Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Back to Monday morning Pilates. Generally seemed to go OK - I'm getting back into the swing of things. Obviously Bright is popular because both the other people in this class are heading up there later on this week (one of them with somewhat more ambitious riding plans than I had).

Then onwards to the pool. They've now gone to 75-minute sessions and I entered 25 minutes in, which meant it was busy at the start, rather less so at the end. Felt a reasonably routine swim.

This was the prelude to a hectic day at work (including writing four monthly or seasonal climate summaries, coming up to speed on the significant numbers from the heatwave of the last few days, preparing my bit for a briefing tomorrow, and preparing for an interview that ended up falling through). November 30 or December 1 is quite often my busiest day of the year (especially as almost every spring in recent years has set some kind of record), and today would have been busier still except that the WMO global statement is coming out on Wednesday and not today as originally planned.

I haven't made much in the way of inroads into my list of unvisited Victorian national parks on this trip (partly because those in the far northeast are still closed due to fire damage), but today's plan was to tick off one, The Lakes, in the form of the only part of it that's accessible by land - the end of the peninsula beyond Loch Sport. Loch Sport is one of those old-school coastal holiday towns whose population is 800 year-round and ten times that in the summer holidays (all holiday houses - I looked at staying here but the only accommodation was the caravan park), but whose services are definitely more consistent with the year-round population - in January the queue for coffee at the one place I found which sells it must stretch halfway to Sale. (I didn't see anyone younger than myself, although the 2016 Census stats tell me that 24% of the population is under 50 - they must have been hiding).

This was a pretty wild and woolly morning - Wilsons Prom had a wind gust of 158 km/h. It was more like half that here, but there was still plenty of surf up on the lakes and anything with an exposure to the west was to be avoided. I thus settled for a run through the middle of the peninsula to a bay on the other side, on sandy-but-not-too-soft tracks through coastal vegetation - a pretty nice place to run. Took a while to get into it but was starting to enjoy myself at times coming back, although hard work in the last bit which was into the wind, uphill or both.

Made my way home round the southern side of Gippsland, after a side excursion to Balook and the lovely Tarra Bulga forest. I haven't done this route in full before - have been down to the Prom quite a few times, while on the other side, went from Port Welshpool to Sale and on to Canberra in 1992 during the short-lived period that Port Welshpool was the Victorian end of the Seacat, generally known as the Spewcat (a name which Murray Scown, then five, embraced with great enthusiasm when I mentioned it) - it was actually a beautiful trip, past the Prom and various Bass Strait islands, if you weren't too nauseous to notice.

The bit in between was unexplored territory, although I know Toora by reputation as a pioneer in both the erection of wind turbines and the creation of dubious arguments against wind turbines - these days the action for both has moved a bit further east. (There's also a sign on the way out of Wonthaggi objecting to the desalination plant, but I'd suggest that ship has sailed). Steep green hills of grazing land close to the coast reminded me of the other side of the Tasman, and I was thinking someone else thought the same way when I saw a sign entering Foster for New Zealand Hill (although it appears to have got its name from a mine, presumably one run by a New Zealander).

C • Second mention of the Wonth... 1

At the best of times Corryong is a bit of an end-of-the-line place, and even more so this year as first the fires and then border closures cut off whatever through traffic it has. I found an end-of-the-line road in an end-of-the-line place, the road up the Thowgla Valley, which has two good features as a road to ride: a decent width and surface, and almost no traffic because it doesn't go anywhere (apart from some farms). I was struggling through the first half, particularly the first 15 minutes, but part of the reason why became apparent as soon as I turned around; in a broad valley you don't necessarily notice visually that you're climbing at a steady couple of percent. Did a bit extra into town (having negative-split by a substantial margin) to take it up to an hour.

Saturday morning is when people come to town, but quite a few places had apparently closed down, and I heard someone say that people were too scared to go out. (Total number of cases in Towong Shire for the pandemic to date: 0).

