Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Post-Conference event on Bruce Ridge. I've had a few shockers in this event over the years. Struggling physically again, although not to the same extent as Wednesday (possibly because there weren't as many hills); starting to improve a bit in that sense in the second half. The second half, though, was where the navigation came unstuck - wasn't sure of my height coming into 10 and then didn't see the control coming down the creek, losing about 2 minutes all up. 12 seconds behind Craig of the Conference people, but I think Lachy took double figures out of all of us.

Lots of worthwhile discussion at the Conference today, although didn't get through as many of the agenda items as I'd hoped. Unsurprisingly those discussions which went on longer than I'd hoped were primarily the ones which involved money.

Down at CISAC this morning; would probably have preferred to have done this session yesterday as I wasn't really up to running, but had forgotten to get the belt out of Max's room before he went to bed on Wednesday night. A reasonably mundane session but felt a lot less drained during the day in general than I have the last three, so must be making some progress in illness recovery.

Despite occasional appearances to the contrary, Cathy's verdict was that I was also making pretty reasonable progress in the injury recovery department, although she's given me some more things to go on with (most notably the dreaded spiky ball). Thought her previous client might also have been someone familiar to me but the driver of the car with the Western Bulldogs sticker parked out the front was not Jase or Belinda.

One of these days I'll be feeling OK again but this was not a good run - not quite as drained as yesterday, but it might have been had there been as many hills today (there were as few as possible, but even the ramp up to the Golden Gate overpass was an effort today). Faded away even from the not-very-high standards of earlier over the last 15 minutes. (At least my voice held out for today's presentation).

Saw ALJ and Belinda out there but they had just finished their session. Even as early as that I suspected that referring to what I was doing as a "sesh" would be in breach of various provisions of consumer-protection laws and so it proved.

Sights of the not-quite-so-big-city at 7.30am: the lawns outside the Uni of Canberra student residences, with a couch and a number of students on the lawn, and an abundant supply of empty and not-so-empty bottles. I'm assuming that exams have just finished.

Up in Canberra for a few days, which gave me the chance to "run" the Summer Series event at Red Hill - the quotation marks being required because, although I felt better during the day than I did yesterday, I still wasn't really up to running, especially uphill (had to walk most of 6 to 7, for example). A bit of technical interest was added by the option (which I took) of running on a map with only contours, termite mounds and rocks. With this map, there were some scary legs (especially 4 and 6, across a steep slope with lots of little gullies but no well-defined features); only had a few small wobbles. You do, however, lose out on the route choices through not knowing where the tracks and the green are (9-10, the long leg, could be run 90% on tracks if you knew where they were).

It was my first time in proper terrain (if you don't count Westgate Park) since the Victorian Relays, and I felt very tentative, especially on the steeper, more gravelly bits (of which the last control-to-finish leg was a fine example).

I went into this thinking there was a certain amount of potential for family scalp-claiming, and continued to think that through the course because I hadn't seen Cassie (who started a couple of minutes ahead of me), but it turned out I'd gone through her somewhere on the slope when she made a mistake (she ended up cutting it short because, I think, it was feeding time). Cassie's never beaten me in a competitive event, although she came close (82 to 84) when she was running up in M21 at the 2000 QB3 (not bad as I was in the World Cup team myself at that stage, and had had a decent run). Three weeks later she won the nationals by seven minutes, and four weeks after that things took a sudden turn for the worse...

Jim and I saw a snake while we were warming up. Decided not to upset Mum by telling her about it until afterwards....

Had a rough night. I started the run with thoughts that this might be a first attempt at a speed session but quickly abandoned any thoughts of that, and ended up struggling round a bit of a token-gesture run. Didn't improve a lot through the rest of the day either - currently struggling to get past 9pm - but feels like the sort of cold where a decent night's sleep should help a lot.

Heading to Canberra in the morning.

Swim at Fitzroy. Reasonably happy with the consistency of this one, although still feeling a bit sore and stiff.

A rare Monday night appearance this week - Cassie and family are in town for a couple of days (staying with my aunt in Albert Park), Jim was keen for a run, and Glenhuntly isn't that far away (although unusually heavy traffic made it further away than it usually is).

