Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

A poor run early in the morning which improved somewhat once I could actually see where I was going. Achilles not great today.

There must be a crime shortage in Victoria this week: featuring in the "Victoria's Most Wanted" column on Wednesday was someone who'd allegedly nicked a mountain bike from a Port Melbourne garage.

Pool run at Fitzroy, starting well and truly in the dark now (the last time for a while - not that I'll have too many more Fridays in Melbourne for a while). Calves felt a bit funny (something confirmed by the masseur who was my next stop); occasionally threatened to cramp but never did.

Banner of the day - from the supporters of Schalke at their Europa League match against Athletic Bilbao, protesting against the 90-euro ticket price for the return leg in Spain: "1 euro a minute? It's football, not phone sex!"

Disrtance starting to wind down a bit now in the lead-up to Easter. Slow to start with in a reasonably hilly first half through East Ivanhoe and North Balwyn, settled down a bit after that. Never flowing but seemed to go quite quickly.

It is the last Thursday in March which means it is time for an annual ritual: the sight of Richmond supporters convinced that this is going to be their year. Usually they're disabused of this notion by about 10 on the Thursday night, and this year is going the same way.

I've also been doing a lot of looking at recent site pictures in the last couple of days. One I saw (not one of the 112 high-quality ones) gave new meaning to the expression "crappy site" - it's at the Launceston sewage treatment works and the observations have been affected in the last couple of years by large quantities of Launceston's you-know-what being dumped in close proximity to the screen. (There's a much better site at the airport which is in my set).

C • What is "the screen"? 2

C • Ti-Tree Bend 1

By overwhelming popular demand arising out of the previous discussion, here is your chance to help raise some funds for the Australian teams in 2012.

If donations to orienteering through the Australian Sports Foundation reach $500 between now and Easter Monday, I hereby pledge (*) to follow the fine example of the Ukrainian federation president mentioned yesterday, and sing the national anthem at the Easter presentation. If we get to $1000 I'll sing both verses. (* - if, on the other hand, you're so appalled by the prospect of hearing me sing that you're prepared to pay good money to see it not happen, you can nominate that with your donation, and if "not singing" donations exceed "singing" ones I'll refrain).

Donations to the Australian Sports Foundation can be directed to a number of projects, including the teams for WOC, JWOC and MTBO WOC. If you're an Australian taxpayer you can even claim a tax deduction for it (as long as you or a member of your immediate family isn't in a team you're directing your donation to). You need to fill out the donation form - you can either scan and e-mail to me or bring it to Easter (I'll also have hard copies at Easter).

C • I really think 4

Felt a bit sleepy warming up, better once trying to go fast, but only marginally faster than the last couple of weeks - certainly not hitting form leading into Easter in the way I would like. The light was pretty marginal at the start - definitely ready for daylight saving to stop.

The ride in was pretty hard work (my rear tyre was low - fortunately we have a good pump at work). There was a piece in yesterday's paper about how Audi had a model for the Indian market which included an extra heavy-duty horn; on today's evidence there might be a market for such vehicles in Melbourne as well.

3x1k on the Tan. A strange sort of run, felt like I couldn't get any sort of speed but faster (or perhaps less slow) than with a similar effort last week, down in the 3.50s. I guess this should be taken as encouraging.

Some of you will have heard of the unfortunate incident the other day in which someone from Kazakhstan won a shooting championship in Kuwait; the organisers had downloaded the wrong song from the internet and instead played the spoof "national anthem" from the Borat movie (a sample - "our prostitutes are the cleanest in the region, except for Turkmenistan"). I'm not sure if it's still the case, but usually teams are asked to bring a copy of their anthem to WOC. When Yuri Omelchenko won unexpectedly in 1995 the Ukrainians hadn't come so equipped, so the president of the Ukrainian federation got up on the stage and sang it instead. (Hopefully public anthem-singing doesn't form part of OA's presidential responsibilities).

C • OA duties 7

Going to/from the Tan, feeling half-asleep on the way there. Lots of stops for traffic both coming and going, and a more positive diversion when I saw the sports medicine person I used to go to for the first time in a couple of years. After seven years of sticking needles into my calf muscles every fortnight, she left the practice abruptly and I'd heard on the grapevine that all was not well, but she seems in good form now.