From there it was southwards, initially to Omeo, the last-but-one of the non-4WD-track crossings of the Victorian mountains for me to do (Jamieson-Licola is the one still outstanding), a long dirt road but nothing particularly challenging, and some nice scenery. I arrived in Omeo to road signs warning of a public event - a novelty in 2020 - which turned out to be a 100-mile MTB race. (Perhaps the signs could more usefully have been deployed at the spot on the Benambra road where two participants came out from a side road without paying any obvious attention to other traffic; I saw them and had plenty of room to go around them, but riding like that has the potential to endanger your health). Left town via the local observing site, which as it happened was an hour away from recording its highest November temperature. Saw plenty of burnt-out forest on both the northern and southern legs of this day; the lower-elevation forests mostly seem to be recovering OK, the higher-elevation ones less so, which may reflect how accustomed each is to fire.

The final leg to Sale saw a couple of diversions, to the former rainforest grove of Fairy Dell (near Bruthen), a casualty of last summer's fires, and the possibly-soon-to-be-former waterside hamlet of Hollands Landing, a strong candidate to be an early casualty of sea level rise. (Hollands Landing also has almost as many streets as it does houses, and I suspect may be one of the Gippsland coastal settlements where highly speculative subdivisions were sold to people whose investment was rendered effectively worthless when it transpired the land couldn't be built on).

C • Jamison-Licola Road 2

Still struggling to get much momentum in my training, and this time it was my quads which were feeling it, which was somewhat puzzling given that it's usually downhills that cause quads trouble and this run was essentially flat (although the wind was strong enough in places to create some fake hills).

Went back to old territory at Falls Creek, the Langfords Gap aqueduct (being reminded in the process that the gap is a wind tunnel). No-one else around, which I suspect would not be the case in January. It's a decade since I was last in these parts and the burnt area of snowgums are still a long way from full recovery, 17 years after the fire. (The taller forest lower down the mountain is making better progress).

The rest of the day involved a fair bit of new territory - down to the Omeo road, north to Mitta Mitta (with a side trip to Dartmouth Dam) and Tallangatta, then along the Murray to Corryong. There's not too much of this I've done before, apart from part of the Murray stretch and a short bit on the main Wodonga-Corryong road. Ducked briefly into NSW just because I could; in days of yore the reason why people might duck just over the border was to play the pokies (senior citizens headed for places like Moama and Corowa on buses in droves for this purpose), not that any such activity happened this far east, but the thing I was doing on the NSW side of the border which I couldn't legally do in Victoria was getting an ice-cream at the Jingellic general store without putting a mask on.

A big swathe of this area was burnt in last summer's fires. It was interestingly patchy; the big forested hills had been hammered, but on low ground there were a lot of unburnt trees (sometimes next to road signs with melted paint) and I didn't see any evidence of destroyed or newly rebuilt buildings near the road. I suspect what happened was that the fire moved across grassland areas with little fuel so quickly that the trees there didn't have time to catch fire, although radiant heat was still a problem for living creatures in the way (there were heavy stock losses). Something similar happened in Canberra 2003 - the grasslands between the Murrumbidgee and the west side of Stromlo looked lightly toasted rather than blackened.

Lake Hume was looking in the best shape I've seen it for a long time. Appropriately my music shuffle found this as the waters came into sight.

C • No-one else around 1

C • Corryong 13

Running continues to be a bit of a struggle in the fitness sense, especially up hills (even the gentle climbing which formed most of the first half of this run, on the bike path to Wandiligong), but at least the body was functioning. I had been concerned about soreness at the front of my right ankle but it was fine (better running than walking, actually) - and it was better driving today than it was yesterday, too.

I'm always partial to information boards so was somewhat gratified to see that the eucalypts (mostly) weren't cleared to make way for Bright's pine forests - the gold miners had done the clearing first.