The big plus here was that I remembered how to run again, having temporarily forgotten on the weekend. Admittedly it wasn't the most physically testing of areas, but felt reasonably smooth in cruise mode after the first kilometre or so. It was all the more surprising because I started to feel a bit of a sore throat in the afternoon (perhaps the weekend was a case of feeling bad running before feeling any cold symptoms).

There clearly isn't much difference between my cruise mode and top gear at the moment because there was all of 8 seconds difference between my kilometre rates tonight and last Wednesday, when I was trying. Jim went under 4 minutes/km.

Like a lot of people, I lost quite a bit of time (2-3 minutes? not counted in running time above) at a railway crossing about 3k in (one far too obscure to be on the list of 50 which Victorian Labor have promised to get rid of if elected). The restart was somewhat reminiscent of what happens on (car) racetracks once the safety car goes in.

Run based on the Studley singletracks with Bruce and Dion (whom I haven't otherwise seen for a while). Sort of passable on the flatter parts but feeling much as yesterday on the hills (which were numerous but short). Had originally had 90 minutes in mind but wasn't too upset when our route took us pack past base at 75. Definitely a run which left me with a sense that this week is one of two steps forward, two steps back, rather than two and one as I'd been hoping.

Quite slippery on a lot of the tracks after overnight and morning drizzle - the sign at the start of one of them 'hazardous area' was actually meaningful for once.

Mark Textor's notoriety has spread far and wide: a poll appeared on the website of a Manila newspaper today asking readers to nominate which of three 1970s Filipino porn stars most closely resembled the Indonesian Foreign Minister (it must be said that all three were reasonable matches).

And the ads at the bottom of Attackpoint pages were well-targeted today: I saw one advertising a book which promised to bust "climate denier myths". (No, I didn't have anything to do with writing it).

Event: Sprint Into Spring Race 6 LaTrobe University Bundoora
 

Ran as badly as I did last week, and this time navigated worse too - falling into the bridge trap at 17, losing probably 30-40 seconds, and a few other minor wobbles, mostly involving garden beds. (At least I didn't fall into the bridge trip as badly as one competitor - a fairly inexperienced one, I think - who somehow managed to find their way out a door onto an overhead bridge, had the door close behind them and then was stuck up there for 20 minutes before someone could be found to open it). Lost a bit of motivation after 17, and as the rain became a bit heavier, was pretty tentative on the brick pathways around the colleges in the 18-21 section - I do, after all, have some unfortunate history when it comes to slippery surfaces in campus sprint events (and I suspect it costs more to break your arm in Australia than it does in New Zealand).

Haven't seen the full results yet, but fully expect to be even further down than last week.

My mood today was perhaps not helped by reading this in this morning's paper. A few days in Neerim South was a regular feature of late March for me for several years (and I'm assuming that the reference to "Neerim" was actually about Neerim South - Neerim barely exists) and I always enjoyed being there, not least the running in splendidly bucolic surrounds - perhaps my best training run of the 21st century was there, in 2005 - even if there was always a sense of having absolutely nothing in common with the locals other than having one head, two arms and two legs. Apart from passing through briefly on the way home from Baw Baw, I was last there in 2010, but it sounds like it's a very different place now (and a small town full of ice addicts is not a place where I'd be wanting to be wandering around after dark, or even perhaps before it).

At Fitzroy. Hamstring felt a bit on the sore side this morning, although in a much more generalised sense than when it was causing serious trouble a few weeks back. A reasonable session in the pool, but felt pretty tired during the course of the day (not surprising when I'm in almost full-burning-candles-at-both-ends mode; hopefully not a precursor to getting sick).

Not quite a Proper Thursday Long Run (tm) but getting closer to one - linking two football venues of old, Princes Park to Windy Hill. Still not that easy to come up after running hard on Wednesday night and found the first two-thirds a slog (the first kilometre was especially stiff), but gradually started to come good in the later stages. Seemed to be a fair number of traffic interruptions today, even for an inner-suburban run (and some people need reminding that the road rule about turning traffic giving way to pedestrians still applies when you're more than two kilometres from the GPO). As with last week, this took as much out of me post-run as rather longer runs have in the past (right down to the traffic-light cramps on the bike riding in).