C • Karen? 2

Nothing to get wildly excited about but nothing too bad either in the first leg of the occasional Monday triathlon, from the Fitzroy pool north along the Merri Creek. Seemed to be going gently uphill for a lot of it which is puzzling as most of this run was dead flat.

In the pool at Fitzroy in the early stages of autumn (today was one of the first markers of developing autumn, the first sub-10 night in Melbourne). Felt a bit strange at times swimming, thanks to the aftermath of jamming a couple of fingers in the pantry door this morning, but settled down eventually.

An early start this morning before heading off to the Gippsland Field Days (only for the day this year). Came up a fair bit better from the Saturday long run than I did last week, feeling quite reasonable for the most part on a fairly hilly course. Rather slow, but part of that was feeling my way on potentially slippery Eaglemont paths on a drizzly morning in the dark.

C • Proper Gippsland weather for a change 3

Again a Saturday long run as I won't have time for anything long tomorrow. Didn't sleep very well last night; felt reasonable on the run most of the way, without filling myself with confidence that I've got what it takes to race for a couple of hours on a hot day in Queensland. A considerably hillier run (through Montmorency and Lower Plenty) than most of what I've done lately, and felt like I had no power in the legs up the hills, although not weak in the sense I sometimes can be.

It's election day in Queensland, something which I expect most Queensland readers are heartily sick of (especially those of you who live in Ashgrove). The only real interest remaining from my point of view is whether Rachel Nolan will hold her seat (by no means a given - she's on 16%, polls indicate a general swing of around 13%, and outer suburban seats often swing more than the average). If she does she will probably be leader of the Opposition, as just about all the other likely candidates are on considerably smaller margins than that.

C • Rachel 3

A session which seemed almost incidental to the day, but not a bad way to start it nonetheless, in the midst of the first vaguely cold outbreak of autumn. Fairly smooth and relaxing, except perhaps when we could hear someone five lanes away abusing the pool staff and everyone else within earshot (I think his grievance was that a group, one of the Melbourne Uni colleges at a guess, had booked a lane and he took exception to his lane being too crowded for his liking) - I thought it was only at Kew that people had that sort of sense of entitlement.

Then it was on to a busy day associated with the launch of the long-term data set I've been working on for the last couple of years (now at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/). The launch seemed to go pretty well, although speaking at it was a bit different to the usual - I felt much the same way as I do before the start of a big race (complete with a desire to run up and down the aisle a few times to let out some nervous energy).

Now the wait comes to see what the reaction is - I'm prepared for anything from largely-unnoticed-outside-the-scientific-community to the full News Limited blowtorch. I think the former is considerably more likely than the latter, but have known enough people in this field elsewhere who have had the equivalent of the latter (or worse) not to take that for granted.

C • Lane space entitlement 1

Not quite as planned - yesterday one of the headlights on my car failed (third time in 18 months - turned out there was a dud batch which is hopefully clear of the system now) and I took in to be fixed, which meant driving in early to beat the traffic and doing a run from Fishermens Bend.

As usual when I run from there, it was on the general theme of out and back southwards - this time out a little inland through Middle Park down as far as Elwood (would have preferred going through Albert Park, but I doubt that it's open yet after the Grand Prix) and back along the beach. A solid run with nothing to get really excited about, but still good to be back to something like normal after a difficult week last week. Lower left leg still doesn't feel quite right, with more general soreness than the usual (and felt a bit jarred when I stepped on a small rock yesterday) - will need watching.

The 'not quite as planned' continued once I actually got to the workshop - I'd just unloaded my bike from the back of the car to ride it into work when the person moving the car behind mine drove forward over the top of the bike. The damage isn't as bad as I'd feared but the rear wheel is buckled. Hopefully the workshop foots the bill (they said they would).