Again today's excursion was in the afternoon after a morning work engagement, this time to Mount Buffalo, and getting to the Horn this time (the road there wasn't open on our 2011 visit and it would still have been under snow anyway). It's a nice area but there was an element of bittersweet about it, because parts of the plateau reminded me of parts of Namadgi that I'll probably never see looking like that again (unless (a) it doesn't burn again and (b) I live a sufficiently long and healthy life to still be exploring parks in my 80s). The south end of Buffalo itself took a hammering last summer, making the approach to the Horn a stark place indeed, but there are still plenty of untouched places, and on the way back I dropped into a waterfall which would once have been described as picture-postcard (these days the term is Instagrammable).

Original plan was a run today and a ride tomorrow, but was feeling both sleepy and sore this morning so decided to do a swap (hopefully tomorrow's part of the deal will work out). I had a (virtual) meeting this morning I couldn't get out of (there's another one tomorrow) so headed out after that - there's plenty around here for the ambitious, but my ambitions were lower and I contented myself with an explore up Buckland Valley, a climb sufficiently gentle that it felt easier going uphill with a modest tailwind than downwind with a modest headwind. A few calf twinges during the ride but didn't have the post-ride tightness I had on Monday (though the occasional post-driving front-of-ankle soreness is starting to put in an appearance).

An afternoon trip out to Hotham and Dinner Plain was a reminder of the mountains I ran up once upon a time (the Razorback was a particularly memorable one). The road up Hotham is not one I'd particularly want to be on in a blizzard.

C • Road up Hotham 6

Today was a reasonably long travel day from the first major stage of my trip to the second, from the Grampians across to Bright. The optimal route choice for this (at least according to Google) goes right past the front of Kooyoora so I could hardly pass up that opportunity. My back wasn't feeling great driving there, and it proved to be troublesome up hills too, but there was more than enough that wasn't to give me a taste for how much fun this area is - doing the phi loops area from the 2014 ultra-long, north of the campground. Shorter than I thought it was going to be, but with the back suspect I was happy with that. Wobbled a bit on one control, and picking my way from point to point a bit, but it's the most technical thing I've done since March so can't be too upset.

A bit of a theme for the rest of the day was "when was I last here" - there weren't too many bits of completely uncharted territory apart from the Halls Gap-Stawell-St. Arnaud route, but there were plenty of places I haven't been in a decade or two, including St. Arnaud itself (2009), the northeast exit from Bendigo (2008, and I'm not falling over myself to do it again in the next 12 years) and the route across from there to Violet Town (2003). For that matter, I think it's 2005 since I last set foot in Bright itself, and 2011 since I was last in the Victorian mountains at all. One thing which is definitely new since last year, though, is the big solar farm next to the Hume at Winton.

You learn something new every day: there is a conspiracy theory in Germany (or perhaps more accurately a satire of a conspiracy theory) which holds that the city of Bielefeld does not exist. This will come as news to most who were at WOC 1995.

C • Bright 10

Monday would normally be a swim session, but I couldn't work out how to make a booking for Warrnambool's pool without already being a member (I get the sense that this is one regional setting where people from Melbourne will be persona non grata for a while yet), so instead I stopped for a ride on my way to the Grampians. (Hawkesdale, my start point, has a pool of its own - and they seem quite proud of it because its 1969 opening features on the town's history timeline - but it only opens weekends).

This was a reasonably flat ride with only a few small hills, mostly early and late. Quite windy, more crosswind than anything else but tending towards favourable in the second half. Didn't feel as if I had much energy early on, but built into it and the last 30 minutes were a nice cruise through Western District farming country on a quiet road.

My main sightseeing plan for the day was to climb Mount Abrupt, but it was in cloud so I did Mount Sturgeon instead (the last peak at the southern end of the range, overlooking Dunkeld). Impressive views to be had from there, and more impressive ones from various lookouts closer to Halls Gap later in the day (the cloud had mostly lifted by mid-afternoon).

Calves were pretty tight at times post-ride, so maybe that's the trigger for them? Hopefully they'll settle overnight as I don't think I'd have fancied trying to run on them this afternoon, although walking was OK.

A bit of a tourist run heading for the Warrnambool waterfront on a day when my main physical activity was going to be elsewhere. Didn't work out too badly, and managed the (small) climb back out, so fitness seems to be improving in very small increments.