Found this gem on trawling station information today (in this case, Birdsville 2005) - a report from someone in the Queensland office. (A Metconsole is a terminal used for transmitting observations, UPS is (allegedly) uninterruptible power supply).

"Phonecall from Observer - No power to Metconsole PS. Ascertained that a faulty UPS was the cause. The UPS began making loud cracking sounds and began smoking during our conversation.I advised her to step away from the unit, turn off the mains power at the switchboard, then remove the unit from the building. Donna called back 10 minutes later to advise that UPS had caught on fire and that a QBuild Officer had effected its removal.The Metconsole was reconnected to the mains".

And a headline I never thought I'd see: "Highrise development shortage in Gold Coast". (Admittedly, it was an article largely spruiking the interests of someone who wants to build even more high-rises on the Gold Coast).

Street-O at Mont Albert. Not quite baby steps in the Jules sense, but a small step nonetheless in that it was a tiny bit quicker than last week (on a slightly hillier area, though in better conditions). A more even performance than last week, and actually felt like I was attacking the hill up to the last control, the first time I've felt as if I've been attacking a hill for months (perhaps even this year), though still lacking pace - something which was most noticeable in the poor man's Jukola start experience which was the run to the first control (there was an obvious first control; having a main road crossing 50 metres out of the start was perhaps not the best piece of setting, although the course redeemed itself several times over before the end).

It took a few controls for the group around me to thin out, something which happened when I went from 2 to 18, a control most people dropped (I dropped 5 instead) - the one person who went with me to 18 went in one street too early. More or less on my own for a while, then got onto the back of Rachel going into 7 - and was rather taken aback when she didn't punch it. I mentioned this when I caught up a control later and she said she'd already been there (it turned out she'd tried to go 7-14 but didn't notice there was no railway crossing at that point, and had had to go back through 7). Also turned out she got an extra control so it really wasn't her night....

It was a bit too much to ask the others to give me 600 metres' start for the third week in a row; this time several people had distances around 9.2.

A rather sleepy session, not quite as bad as it looks from the times as I spent a fair bit of it on the Yarra Flats singletrack (lacking in mud, somewhat to my surprise), but still won't go down as one of my great sessions.

Somehow I think there might just be some particularly vigorous police crackdowns on drunk and disorderly Australians in Kuta in the next few weeks. I'm guessing the Indonesian authorities won't be going out of their way to stop boats, either.

Didn't feel that great (muscle-wise) this morning but OK once I was in the pool; still not entirely happy with the way my pace (such as it is) is drifting away in the second half, but did at least find something for the final lap (even as it felt like it was taking forever). I think my goggles might be just about due for the rubbish bin; as anyone who knows me will tell you, I do have a tendency to cling onto gear long past its use-by date....(This pair, from memory, were acquired on one of my Geneva trips in early 2011 when the strap on the previous pair snapped in mid-swim).

Muscles of a different sort were turning up in my Facebook feed, as they sometimes do, in the form of an ad with a picture of someone with arms looking like several blown-up balloons, and the wording which started: "A new, safe Steroid alternative that boosts muscle growth by 500% was recently discovered by a group of Doctors. Discovered by a celebrity athlete...". Gee, what could possibly go wrong? Seriously, if stuff like this is turning up regularly in the feeds of people who post about sport (and I've sometimes wondered whether I get ads for this stuff because I post about sport, or because I post about Essendon), I'm not surprised that some who don't know better get tempted.

(Even more bizarrely, there was a link underneath 'Create an ad like this for AMOS'. I'm pretty sure there is nobody in the Australian meteorological or oceanographic sciences who looks remotely like the person in the ad, but I'm prepared to be proven wrong).

MFR Monday night from my place for the first time in a couple of years - I've often struggled for turnout as potential participants are daunted by the prospect of venturing into suburbs which are on the border of zone 2 and don't have any trams, but it was a pleasingly large crowd tonight on a warm night. I came to this needing to let out a few frustrations after a largely fruitless day thanks to an ancient computer which won't do what it's told (I can only assume that the reason why it hasn't yet been replaced is that the National Trust has declared it to be a historic ruin).

Started out showing the others the remnants of yesterday's driving epic fail, then headed north through Macleod and back through the Rosanna parklands - always a nice way to finish a run. Pretty slow but I wouldn't have wanted to be trying to go much faster tonight - was definitely grinding the gears at times, especially early.