Yesterday, in the process of posting an AP comment, I had cause to look at the Wikipedia entry for Fine Cotton (for an explanation of the relevance of Fine Cotton to the ACT Paddy Pallin rogaine you'll need to look at Craney's log). I'd forgotten just how farcically incompetent the execution of the plot was - a sample, worded in rather understated style:

"The syndicate faced a problem in that the horses were different colours. Fine Cotton was an eight year old brown gelding and had white markings on his hind legs, whereas Bold Personality was a seven year old bay gelding with no markings. To overcome this issue, they applied Clairol hair colouring to Bold Personality with limited success. On race day, having forgotten the peroxide to whiten the legs of Bold Personality, they resorted to crudely applied white paint. These poorly conceived attempts to overcome the discrepancies in appearance between the two horses later served to highlight the amateurish nature of the scheme"

4x1k (actually about 1.03 as lanes 1/2 are blocked off) at the Clifton Hill track, 400m jog recovery in between, at orienteering race pace or the best approximation thereof. A consistent pace was rather lacking, partly because it took a while to warm up, but mostly because of a squally northerly wind, on a strange day (maximum 26 at 3am, minimum 11 around noon) - sometimes the squalls happened while I was on the home straight (tail wind), sometimes on the back straight (head wind).

As with yesterday, felt OK while doing it but not happy with the pace, only getting town to around 4 min/km at the best of it.

Warm up and down for the intervals session, before going on to another day of conspiring with Greenpeace and the CIA to cause the downfall of the global capitalist economy, or something like it. I knew that one day my deeply-hidden connections (*) with the former American ambassador to Azerbaijan would come back to haunt me.

(* - in case you're wondering, said connections are that his previous posting was to Canberra and his sons were at school with me; I stayed with them for a while in Washington DC, where they were between postings, in the lead-up to WOC 1993).

C • Conspiracies 1

Felt considerably better than last week but not much faster. Loosening up a bit more easily than has been the case in the last few days. Would want to do some improvement soon, with only a couple of weeks to go until Easter.

Trivia question of the day: who was the back-seat passenger in the Angry Anderson Batmobile at the 1991 AFL Grand Final?

And my list of remaining sites:

WA - Halls Creek, Marble Bar, Meekatharra, Forrest, Giles
NT - Victoria River Downs, Rabbit Flat, Tennant Creek
SA - Tarcoola, Oodnadatta
Qld - Weipa, Palmerville, Burketown, Barcaldine, Longreach, Cape Moreton, Miles, Charleville, Thargomindah
NSW - Tibooburra, Bourke, Point Perpendicular
Vic/Tas - none

Quite a challenging planning exercise (perhaps a rogaine on a grand scale!) - there's a reasonably logical loop (at least in a year when the far northwest of NSW isn't under water) taking in Tibooburra, Thargomindah, Longreach, Barcaldine, Charleville and Bourke, but the rest are pretty scattered. Palmerville, in the middle of Cape York and 80km on a rough track from the nearest road, will probably be the toughest nut to crack. (Someone else in the Australian orienteering community has been there - AJ, as part of the infamously tough Crocodile Trophy MTB race which went that way some years ago).

C • Jasper Gorge in the VRD is ... 1

Had toyed with the idea of a session on Ninety Mile Beach but the tide times weren't favourable and I remembered from Lakes Entrance 2009 that it's not a great place to run at high tide (and my Achilles was better then than it is now), plus Metung seemed a decent place to run and the right size to be covered pretty well in a 40-minute circuit - hilly early and late, otherwise flat. Took some warming up but pretty good in the last 15 minutes, along the shore on the western side of the peninsula (although not quite as peaceful a scene as was the case walking back from dinner last night, a lone waterbird drifting against the setting sun).

Next stop in the tour was Sale, home to a big swimming complex, although only the indoor part of it was open (which was a pity as it was a warm day and would have been nice for an outdoor swim). A reasonably nondescript session which did manage to loosen me up a bit, with only one uncomfortable moment when someone approaching from behind collided with a sensitive bit of my heel - no lasting damage as far as I can tell.

The rest of the way home, after a detour to Seaspray, was largely about some unfinished business from the 2009 trip, when high winds and resultant fallen trees scuppered plans to do the Grand Ridge Road. That wasn't a problem this time, although in essence it's a long drive on a track through the forest, a lot of which is testament to the efficiency of Kathryn and her colleagues (sorry Kathryn). For old-growth forest and tree ferns in vast quantities the climb up the Tarra Valley to get up to the Grand Ridge Road in the first place is better.

And there's one drawback of travelling on a weekday: roadworks (seven different lots of them on the freeway between Yarragon and Pakenham).