The day's main activity was walking around Cape Bridgewater (west of Portland), an impressive coastline. The west side was somewhat reminiscent of the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula, the east side (with green sheep paddocks running up to the edge of the cliffs) was reminiscent of New Zealand. The weather held out for the most part but we got a thunderstorm later on - the shelter at the seal-viewing platform didn't provide that much shelter from rain, and I suspect would have provided even less from lightning had it come closer than the 2km it did.

Doing some checking for the Victorian Sprint. Felt reasonably good (by modern standards) while doing it - probably the best I've felt on a run for some time. Should be a fun area, too - not super-technical but still things to trip up the unwary.

This was on the way out of town, in my first substantial trip for some time - I'm taking this week off. First stage was down to Warrnambool (apart from anything else, my cousin is currently down there working in the hospital for a few months). There's some walking planned tomorrow, but today was mostly about making my way down there via a somewhat meandering route which took in chunks of the Otways (green as you'd expect after a reasonably wet winter and early spring). Quite pleasant all round, and an added bonus was that I made it to Timboon while the ice creamery was still open...

Set about clearing the last of the remaining bits of Northcote (within the 2km circle) south of All Nations Park. This required climbing most or all of Ruckers Hill three times, which was more demanding than what I've done in a while, and proved to be a struggle, but at least my back, which had been difficult in the first 10 minutes, settled down. Hamstring was beginning to fatigue a bit at 30 minutes but got no worse. Seem to be in reasonable shape in the injuries department, fitness is a different story.

In something of a novelty for 2020, I'm actually going somewhere for more than a weekend. The somewhere is a bit of a circuit of Victoria, although plans for later in the week are still somewhat fluid, and I may dip briefly into NSW just because I can (assuming nothing goes pear-shaped in Victoria in the interim).

Some creativity was deployed by a solicitor with a side business in an irrigation farm at Euston. His explanation for his activities was that he took water without paying for it because he didn't have enough money at the time to pay for it, and in any case it was the fault of the regulator for not stopping him from stealing water. The judge was not impressed.

Not something I'd normally be doing in Melbourne (at least during the week): lunchtime under a 30-something degree sun. This was one day to be grateful for a limit on numbers (although if there hadn't been a limit on numbers I would have been here a lot earlier in the day). Steady enough, although enough creaks this morning that I think I might have struggled to come up for a run today.

One odd sporting fact which came to my attention this week: Bernhard Langer has played in golf majors against people born in 1902 and 2002.

Feeling pretty tired this week, but have more or less finalised a couple of big work things today, and have a long-overdue week off coming up after tomorrow.

MFR Wednesday night training at Willsmere, first a bush course and then some sprint intervals in Willsmere itself - a new experience for me and quite interesting. For the first part I thought it might have been a repeat experience of last week, with my back troublesome and not able to run uphill at all, but it came good after about 25 minutes (part way through the first sprint) and from there it was about as good as it gets for me at the moment. One silly error in the bush part but pretty clean for the rest.

Next step was to see whether my calves could handle a continuous run. They essentially could, with the only issue a bit of hamstring fatigue towards the end which convinced me not to push this beyond the originally planned 30 minutes. A bit of a struggle fitness-wise but probably no worse than various runs of a couple of weeks ago.

Finished off another block of suburban "terrain", this time the area between Station Street and Victoria Road and north of Darebin Road.

Although the calves have improved, the physio still found plenty of scope for needlework this evening.

The early Monday morning session. Felt fairly smooth for the most part although a bit of back soreness on a couple. Didn't sleep that brilliantly, which may or may not have been something to do with it being near 30 degrees until 4am (whereupon there was a dusty change with a few spots of rain which made it abundantly obvious which cars had been parked outside overnight, and which ones hadn't).

Moved on to the pool, which felt a bit better than it has the last couple of weeks. Calves seem to have come up not too badly after the weekend - will be interesting to see how they hold up when I try running again tomorrow.