This was rarely a comfortable run - this time the main issues were in the hips - but it was at a level where I could keep plugging away. Seemed to be managing a reasonable pace on the flat, where I saw a fair number of other runners, but struggling a bit more once starting to climb (even though the climbs were mostly fairly inconsequential). Probably at its best in the last 15 minutes.

The main excitement of this run was seeing the aftermath of this spectacular piece of lousy driving at the top of my street. Given the distance over which debris was scattered and the extent to which the car was smashed in I'm surprised the driver got out as lightly as she did.

From the run it was onto the Treasury Gardens as part of the rally for climate action, which drew a very substantial crowd (I think the 30,000 reported by the organisers is a bit on the high side, but not massively overstated). Not sure my back appreciated it as a post-run recovery (especially after a sardine-tin train ride in), but it's in the name of a good cause.

Event: Sprint Into Spring Race 5 Royal Showgrounds
 

Sprint series at the Showgrounds. The area didn't really live up to my expectations - too many big square buildings - but the courses made good use of what was there. Not a good day for me, though - the back was troublesome, particularly in the first half, and I never felt as if I was running freely. My performance was about a minute below par, and in the fields that are coming to this series, that means a lot of places.

Among those who claimed my scalp for the first time today were Asha Steer, along with Chris Godfred-Spenning, a Bureau colleague and intermittent orienteer (more regular in the last couple of years) who got me by 2 seconds. The latter result has been coming for a few weeks - Chris has had a good month and probably would have got me last Wednesday had his route choice not given me 700 metres' start. The former result has been coming for about four years but I thought I might have been able to postpone the moment to, say, 2015.

A decent session, and fewer people around than is sometimes the case at Ivanhoe so there was a reasonable amount of room to move. No sign yet of the redevelopment that's supposed to be happening (latest suggestion is "by Christmas" but no-one's specified which year).

It's been a long week, and I was definitely very tired by the time I walked in the door this evening. Probably a few more long weeks ahead, too.

Another step in the 'longest since' stakes but this was hard going, especially up hills - probably not quite ready to do the Wednesday night/Thursday morning double yet (and, like last week, had the post-run Thursday tiredness more consistent with a two-hour day). The hills weren't in short supply either, this being the Viewbank/Yallambie loop (with a few new buildings on long-vacant lots since I was last out this way). No injury concerns though.

The preliminary annual global climate statement came out overnight; I took my phone out with me on the run in anticipation of possible media calls, but there weren't any - quieter than expected thanks to being gazumped by Kevin Rudd. I did do a few interviews at other times, although I suspect not much of my SBS radio one will have gone to air because they kept asking policy questions and I kept ducking them. (I'd like to suggest that I learned my bouncer-ducking skills on the cricket field, but in reality not many bowlers in ACT Under 16 Division 3 are fast enough to bowl bouncers).

C • Threaten the big S 1

Street-O at Blackburn North. Once again appear to have nailed the route choice - very few others seem to have got much below the upper 8s - and this time ran fast enough to get some reward for the effort. We won't get too excited here - I'm still a long way below a pace I'd be happy with, and couldn't keep the initial promise going for more than 3k - but it's still a step in the right direction.

Started with 3 and 15, a key decision as it turned out. Thought I might be in for a good scrap with Rachel but she went her own way after three controls (we briefly merged again late in the course, but I was a control ahead of her by then). Had a good second kilometre but then started to find climbing a bit harder (not that this map had anything steep). Getting the control flow much better than I have been. Struggling a bit by the end but had just enough to hold off Fredrik (whose route had been less than optimal) between the last control and the finish. Steady rain most of the way - I made a rapid exit before too many people started blaming me for it.

An early start joining with the Hoggster and a couple of colleagues. Started with a full frontal assault on the Lorne hills (for those unfamiliar with the place, the streets off the beach climb straight up to a ridge - at a guess I'd say 400m at 20%), then onto the Erskine Falls road, a long, steady climb. Thought we'd be doing an out-and-back but found a 4WD track off to the side fairly close to when we would have been starting to think about a turnaround, and that track brought us into the back of town (no thanks to me, who was keen to take a turnoff which would have taken us into the never-never). After the others finished I added another 15 minutes, during which my quads were starting to feel the long descent. Got most of it in before the rain started. Reasonably happy with how I handled the climbing, although couldn't quite hold the pace of the others uphill without some serious effort.