C • Sale 7

This time the wind was light enough to go out to Gabo Island, which was my start to the morning (they like to get out as early as they can as the wind often picks up during the day). Mallacoota has an airport vastly in excess of its needs, a legacy of its role as a WW2 air force base - these days its main purpose is as the main DSE firefighting base for far eastern Victoria. (You know you're in the bush when the electric fence around the airport is directed at wildlife, not would-be terrorists). I was surprised how little it cost to get to the island by air - $100 including a lighthouse tour. (The pilot is also principal of the local school and I think he does the flights as a hobby and/or to keep his flying hours up - I can't believe he makes much money on it at that price).

With the Gabo Island mission accomplished - 90 sites down, 22 to go (next target is Cape Moreton in the week after Easter) - it was back to the mainland and time to go out for a run, this time northwards along the edge of the inlet and reaching the start of a walking track at the far end after leaving Mallacoota behind (I suspect this track would make a good longer run). The setting was very nice but as expected I found it hard to come up after the long day yesterday, and found this run a bit of a struggle. Also took a while for what seems to be fairly general soreness in my right foot to warm up, although it did eventually.

Couldn't help thinking, on visiting a cafe post-run and hearing the people on the next table in approving discussion of what Andrew Bolt had written in that day's paper, that they might be dissecting my character this time in a fortnight....

With Monday off, there was no rush to get back to Melbourne so I didn't, instead making a fairly leisurely way back as far as Metung on the Gippsland Lakes - not a bad spot, although the food at the local pub, while perfectly adequate, wasn't quite as good as its reputation had led me to believe.

C • fence 2

Waiting for Gabo (thanks to a commenter on my Facebook page for that one): the word came through that it was too windy to get to the island today, something I'd half-expected (the forecast had always suggested that today would be marginal, tomorrow more promising). That then meant I swapped my planned weekend sessions and went long today, an out-and-back southwest from Mallacoota, sort of along the coast, going almost (but not quite) to the end of the road at Shipwreck Creek. This is a gently rolling route, bitumen for the first 5k as far as the airport, then a forest dirt track into the national park.

The start was again slow but by 2k I'd settled down into something a lot closer to normal than any other run I've had this week. By usual standards it was a steady run, not as good as a couple of the long ones I had in January but a decent accumulation of distance. Started to tire in the last half-hour and was hanging on a bit at the end (probably slightly influenced by the biggest hill of the run coming with 1k to go), but then it's the first time I've gone much beyond 90 minutes since coming back from Europe.

The afternoon seemed to disappear doing nothing much except walking to the beach at Bastion Point and spending a couple of hours on it. Like a lot of coastal towns, it's packed in January but seems pretty quiet at this time of the year, although the caravan park was still pretty full (with a disproportionate number of Queensland plates, suggesting that at this time of year it's a favoured grey-nomad haunt). At the moment it's very pleasant by the bay - lots of green and the forest all around (not sure I'd want to be here if/when there's a big fire, though - the only realistic escape option is into the water).

The Garmin must have turned itself on in my bag because it was almost out of battery despite being charged on Thursday, but it did last long enough to confirm that I'd settled into about a 5 min/km pace, so I've assumed that for the weekend.

Navigation epic fail of the day:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/taking-...

C • What were they thinking? 4

Pool running at Fitzroy, starting in the dark which always feels a bit strange. It rained very heavily just before I started but then cleared for the remainder (which meant I got out with a dry towel). Starting to feel a bit more normal.

I'm taking advantage of a clear weekend (and Monday) and a decent weather forecast to tick another one off the list of temperature stations to be visited - Gabo Island. Unlike the people linked to above, I'm well aware that you can't drive to islands (and I have a somewhat unfortunate history in any case when it comes to remote weather stations and water crossings) - it's a small plane from Mallacoota instead. Should hopefully be some nice running to be had around Mallacoota too.

A bit later in the morning than usual for a Thursday (thanks to a 9am date with the auditors) and also shorter than I'd planned on at the start of the week - feeling that I still need to back off a bit. Certainly felt improved but still pretty slow - not much faster than this time last week.

Thought my route up through Springthorpe might take me past the location of the news of the morning, but the fire turned out to be at the junior campus of Charles La Trobe College which is somewhere else. There was, though, one memorable sight, one of the most spectacular rainbows I've seen in a long time as rain developed to the west about halfway through with the sun starting to rise properly in the east (later there was a bit of light rain, taking a bit of the sting out of a warm morning).