My first weekend for a long time on the Mornington Peninsula aligned with the debut of the Mornington Peninsula park/street series. (This wasn't entirely coincidental - I applied a bit of presidential influence to get the event deferred a week from its originally scheduled date so Melbourne-based people could get to it). This was at Rye, mostly in the flat first few blocks in from the beach - I think it would be more interesting further inland where the street pattern is less regular and there are more dunes.

I was still managing my body closely, which meant walking on the hills (not many of these) or every few minutes on the flat bits to keep my calves under control. This seemed to work, with a similar feeling during and post-run to yesterday. Back ordinary in the first 10-15 minutes but OK thereafter. I knew from early on in the piece that I was going to get them all within 60 minutes, and from there the route choice was mostly pretty straightforward.

Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of people down here today. I'd always planned to go home after dinner and the mid/late afternoon traffic did nothing to disabuse me of that idea (it was fine by the time I set off).

C • Mornington 3

Some bush orienteering of sorts, in the form of a Yarra Valley training event at Jumping Creek (near Warrandyte). There wasn't actually that much forest running - the forest section was green and mostly track running - but a semi-open area out the back saw much more cross-country. I didn't really expect to come up for this but it worked out OK (though I was very conservative, walking all the hills) - calves were tight but no pain, and have come up better afterwards than the back-to-square-one sense of the last two attempts. I haven't forgotten how to navigate during the break, either - most of the controls were straightforward but there were a couple of vague slopes which I hit right on.

Saw quite a number of people I haven't seen for a while - good to see Joyce Rowlands, whom I passed on the way to the first control, back in action. (I had thought she must be in her 90s by now, but a check of my results files indicates she's 88 this year).

After that it was taking the chance to go further afield than has been possible for a while. The ultimate destination was Blairgowrie but I decided to take a highly indirect route choice, partly because I'd been planning to go to Toorongo Falls (near Noojee) in July (thanks to a tip from Rob Preston) and hadn't had the chance then. It was as nice as I expected, and in any case I've really missed the setting of green fields in valley bottoms and towering eucalypts and tree ferns off to the side.

The route choice from there to the Mornington Peninsula was also something a bit different (including a stretch on the uninspiringly-named Main Drain Road, where I failed to find the Cora Lynn ford which regularly gets mentioned on Bunyip River flood warnings). It did, however, take me back to once-familiar ground around Neerim South, where we were based when working at the Gippsland Field Days in the 2000s (and where I did perhaps my best training run of the 21st century). Neerim South apparently had a serious ice problem a few years back; not sure if it still does.

I now have experimental evidence that the minimum speed required for a sweaty orienteering top to fall off the roof of a Subaru Forester is approximately 50 km/h.

C • It's not a proper experiment 7

Late start today after a post-midnight finish (the first of two). Wasn't quite sure how the calf would respond in the water; it seemed to be fine there although there was a bit of cramping later on. Feeling a bit better than I did yesterday, although back is unusually tight after sitting all day (which might have been part of the picture on Wednesday).

Calf still not 100% today (although not as bad as it pulled up last night). Walking later in the day it felt pretty tight on both sides, which suggests that the fundamental problem is elsewhere. Hoping it settles down enough to be able to get into the bush on Saturday - will be a pity to miss that (in a normal year I wouldn't be getting too exciting about a bush training session on what will probably be a steep and green map at Warrandyte, but this isn't a normal year).

Must be WMO statement time (I'd normally be in Geneva around this time of year) - in the space of an hour a couple of days back I sent e-mails to China, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Sudan, Libya, Argentina, Brazil, the US, Canada and Switzerland. Haven't gone looking at any North Korean government websites yet this year.

C • North Korea 2

Decided I was more or less ready to try things out again, at MFR sprint training in Carlton. The good news was that my ankle was ready. The bad news was that my calf wasn't. Hopefully it's a similar injury to the one I did about this time last year, although it feels a bit worse than that one did.

An interesting session conceptually (and I fell squarely into the trap at 5 on the second map). It also featured a mapped alley as narrow as some of the more borderline ones in China.