The Australian is in fine form, publishing an opinion piece on the alleged non-existence of climate change by a professor at the University of Queensland - a professor of gastroenterology whose specialty is irritable bowel syndrome. This is perhaps fitting as this sort of thing gives me the you-know-whats. (The equivalent would be the Australian giving me space to put my views on what causes irritable bowel syndrome, something I don't expect to happen any time soon).

C • It's a syndrome... 2

Headed up the Erksine River valley from Lorne, on a single track which climbed reasonably solidly after the first few hundred metres. Matt Wheeler, who some of you will have come across at the Four Peaks, joined me for some of it (he was coming down as I was coming up, but turned around when we met), which gave a bit of company. Finished off with a loop on the flat, which turned out to be slightly longer than expected because the footbridge across the estuary was closed for repairs (but the river-sandbar crossing a couple of hundred metres down was narrow enough to be jumpable). Not the smoothest run I'll ever have, but a pleasant setting and OK in the injuries department.

As usual with meetings of this type, I've come out of today with about five times as many ideas as I actually have time to implement (although all of them are probably less grandiose than the Hoggster's planned experiment which involves the (virtual) demolition of New Zealand).

The buildings at the Cumberland Hotel are named for significant ships in local history (this being known as the Shipwreck Coast for good reason), including one in the 1880s which ran aground with a full cargo of liquor, which was enthusiastically salvaged by the locals after the police were unsuccessful in protecting the vessel. One notable ship of more recent local history has so far failed to get a guernsey.

A few stars aligned to set up this run. Lachlan and Susanne were coming in on the overnight train from Sydney towards the tail end of their Europe-to-Australia-without-using-a-plane trip, I wanted to catch up with them and their next destination was Ballarat; at the other end of the day, I have a workshop in Lorne tomorrow and Tuesday. On a more-or-less logical route choice between Ballarat and Lorne is Colac, and the stony rises country north of Colac that Invisible has mentioned here on a number of occasions; I'd been wanting to check out for a while and this was the chance.

This was a (deserted dirt) road run; the terrain itself is all on private land - old lava flows, with lots of small rocky knolls and ridges, mostly not more than 5 or 10 metres high, but enough of them to keep visibility down (along with scattered shrubs). The vegetation and visibility reminds me a bit of some farmed sand dune areas in NZ - at this time of year, the grass in paddocks which aren't being grazed is long enough to be awkward (especially given the rocky ground in places) but it would be better in August and September. The hills are very rocky underfoot but the gaps between them are sufficient that it would still be reasonably runnable terrain (not as full on as Mount Eccles from reports I've heard), though one negative is a lot of fences (some electric), and some stone walls which would probably require compulsory crossing points. Probably better for a middle than a long (if only to keep the number of landowners involved manageable), but may well be worth pursuing.

The run was decent, as my country back road runs often are. A bit twingey for much of the way from about 20 minutes onwards but never got any worse. Did have one puzzled local working on the garden in front of their farm.

Ballarat educational institutions have been into name changes a bit lately. On the way to the Prendergast residence (where I dropped my passengers off) is Phoenix College - I was wondering if it got its name because its predecessor burnt down, but in fact it's merely a merger of two other schools. The University of Ballarat is also changing its name to Federation University; as Red Symons very dryly said after interviewing someone from there the other day, he's looking forward to the T-shirts with the university initials. (I predict that it will become something like the Federation University of Australia no later than the start of the 2014 academic year). My favourite Symonsism of this type came a few years ago when he was interviewing someone from the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union about a dispute involving the zookeepers from Melbourne Zoo: "presumably they're in the miscellaneous bit".

Susanne and Lachlan inform me that one feature of Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan hasn't changed since 2004: they still use second-hand buses acquired from northern Europe and still haven't changed anything on the buses, so they still carry destination signs for various Stockholm suburbs or ads for Finnish supermarkets.