Not as out of sorts as the last two days but still well short of what I would hope for. Started reasonably well and got a bit of a jump on the field by noticing that a fence was uncrossable before committing myself to a route choice involving it, then took another original route choice - having noticed that the only plausible way to get 15 (which most people dropped) was 10-17-15-19 - and was on my own for most of the rest of it. Thought I'd made a good job of the route choice (on an excellent course) so was a bit surprised that Bruce was shorter (although not many others were).

Blackburn is one of my favourite street-O areas - the bush around the lake and the bushy streets on the south side of that - so I was keen on a night where otherwise I might have been tempted to take the easy option. Started out OK physically and was good for about 25 minutes before falling away, on the first warm night (29) since returning from Europe - good practice for Queensland. A bit of random shoulder soreness too. On the good side, an ankle which I rolled a little on Saturday and has been a bit stiff and sore during the day warmed up fine.

I'm clearly still struggling but there were some signs of improvement tonight. Will still back a bit off original plans tomorrow but hopefully things have turned the corner.

And the latest on the ten-green-bottles competition that is the 2011-12 Swiss national football championship: we're now down to seven (two teams bankrupt and one on -1 point after being penalised 36 points for fielding ineligible players). The way this is going, actually managing to get to the end of the season solvent and unpenalised is going to be enough to get a Europa League place.

Standard loop from home but really only a token effort - am not really making much progress towards returning to par, despite only displaying slight symptoms outside running. Will back off a bit tomorrow (i.e. only running once) and see how that goes.

The long weekend didn't seem to put people in a good mood - plenty of gratuitous horn-blowing from people with a limited understanding of give-way laws, both whilst running and later on the bike.

C • Kalumburu Road just got worse 3

Down on the Peninsula for the day, and headed out for a fairly standard run to the back beach at Blairgowrie (somewhat to my surprise, the rock tower that everyone jumps off hasn't been fenced off yet, despite the Herald-Sun beat-up mentioned previously on these pages). Could barely get myself moving for the first 10 minutes; loosened up after that but still left in no doubt that (a) I ran a race yesterday and (b) I still have a cold. Reasonably relaxing day after the run, though (even if I did have to wrestle with the OA accounts for a couple of hours before finalising them).

Hopefully the weekend was an aberration, but it will need some good runs at Easter to be confident of this. I find it hard to believe that I've gone backwards so quickly in six months (or they've gone forward so fast) that juniors who were considered to have done well to get within 10 minutes of me last September at the NSW Championships can now take 15 minutes out of me.

I've occasionally mused on whether the iPhone in shuffle mode has a geographically appropriate song selector. On that theme, given that Alex Massey was getting a lift out with me this morning, I thought it was vaguely appropriate that it came up with a song about a building in Newcastle - and then realised that the demolition of said building (and consequent riot) occurred at least a decade before Alex was born.

(The song - Cold Chisel's "Star Hotel").

NOL long at Chinamans Flat. No-one was really sure what to expect with this one - it was a very fast area when it was first used for the 1995 WOC trials (where I had one of my best runs on the Saturday to run myself into the team, then almost ran myself out of it on the Sunday), but it was unclear how it might have grown back after the 1998 fire - as it turned out, quite a bit of bracken (tough in the mining areas, OK otherwise) but not too bad elsewhere.

I might have got away with running while sick yesterday but it wasn't to be today. Felt horrible in the early stages and spent quite a bit of the first loop seriously considering pulling out at the end of it. I'd been dropped immediately and was left to pick off a few that fell off the back. Got caught in some nasty bracken at the end of the first loop and made a couple of small mistakes at the start of the second, then started to feel a bit better after settling into a sort-of-bunch with Mark Gregson, David Brownridge and Reuben. Kept plugging away on the much longer last loop (despite a stupid but small error on the first control of the last loop), and finally started to feel reasonable in the last 20 minutes (this might have had something to do with the fact that the last 20 minutes didn't have any meaningful hills). Mark fell away there, and I got a break on Reuben on a route choice to the third-last. David wobbled on that control but not quite by enough for me to get through him, and then outran me at the end.