I was somewhat worried about the ankle soreness last night because of the experience of last July; while a repeat seemed unlikely because I hadn't experienced any of the other symptoms from last time (especially the loss of appetite :-), I was still relieved to get up this morning and find it better rather than worse. Originally I was thinking of not doing anything today, but after managing a walk to a source of morning coffee with only mild discomfort, I thought I'd be able to manage a lunchtime ride. As it turned out there were no issues at all with this (and getting a bit of mobility into the ankle was probably a good thing). It was the hottest day of the spring so far and I was getting a bit thirsty by the end, but otherwise this was a decent session.

Edinburgh Gardens at lunchtime are a lot quieter than they were a few weeks ago.

Back to Monday morning Pilates after a long break. Arrived to the sounds of Party In The USA, an appropriate choice given the amount of partying currently taking place in the USA, along with various other parts of the world (as someone put it, a fairly minimal performance bar to clear is that the whole planet doesn't start dancing in the street when you lose your job).

Somewhat to my surprise, I remembered how to do this.

Moved on to the pool. Felt like a reasonable session, but was pretty slow. The sort of morning that's made for an outdoor pool, with a clear sky and a bright sun.

My calf felt considerably better today, but I've swapped one problem for another because for no obvious reason the front of my right ankle became painful sometime between coffee and lunch. It's quite painful to walk on this evening; I've experienced this before and it usually settles down before too long, but I suspect I might not be getting out tomorrow as I'd planned on.

Getting out in another sense did happen this evening, in the form of a post-work excursion to Kinglake and a takeaway dinner at a lookout picnic table looking over the city I've been stuck in for the last four months.

The calf turned out to be a more significant issue than I'd hoped; there was some discomfort walking on it last night, and although that part of it was improved somewhat this morning, I didn't consider running. I was a bit apprehensive riding, too, when it was a bit uncomfortable pushing off, but it was fine once moving (and better later in the day). Still generally avoided hills on a loop through La Trobe (where the Sunday market is back), Reservoir and Coburg. Very pleasant morning to be out (and various pieces of good news during the morning didn't hurt, either).

This is (hopefully) the last day of having to stick to local exploration so I did a bit more of it, looking at some of the more obscure approaches to the north side of the Yarra between Eltham and Warrandyte. The back blocks of Eltham have something of a reputation as a hippies' hangout and in Saturday's Age I was reading a piece about an artists' commune on a property out there (not sure if I passed it or not) in the early 1970s which had all the features you might expect of an artists' commune in the early 1970s (especially the fornication and the mind-altering substances). Finished up this excursion by hanging out for a while in the park next to the railway trestle bridge, which a couple of years ago was the unlikely venue of a demo by the United Patriots Front or some other such outfit (although they were considerably outnumbered by locals giving renditions of "say it loud, say it clear, Nazis are not welcome here" and other such classics).

On the evidence of today, a substantial proportion of Melbourne was spending their last day of relative captivity mowing grass.

C • calf 1

Checking things at Kensington for the forthcoming Victorian Sprint Championships (yes, there's going to be one, and I'm the controller). Not a super-technical area but enough to produce traps for the unwary (including a couple of losses of concentration by yours truly). Some twinges in my right calf were a bit troublesome.

Perhaps the fastest running I did today was afterwards (preparing to walk around the controls after doing the run) when a gust of wind picked up my maps and started propelling them across Smithfield Road towards Flemington Racecourse (fortunately none of them went over the fence, and I managed to retrieve all of them). It's an indication of how abnormal 2020 is that I was able to get a (legal) parking spot just across the road from Flemington on a spring carnival race day.

Back to the home of the aqua (sic) profonda for the first time since March, to do this session for the first time since March. Felt rather tight and stressed at the start of this after a busy day at work (got something significant done just before heading out the door), but gradually relaxed through the session (which was part of the idea), and ended up getting my mind sufficiently absorbed in the question of optimal location for a possible February OA conference (taking into account who can get into which state, who can get back home afterwards, and how easy it is to get there in the first place) that I lost track of time and went a few minutes longer than I'd planned on.

