Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

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.