C • Middle 2

Event: Sprint Into Spring Race 4 Westgate Park
 

Sprint series at Westgate Park - essentially a bushy urban park with a few lakes, which I suspect used to be a rubbish tip or similar (as Darebin Parklands was). My first attempt to run hard since the injury and was fairly pleased with how it responded - still behind some people who I should be ahead of, but no signs of pain which was the main objective.

Started 2 minutes behind Lanita and 1 minute behind Angus Robinson. Didn't really expect to see them but both struck trouble on the butterfly loop out the back, going to 13 before 12 (Lanita realised, Angus didn't) - not the only ones to do this by any means. (I'd started around the loop the wrong way - there's a first time for everything - but picked it up quickly and only lost 15-20 seconds). Was with Lanita from 12 and thought we might be in for a good scrap given how closely matched we were last time, but I got a bit of a break when she missed the short 18 a little and didn't see her again. Brought it home reasonably well. 3 1/2 minutes behind Bruce, a respectable effort (for 16th place; there are a lot of people running this series, which is great).

I'm not 100% certain of the accuracy of the map scale; it was a decent run, but I'm not convinced it was sub-5s. (Update: have just cross-checked against the Melway and think it's about 1:4300).

The lakes were labelled as the Salt Water Lake and the Fresh Water Lake. This might suggest a lack of originality but there was an era when the two rivers in the area were also the Freshwater and the Saltwater. The Freshwater became the Yarra fairly quickly, but the Saltwater didn't become the Maribyrnong (at least officially) until the early 20th century - I've seen references to the Saltwater in 1890s and 1900s flood reports.

Some things just aren't what they used to be. I wonder what the reaction would have been if, say, the young Sebastian Vettel running up Mark Webber's rear end in Japan in 2007 had drawn a similar response?

Probably not a great day to be training at Kangaroo Crossing:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-08/inmate-escap...

The unusual feature of this session was that I was moving considerably faster through the pool than I ever have previously - didn't think I was pushing that much faster so something subtle must have changed elsewhere. Was threatening to cramp in the last few minutes but never actually did so.

Slept atrociously last night (probably through over-stimulation after riding home from a workshop dinner at 10.30 last night), but didn't pay for it during the day as I thought I might have - didn't even manage to fall asleep during the presentation on fatigue management (and other issues) by our work health and safety people.

I don't think I'll attribute the lack of sleep to the fact that someone has written to the Director of Meteorology to demand my sacking. When that gets short shrift probably his next move will be to write about the corrupt science peer review process to the Minister for Science (oh - wait a sec - there isn't one). One thing I am expecting is a mauling in certain corners of the blogosphere (possibly extending to related corners of the conservative media) sometime in the next couple of weeks, something I'm not especially looking forward to.

Fairly similar to last night - as a run in its own right, pretty ordinary, but coped better than I thought I might have done (hamstring-wise) with the added distance, the Eaglemont hills and running twice within 12 hours. Definitely in the post-injury lack of fitness phase though - felt as tired during the day as I would have in more normal times with a Thursday double this distance (as well as being fairly thirsty after a warm morning).

Another step up at the Wednesday night street-O at Smiths Dell - not running it hard, but adding a bit to the distance, on a night when all the ingredients were there for a lousy run - first hot run of the spring, not much fitness and not much sleep (midnight teleconference last night). Really struggled up the first hill, then settled into a grind - definitely running out of water in the last third. Made a reasonable job of the route choice, I think, but pretty slow; Simon Rouse was just behind me at the last control, having presumably run a fair bit further, but I'm not yet up to running fast and didn't contest a sprint I would almost certainly have lost anyway. A few twinges from time to time but nothing too serious, and no post-run soreness.

Is it just me, or does this map have two contour intervals? (5m on the west side, 10m on the east).

Spotted yesterday: a real estate sign "a new definition in executive style living". As the property in question was a block of one-bedroom flats in the lower part of Heidelberg Heights, I'm assuming that the target market is executives of companies which have gone bust and whose partners have walked out on them.

Another small step forward - in fact quite a significant step forward in that this time there was really no trace of hamstring trouble at all. (However, the back doesn't like climbing any more than it did four weeks ago). A glorious morning to be out - reminding me a bit of Cup Day in 2004. The difference was that in 2004 a strong cold front was expected about 1pm; on that day I looked at people heading to the station on the way to Flemington, mostly wearing not very much, and thought "you're going to regret this" - and headed straight for the TAB to back a mud-runner (which came second). Today was fine all day.