In one sense it's good to be able to fight this one out, but the total return from the weekend was zero points - and it's certainly frustrating to have been sick for both my race weekends this year. Hopefully Easter will have something more to offer. Impressed by the depth of the junior men on display this weekend (which is another way of saying that a lot of them beat me).

By the way, did anyone notice that today's map was printed at roughly 1:11000? (must have been the printing as the course lengths were right).

C • Map Scale 14

Long Distance ME 5 - Splits

Event: Eureka Challenge, SILVA NOLs
 

NOL sprint at Uni of Ballarat. Not the horror story I'd feared after a couple of the midweek runs (and after having a bit of a sniffle yesterday, more evidence that a cold - for me anyway - hits one's running hardest before any symptoms appear). Still not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but at least able to run with a vague semblance of speed. Control flow not the best, hardly surprising in a first race for four months, but only one minor wobble in what was really a fairly technically easy race.

NOL Middle at Specimen Hill, a nice little patch of goldmining (the sort of area which wouldn't have been on the radar pre-Sportident - too small). The start draw didn't do me any favours with third-last start in the morning and first in the afternoon (perhaps I should have entered the morning race as Aaron Aardvark - the start list was essentially alphabetical), but that didn't prove a major issue. Flowing well through the first half, if a little slow. Bryan and Lachlan went through me about halfway and couldn't hang onto them (not surprisingly). Became a bit scrappy at the end with 15-seconders at 18 and 20 which cost me a place in the points - an indicator as to how much depth there is at the moment (including an impressively deep bunch of juniors). Still a vaguely decent midfield result, but I'm slipping a bit further back each year....

It's the first time for a while I've been out to the southwest of Ballarat (I think the last time was doing a talk out at Lake Bolac in 2006). The petrol station at Smythesdale no longer advertises 'Fish and Chips and Discount Cigs' (try saying that with a Kiwi accent).

M Open Elite - Splits

Middle DistanceM Open Elite - Splits

A swim at Albert Park (a venue chosen because it suited other logistics later in the morning); I've always found this a particularly uninteresting location even by swimming pool standards (although I'm not sure what makes a swimming pool 'interesting'). Did feel reasonably relaxed by the end. I assume there is somewhere in the complex where one can do pool running but I haven't seen it (and in any case, the last couple of times seem to have coincided with Achilles flare-ups - not sure if there is any connection but it's a risk I'd rather not take this week).

Felt quite relaxed by the end of a swim which was slower than Monday's. Also felt better than I did at the same time yesterday, but going downhill a bit in the afternoon (a late night finalising the documentation for the OA accounts was something I probably could have done without at this point).

Not sure what to expect this weekend; up until a week ago I would have said that I was a bit further ahead than at the same time in the last two years, but the last week has not been encouraging. If nothing else, Saturday afternoon's terrain should be interesting.

I was always going to go short today (by Thursday standards) given the upcoming races on the weekend, but the way I felt on this run would have encouraged such a course of action regardless - weak and light-headed from early on and didn't get any better (and probably the slowest I've ever done a run of this length without extenuating circumstances, other than a bit of newsletter-delivery). Feels like the sort of run where I'm getting sick and there are hints that that is happening, which is not good timing for it. (I don't think it's nausea induced by the front page of today's Herald-Sun, which claimed that the carbon tax would rip $170 million out of the hands of sick kiddies in Victoria, or something like that).

Certainly not a confidence builder leading into the weekend.

Morning run based from Canterbury station, my base in anticipation of tonight's street-O. (The traffic at 6.45 is far uglier than I remember it being - glad that I wasn't trying to get onto the freeway at Bulleen Road). This run had its moments but never quite caught alight, and was still rather slow. Nice morning.

Street-O at Canterbury. I seem to have run on this map an awful lot over the years and my last two outings here have been good, but this one wasn't. Lost time on the first control (which was tucked a bit up an unmapped side lane) and was behind the eight-ball from there (and didn't really have anyone to race with). Felt as if I was running all right, but the stopwatch doesn't lie - only started to get into a reasonable pace in the last couple of kilometres (and found a bit for a finish sprint against three of the Camberwell Grammar boys, whom I presume were on a different course). Not a great time to have hit a bit of a flat spot.

Going to/from the Tan. Was thinking at times that a work breakfast may not have done me any favours.

