' What About Me (also featuring images of a dole queue, a commodity not in short supply in 1982, with some classic early 80s moustaches).

(This is not to be confused with the video for the Shannon Noll version, which looks like a Telstra ad).

C • New Bridge 1

Street-O at Bellfield, which sounds like home ground - and is for a lot of training runs - but I think I have to go back to 1999 for the last time I did an event here. On that occasion, we were greeted by a burnt-out car in the car park. Had we been a day earlier there might have been a quasi-repeat performance (the car of a certain APer was found somewhere in these parts after being stolen and used as a mobile drug lab), but tonight the locals were friendly and the running was good.

I don't normally take a light on these; tonight the circles were a bit hard to read in street lights and it took me a while to be confident of a route; still not sure I got it totally right but didn't hear of anyone with a greatly different distance. A bit slow in the first half but cruising nicely later on.

My car was being fixed today - again - it's never a good sign when your mechanic recognises your voice (and once again it's a highly exotic problem, a failure of the small motor which drives the boot release - though at least it's only a $300 problem and not a $2000 problem like the last one). The original plan was to do this session after picking up the car (on the basis that the traffic getting home would then be nicer at 6.30 than it would be at 5.30), but the part wasn't going to make it until tomorrow, so I decided to do this session anyway after work and get the train home (a less fraught exercise than it was for many in this afternoon's storms).

The warm-up was awful and I seriously contemplated pulling the plug on the session and having another go tomorrow. It was a bit less awful once I actually started doing reps, but whereas last time in this session I was getting excited about getting into the 50s for the first time in ages, today 65 was as good as it got. Never felt like I had much strength and not really finishing reps off.

Warm-up and down. Finally started to feel vaguely reasonable during the latter.

There was a lot of meteorological excitement around Melbourne today, in the form of long-lived lines of severe thunderstorms. We missed most of the action in the central city, but it was a different story in some other parts of town with hail falling in imposing quantities. There were still hail drifts waiting for me when I got home, though there doesn't seem to be any obvious damage other than stripped vegetation.

First time swimming for a couple of weeks. Nothing to get excited about - not a huge amount of energy - but nothing went wrong either. Seem to have come up OK from yesterday, despite feeling very tired last night.

Lunchtime session on the Tan, on quite a warm lunchtime by recent standards - good practice for warmer races ahead (possible in WA, probable in Brazil). Didn't feel too bad though not terribly fast.

Spotted en route: the campaign car of Tim Smith, Liberal candidate for Kew and formerly of the Institute of Public Affairs. I did have a good line in preparation about the IPA's disdain for government regulation but can't use it because as far as I can tell the vehicle was parked legally.

Nothing in the Australian over the weekend (though there were brief pieces in a couple of the News Limited tabloids). Not sure if that means things are blowing over or whether they're just lying low for a few days because they'd heard that Media Watch were sniffing around (though it turned out Media Watch had a better offer - getting stuck into fabricating stories about Australian military planes coming under fire is a bit of an advance on getting stuck into fabricating stories about people fabricating temperature data).

Felt pretty tired riding home tonight - I don't often ride all the way on Monday (normally I leave the car at the pool and ride from there), so combining all modes of exercise I was at it for about 3 1/4 hours today (the last 30 minutes into a pretty stiff headwind).