Had initial plans to do a bit of a run in the morning on my first visit to the central city since June (getting a headlight fixed), but back was a bit troublesome. This run would have been a bonus anyway.

Lunchtime ride on the La Trobe loop after finding out in the morning that I'm not up to three days in row (or, alternatively, the Wednesday night/Thursday morning combination) yet. A stiff southwesterly, not a bad wind for this because it means you have a tailwind going up most of the hills, and felt fairly reasonable although the headwind was getting to be a bit of a drag at the end. A slightly convoluted route home because three different options through the semi-industrial north bit of Fairfield were closed because of works (I think on the same power line, otherwise it was a very poor piece of coordination).

It's November, but you can still find swooping magpies if you pick the wrong place.

A return to orienteering after four months, in the form of a socially distanced version of a street-O. It's definitely not quite the same (and it took me a while to be sure that I'd got the technology right), but there are still maps to read, routes to plan and (virtual) controls to find. I'm not sure if I did a great job on the second of these - and it was the long end for C as well - but still nice to be out there, especially for the brief excursion into the dell bit of Bellbird Dell. Probably at the better end of my street events from last summer - the back was functioning, although I was still short of fitness and walked the steepest hills. Gives me something to build on.

The day was somewhat unsettling, although I was more confident than many during the day that team blue is going to get across the line (albeit unconvincingly).

Small steps. Felt incrementally better today, although starting to feel the warmth at the end on the first warm-weather run of spring. It certainly wasn't the hills because this one was just about dead flat, going into previously unvisited country in the northwest part of my circle (west of Station Street, north of Darebin Road) - this has a relatively simple grid and is flat and I don't think I've run there before except on Boulder Dash street-O events.

Part of the rest of the day was devoted to exploring on the north side of the Yarra - didn't find any new spots to access the river and only fleeting views, but there are some nice bits of bush around the Bend of Islands, which looks like the sort of place where it would be nice to live in the forest but is a bushfire disaster waiting for a year to happen, with added bonus points because the only significant exit road is to the northwest which is the direction a fire would come from. (Had the wind change been an hour or two later, that year would have been 2009).

Found a decent cafe in Hurstbridge for lunch too. Reaching there involved passing through the soon-to-be-removed Doreen roundabout, which featured signs on one side of the road calling for the building of option C and signs on the other side of the road calling for options B and C to be ditched and option A to be built. Neither of them will be happy because some post-trip googling revealed option B is the one that's happening. (For those of us who grew up in 1980s Canberra, the expression 'option C' will be permanently associated with Paul Keating's abortive attempt to introduce a GST 15 years before it actually happened - which naturally didn't stop him from eviscerating John Hewson for trying the same thing in 1993).

One thing which puzzled me a bit on passing it is why South Morang's primary school is called Morang South, but it seems that Morang South is the earlier name and the school kept it after the settlement was renamed. (Checking this also revealed the answer to the question "where's Morang?" - the locality formerly known as Morang North is now Mernda).

C • Bend of Isles 16

Morning swim. Must have slept well with multiple vivid dreams, but was awake enough when I hit the water (not always guaranteed for a Monday morning session). Felt like I was going OK but not a lot faster than the last couple. Quite a busy lane but the others didn't get in the way much (I was probably getting in their way more, but if you're swimming in a slow lane you probably can't reasonably complain about finding slow people in it).

I'll be doing earlier Monday mornings soon: Pilates is back next week.

MFR Sunday morning runs have restarted but I didn't feel confident enough to join a group run just yet, so did my own thing, heading west in the direction of All Nations Park and Ruckers Hill. A bit of a struggle again, particularly when going up the (small) hills, but hamstring remains sound. Back tightened a bit afterwards but OK on the run.

I'm starting to shuffle these a bit earlier in the day in anticipation of the months ahead when heat-avoidance will become necessary (La Nina years in Melbourne specialise in prolonged, humid moderate heatwaves, rather than the short sharp ones of last summer). It's been pleasing that so far my back has functioned OK running in the mornings, unlike the situation in midyear.