The Cup itself was a bit of a mixed day for me - minor placings in two sweeps, but the $10 I bet went down the drain in the most emphatic way possible - the horse I backed is now on its way to the Pal factory. (Presumably a lot more than $10 went down the drain for the owner, but as the owner in question is the Aga Khan I'm guessing he can afford it).

First swim for a couple of weeks after running into problems on my last attempt. No such problems today, and in fact feeling reasonably strong at times today, although drifted out of it a little in the later stages.

Cup Monday is usually the easiest commute of the year (although I suspect tomorrow will top it). It was made slightly more challenging today by the inordinate number of people who appeared to think that the day's status as a de facto public holiday extended to the non-application of clearways.

You have to start somewhere and by usual standards this was a laughably short run, but I got through it which is more than can be said for my last two attempts at this distance or thereabouts, with a tiny bit of awkwardness but no serious trouble (probably better than on any of the walk/jog days, if the truth be known). There are still enough warning signs that I won't be cranking the distance up rapidly, but at least I know now that I can tolerate some very basic stuff; now need to see if I can take it further.

20 minutes was hardly enough exercise for a Sunday morning so I headed out on the bike after watching the Man City-Norwich game (about which the less said the better) - the usual 'injury loop' out along the Koonung path (which has more signs and other facilities than it did last time I was out this way) and back through Doncaster. A bit slower than normal but I think some of that might be because I'm currently riding without toeclips (haven't got round to installing them on the new pedals after one of my old pedals broke). At its best in the third quarter, when I was moving at about the same average speed as a bus (seeing a bus before noon on a Sunday was a bit of a rarity in itself).

Did something a bit different this afternoon and headed out to Mount Donna Buang - the pretext being the possibility of seeing snow (although I always thought that was a bit of a long-shot - needed another 200m or so elevation), but it's a nice part of the world to spend a bit of time. There are some magnificent forests in the areas east of Melbourne, at least in those areas which didn't burn in either 2006-07 or 2009, which narrows the field considerably. (One of my two specific contributions to state Labor policy going into the next election is to propose a review of parks and reserves with a focus on those remaining forest areas unburnt in recent years; the other is a clause calling for no new development below projected 2100 sea levels).

C • 7-0? 2

Stepping things up a bit again today; a 3/1 mix, which seemed to go pretty well - still a little bit of tenderness but feeling better both before and during the run than on Thursday, and no sign of fatiguing the way it did on Wednesday. Starting to warm up a bit; it's the first time I've been to the Banyule Flats for a couple of months and I was surprised how little mud there was.

Orienteering Australia isn't the only thing I'm president of; it's been an interesting day wearing one of my other hats.

C • Integrity 4

First time at Fitzroy for a bit. A reasonably steady effort and didn't seem to cause any issues with the hamstring (which feels better this afternoon than it did yesterday). A very nice morning to be in the pool, despite the sunglare when going east.

It's been a long week despite the relatively small amount of time devoted to training; I've only been home before 10 once (twice work, twice meetings). Next week's not looking a lot easier with an OA Board meeting on Monday and a midnight teleconference on Tuesday (and I've got a conference on Tuesday so won't be getting the holiday either).

Today also exposed me to more than the usual quota of dodgy driving; first a rather erratic driver on the way in to the pool who twice changed lanes without looking (once nearly taking me out, once nearly taking out someone a few cars ahead) and then drove through a red light - if it had been 7.15am on Sunday rather than Friday I would have assumed they were still drunk from the night before. Then on the way home, I had my nearest miss on the bike for a while when a taxi failed to give way at the Queen Vic Market roundabout (possibly not expecting bikes at 10pm) and pulled up a few centimetres short. Taxis were, though, redeemed in my estimation a few sets of traffic lights later when a passenger recognised my Norwich City top (which I often wear for night riding because it's a very visible yellow) and spent a couple of minutes in mutual reminsicing about the Canaries class of '89.

Spotted in the rainfall site lists: there was a site at Belanglo State Forest, and the last data reported was in 1990. Hopefully the observer wasn't another of Ivan Milat's victims.