Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Two Bays. Pretty tough day's work on a wildly fluctuating run. Twice in the first hour I thought I was in serious trouble, first with a back spasm on the small climb around 5k (which turned out to be the only time it surfaced), and once when my quads had reached the point where I couldn't really use them to control my descent on the short sharp drop at 9k. The first half in general felt pretty ordinary, but then hit a good stretch through Greens Bush, making up quite a bit of ground and starting to think that I might be in with a chance of getting close to my target time (2.35). Suddenly hit a brick wall in the last kilometre before the road crossing, got a second wind there (the consumption of a gel may have helped) which took me through to the Bushrangers Bay stairs, but couldn't finish it off and was counting every 100 metres in the final section. Ended up about 30 seconds outside my 2014 time, which given that I considered my 2014 run to be poor doesn't say a great deal for this year.

Perhaps a bit underdone; I've only gone significantly beyond 2 hours twice in the last few months (and one of those was in the snow in Switzerland which isn't massively relevant). The only thing in my plans in the early months of 2016 which will be remotely as long as this is the Ultralong in SA (if I run M21E), but I'd still like my endurance to be in a better state than this.

C • Sounds not unlike 8

Nice morning for a run, even though I went out a bit later than usual for a summer morning - humidity was pretty low. Felt reasonable but pretty slow on the singletrack sections along the river (which are somewhat representative of what I'll face tomorrow), faster later on. A bit of Achilles soreness from time to time but nothing too serious.

Standard session at Fitzroy. Water seemed a little cooler than usual but I didn't see any numbers to prove it. Felt pretty smooth for the most part.

Back in 1900, there was such a thing as the Anti-Sweating League. They appear to have been an eminently worthy organisation and had some committee members who went on to bigger and better things. (In the light of some revelations of recent months, perhaps it could do with a revival).

A shorter midweek long run than usual; I'm treating the weekend with a bit more respect than I sometimes have in the last. Out through Heidelberg and then back along the river. A run which promised a bit early on but never really caught alight; slow throughout. Having to pull my shorts up several times every kilometre in the second half (a combination of failed elastic and rain) was an annoyance, although the rain itself was welcome.

C • I know nothing 6

Woke to the news that someone from Ambulance Victoria had advised people, among other things, not to run today. I took this advice as applying to those times of the day when it was going to be near or above 40 and not to the early morning, when it was still a comparatively pleasant 18.

Ended up as a pretty decent session; perhaps not quite as good as the equivalent two weeks ago, but definitely better than last week. I think I got a bit of confidence out of the last couple of kilometres last night.

One day I'll probably have an issue with dogs in this session (All Nations is a popular venue from them, and as with most places, at least 50% of the owners don't think the on-leash area signs apply to them), but it hasn't happened yet.

Warm-up and down. Had a sense it was going to go OK once moving (even if a bit sleepy beforehand).

Street-O at Altona - switched to Tuesday night because of the prospect of a 40-degree night tomorrow night (and the knowledge that last time I took one of those on I wiped myself out for a couple of days, not something I want ahead of the weekend).

Again, didn't feel too brilliant; settled into a pace over the first few controls, but hit a bad patch in the middle (around the inevitable control on the jetty). Ted came through me around this time. Got a bit of a second wind heading into the last quarter, but then struck trouble at a control and lost 45 seconds - thrown a bit by a new fenced enclosure not on the map and an old one not on the ground, but if I'd been properly on the ball that wouldn't have mattered. That cost me my first sub-5 of the season (baby steps....), but felt as if I was making a bit of progress - although on a dead flat area and with reasonably benign conditions.

Of course, there was another sport which was rather more in the news today. I was a little surprised by the result - mainly because I can't recall a previous case where WADA had successfully appealed an insufficient-evidence finding (their successful appeals I'm aware of had involved inadequate penalties for guilty verdicts, or inadequate explanations for positive tests). That said, it's the result we've got; surely the message has got through by now for no-one to try something like this again (and I would be reasonably confident that Essendon were by no means the only club pushing boundaries in this area). A wooden-spoon season is something I think most Essendon supporters can live with if that's the end of the matter, but you'd have to wonder where the legal side of this will end.

Definitely a morning run this Monday - even had it not been forecast to be mid-30s later in the day, there was a lunch on at work (for a colleague who's moving to join his girlfriend in rural Louisiana; it was remarked that we'll know he's assimilated if we see him posting a picture online of himself with a gun), and a post-work massage which I expected to be (and was) pretty brutal.

The run was reasonably standard Monday fare on a reasonably standard Monday route. A lot more people are back at work today, but they still think no-one else is on the roads which leads people to do things like park trucks in clearways (because clearways don't apply in January, right?).

The swim component of a Monday. Pretty slow.