Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Saw the physio this afternoon. Verdict is that the injury is actually to the hamstring where it inserts into the knee, and is probably lower-back related (all of which makes sense). Hopefully not too serious, and for other reasons I wasn't planning to run until at least Sunday anyway. Will give the water a try tomorrow though.

Through being away I haven't had as much involvement as the by-election campaign as usual, but had my first (and last) evening on the phones tonight. This proved to be a particularly unproductive session - normally I consider it a good session if I have half a dozen meaningful conversations, but tonight there was only one - and then when we got to the end of it she said she'd already voted...(The session was periodically interrupted by visits to the campaign office by aggrieved Macedonians, who were understandably upset over an accidental but epic stuff-up on the how-to-vote cards, where the text under the heading 'Macedonian' was written in Greek...).

Knee improved more overnight than I thought it would; still a few days away from being runnable, I think, but was able to walk reasonably freely on even ground, which wasn't the case yesterday afternoon.

Sprint relay at Yarra Valley Grammar, although I was running third in an unofficial (and incomplete) team. Pushed off at the start and instantly felt a sharp pain on the inside of my left knee; thought initially that my race was over inside 10 metres but decided to at least give it the first leg to see how it felt. The pain eased to nuisance level within a minute or two and didn't really affect my running except to make me a bit tentative on stairs and uphills, and this turned out to be probably my best run of the three (certainly aerobically). A bit less technical than the other two and went through it fairly smoothly.

As I thought I might, I pulled up pretty sore once cooled down and had difficulty walking in the rest of the day; no question of running in the afternoon, and I think I might be on the sidelines for a few days (not such a bad week for it to happen as the later part of this week was going to be a write-off anyway). The fact that I was still able to run the course suggests to me that there isn't a major structural problem and it's probably a strain of some description (albeit in a place which I've never experienced before).

Event: Melbourne Sprint Weekend
 

First race of Melbourne Sprint Weekend, at Monash. Felt as if I was in oxygen debt from the beginning, perhaps not too surprising given that I've been unwell the last couple of days. Not sure that I got all the right routes (but did get the biggest trap, 3, right), but only had one meaningful timeloss, perhaps 10 seconds at 11 where I didn't see that you had to come in from the back.

One of my objectives for the day was to defend 6 minutes on Martin. This was achieved, but that had more to do with his performance than mine; ended up about 7.5 minutes down.

Second race, at Caulfield Grammar Wheelers Hill (if anything ever happens to Melbourne Park, they could play the Australian Open there - they have 16 tennis courts). A small but fairly intense campus, so we expected it to be technical. That should have suited me, but in my current condition a second race in 35 degrees was stretching my capabilities too far, and I could barely run. In turn that had an effect on my concentration, although I sort of held it together for the first half, and only really started coming unstuck at 20, where I mistook a circular(ish) wall for the control circle; thinking that it was in the wrong place, this rattled me and I wobbled on 21 and 22 as well.

The worst was yet to come, though - I'd been to the wrong 14 (guilty as charged). I think this is the first time I've been to a wrong control in anything since 2000 (if you don't count my picking up the wrong map at WMOC 2014), and the first time in a sprint ever. This was a particularly spectacular outing of the karma bus because I'd been musing after the morning race as to why boys are so much worse at checking control codes than girls are (the morning ratio was 14 to 2).

I do feel a bit better today (in a non-running sense) than I did yesterday, and tomorrow's conditions should be kinder, so hopefully tomorrow will be better.

OK in the injury department, but otherwise today was a real struggle. A possible reason why was indicated afterwards when the headache (which had been OK overnight) returned during the day with a vengeance, this time without any altitudinal assistance - eased in the late afternoon (just in time for me to do something useful with the workday) but suggests that there's an illness of some kind underlying. Not the best of situations to be heading into the weekend in.

Back still a bit tight to run (although nowhere near as bad as last night) so took to the water instead - certainly a bit more relaxed than the equivalent session last time I did it in Geneva. Fairly slow but otherwise OK.

This was a prelude to a day trip to Canberra (the first of two I'll be doing in the next couple of weeks). The work part of it went well but the annoyance of the day was getting a bit of a headache before leaving, which then became more than a bit of a headache while in the air. Was certainly glad I wasn't flying much more than an hour in each direction.

My back disliked work as much as I can remember today, and I wouldn't have bothered to go out to street-O except that I'd driven to the station next to the start in the morning and got the train in, so had to go back out there anyway. Made a token attempt to warm up but the result was inevitable.

Getting across there in the morning was unpleasant, too, but at least that is something that has a finish date; the two major bottlenecks (the Grange Road level crossing and the narrowing to one lane on the Chandler bridge) will both be gone by the time the next summer season starts.