Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: Australian Middle Distance/Relay Championships
 

Australian Middle Championships. Was vaguely encouraged by yesterday's run but only to the point that I was reasonably confident I would get around the course, which is not the same as expecting to do it with any great speed or strength. As it turned out I was sort-of-reasonable in the rough stuff, but the ribs hurt whenever it came time to go faster (i.e. downhill, and going around the bottom from 18 to 19).

Dropped about 45 seconds going wide and a little low on 2, a control which seemed to give a lot of people trouble. Briefly caught David Brownridge there but Nick Hann caught us, and David could make use of that and I couldn't - never saw him again. Settled down after that, although never quite got the hang of which rocks were mapped as big rocks and which ones weren't. Some hesitations going around the big slopes, and wasn't sure of myself climbing into 19, but not really something I'd describe as a mistake. Spent a few legs with Nic Cherry, who'd obviously lost a lot of time early (he did 80) but was moving all right while I could see him, and was also with Tracy for a bit.

Ended up a bit below halfway, which I can live with (though a long way from the points - it's nice to see a field of 76, counting the juniors), and in the middle of the old men's bunch also featuring Liggo and Hoggster. (Greg Barbour was a bit further back despite his pre-start sledging - I threatened to start mentioning the America's Cup if he kept at it).

Oz Middle Course 1 - Splits

Headed out around the bottom of Aranda Hill and Black Mountain with Bruce and GrantM after the OA high performance workshop. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have considered this a great run - having to work fairly hard on the hills even with the short distance - but the good news was that the ribs have eased to minor-irritation level (still remains to be seen whether this will still be the case in the terrain tomorrow, but I feel more confident than I would have yesterday).

The workshop (which involved an AIS facilitator taking us through an athlete pathway "health check") was something of an eye-opener - we have a lot of areas where we have considerable room for improvement, but we also have a lot of good ideas for doing something about it. (As always, finding the people and the money to implement all of those good ideas will be part of the challenge).

Thought it was about time that I got a second opinion on my back and associated issues, so took advantage of the opportunity to see Cathy while I was in Canberra. She thinks that the real underlying issue is instability in my pelvis on the right side (which makes sense) and that everything else is a flow-on consequence of that. We'll see over the next couple of months whether the plan to do something about that works. (She was also of the view that my ribs were merely badly bruised and there wasn't torn cartilage, but it's still taking its time recovering).

I wasn't sure what things would be like in the pool (for that matter I wasn't sure how the belt would work as the place where it goes still has lots of very visible, if not especially painful, bruising). As it turned out it was basically OK, suggesting that it's mainly the impact on the ground that is generating pain in the ribs. That's probably not going to help me much this weekend, though.

And, of course, a pool in Canberra is an obvious place for someone from Melbourne to run into their cousin from Perth....

A short jog around Aranda late in the day, squeezed in between work and the Schools dinner, to see if my body was functioning again. The answer is that it's a bit better than the weekend but still pretty ordinary - still feels like I have a permanent stitch.

The Schools relays again went well (and as a Victorian by adoption, I was pleased to see them win for the first time since 2004). The weather wasn't quite as wild today as it had been on Tuesday but it was still pretty breezy. I wasn't responsible for the greatest commentary innovation of the day - Brodie (who was our equivalent of football's boundary rider) interviewed Victorian reserve Sam Hasell while he was running the spectator leg for a composite team.

I also had the pleasure of doing the sort-of-after-dinner speech at the Schools presentation dinner. In between some serious stuff, I thought this audience was a good opportunity to pass on some of the (not involving misbehaviour) tales of Schools trips past, so they got to hear of episodes such as the spectacularly unreliable SA bus (1989), some of the epic pizza-eating feats of 1990s juniors, the 2001 post-Ansett WA bus trip and the Kiandra snowball fight with SA, and the 2004 lightning-blasted cow.

It's been a pretty hectic couple of days - at events in the mornings and working in the afternoons (and deep into the evenings). Somewhat to my frustration, the report I've been working on hasn't seen the light of day yet, but hopefully it will soon.

Schools individual day today. In a normal training week I'd probably just about have thought about going out today but thought I'd give it one more day - would have struggled to find a timeslot in any case in a day where I was juggling Schools commentary and lots of work balls in the air - the final September number came in even higher than I was anticipating. Finally drew stumps sometime around 11pm (as I did last night).

Did seem to have improved somewhat today but no point in pushing things too hard in a race week - Ezy (who had what appears to have been a similar injury) noted significant improvement around the 10-day mark so I'm hoping the same is the case with mine.

A lot of today was devoted to keeping track of all the September temperature records broken in Australia this month (haven't counted them all up yet, but 700 will do as a first guess). In between I went to the Schools and Capital-O opening ceremony, which had an impressively high-powered turnout, once we'd actually found it (I've been to the outside of the Girls Grammar campus plenty of times on dropping-off-little-sister duties but don't think I've ever actually been inside). Guest of honour was ACT minister Shane Rattenbury (Canberra is a small town moment #3981: Shane was a year below me at school), much better known outside the ACT for altercating with a kangaroo while running a few months back than for any of his political activities - he's certainly the only member of the ACT Legislative Assembly ever to get coverage in the Washington Post.

At times when my mind was wandering in school geography classes it would sometimes turn to the ACT 1:100000 topographic map on the classroom wall. The shape of the ACT is such that a rectangular sheet which incorporates all of the ACT also incorporates a fair bit of country outside the ACT, especially to the south-east, and I'd always been fascinated by the south-eastern corner of it, remote country well off the beaten track which we only ever went to once (exiting the 1987 Australian Relays through Jerangle, on the way to Cooma and Jindabyne where we were next headed) - contours with four-digit numbers on them, and stretches of bush in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not sure if Slap Up Creek quite makes it onto the ACT 1:100000 - Jerangle certainly does - but it's at the very least close to it. It promised to be, and was, a nice area, and one that I was very much looking forward to prior to last weekend. By midweek I knew the best I could hope for might be to jog around the course, and yesterday suggested that even that was going to be a struggle, especially as I suspected the ribs would give me more grief with the extra jolting in terrain. Nevertheless, I thought I'd at least start, trying to tell myself that if Dermott Brereton could play two hours of a Grand Final with broken ribs then I could orienteer for a similar length of time with bruised ones. (Perhaps a crucial difference is that orienteering has no equivalent of resting in the forward pocket).

For the first four controls, in country which was either open or relatively flat or both, I was functioning sort of OK, although not able to stretch out, and with a feeling somewhat like a permanent stitch. Started to struggle much more on the steeper slope across to 5. The configuration of the course made 5 a bit of a decision point, but I thought I'd at least see if there was some improvement on the flatter first half of 5-6. There wasn't, and I decided that that was going to be that. 20-25 was a logical set of controls to get on the way home (and one consolation was that I did spike all of the controls I did get), but it was very slow going by then - as demonstrated by the various people (mostly considerably older than me) who blew me away downhill in the open. Crossing fences was also a major problem as I couldn't bend properly.

This year I've been drifting towards the decision that this will be my last year running elite at championship level as I've become uncompetitive at that level, but this is not the note I want to go out on (and the M40 field next year in WA probably won't have many other than the locals), so maybe I'll give it one last shot? Depends a lot on what sort of summer I can put together.

Definitely a well-run event on a nice area, and the Jerangle Public School produced the second-best food item I've eaten at post-event catering (behind only the time I ran a course in Italy which finished outside a mountain restaurant).

C • Food review detail please? 3

C • WA Locals 1

C • Commentary 3

LONG Course 1 - Splits