One pleasing development: the cycle of the pedestrian lights between Crown and Southbank has been shortened substantially - perhaps the powers that be have realised that pedestrians outnumber cars by about 100:1 at that spot at lunchtime.

Stat of the day: the 7-day rainfalls averaged over the catchments of the Murrumbidgee, the Upper Murray and the Lachlan were each almost double the previous records. No wonder there's been a flood.

8x250 on the Tan. Felt as bad as I did the last two times I've done this session in this location, but this time without any excuse of seriously inadequate sleep. Hamstring quite sore again and only gradually got going with any sort of speed. I'd been half-thinking beforehand of asking Bruce if he had a hills session in mind (turned out I saw him heading in the opposite direction, very fast, on the flat) but I would have been blown away today (to an even greater extent than usual).

One of my better swims for a while, on a nice morning. Was working pretty hard by the final third. Amazing how much less boring a swim is when it lasts for 10% less time to cover the same distance.

Water in other places has been very much in the news over the last few days. In some places it's beyond previous records - already in Numurkah, and probably Nathalia and perhaps Wagga. In other places it's nothing we haven't seen before, and there's been plenty of evidence of the benefits of sensible planning in Canberra (total properties flooded as far as I know: zero). In other places there's been evidence of a lack of sensible planning - when a building has been flooded for the fourth time in just over a year, it's probably an indicator that it shouldn't have been built there in the first place.

Monday night is supposed to be a recovery run, but someone forgot to tell tonight's crowd (a select group), who were doing hill surges which I was sort of hanging on to (a bad day for the Achilles didn't help) around the Yarra tracks from Reuben's. Settled into it, eventually.

We didn't see any snakes en route which meant we didn't get the opportunity to put into effect anything said in the all-staff e-mail today about procedures for dealing with them (important at our remote sites but not especially relevant to head office). Spent a bit of time post-run talking about recent political developments, and various attempts in the past to get orienteering publicity (including a subediting epic fail in 1998 when David Colls' local paper announced that he was off to the world jaywalking championships).

Headed into the terrain today at Nerrina - my first excursion into the terrain for a couple of months (unless you count the snow-covered variety in Oslo), and also the first time I've needed to read a map in a couple of months. David Brownridge was there for company - had hoped we might be able to get a few more but I guess most people got enough terrain last weekend.

We headed out on the relay courses from last year, something which led to a bit of confusion at one point because I suggested we reassemble at 6 without realising that David's split was different to mine and my 6 was his 5. Lots of rust in my system, which I expected - both technically and physically (and climbing in the terrain was ugly, something I'll try to do something about but one week probably won't be enough to do much about it). Starting to feel more confident technically in the second half, though, and felt very good afterwards for having been out in the bush - I've definitely missed it.

Longer than usual today because I'll be doing technical training rather than a long run tomorrow, and later than usual for no really obvious reason - which meant the discovery that mid-morning Saturday traffic isn't that nice to contend with (if anything it's worse for running than weekday peak hour because it is moving, whereas during the week you can often get across it where it's stopped).

Started the run to the sound of horns in the background, which turned out to the latest act in the nurses' dispute with the state government. I didn't have a horn to voice my support so settled for a wave. (Do I recall correctly that a certain resident of Esperance once crashed his bike across the road from a picket line of striking nurses?). It was raining steadily so it was mildly surprising to see a reasonable number of cricket games in progress (one featuring Jaffe the younger). Once past the Ivanhoe fields, headed down along the river and across to Kew, then back through North Balwayn. Achilles took a while to warm up but eventually did; not a great run though, with the hills a particular issue (as they have been for a couple of weeks now).

The nurses weren't the last street theatre for the day; there was a group outside the Preston town hall demonstrating in favour of solar energy (as far as I could tell it was in favour of the concept, and against coal and gas, in general, and not specifically about the shutdown of the solar hot water subsidy). Not for the first time, venturing into the Preston market was a reminder that staying out of its car park was a very good idea.

Back to pool running at Fitzroy for the first time in a while, on a nice morning. I needed this - quads were very stiff when I went in, rather less stiff when I got out (although the Achilles isn't quite so enthusiastic about it).

Definitely a busy news day today (with a lot of journalists clearing a lot of egg off faces at present). Rather lost in amongst this, at least for now, was the report of an independent inquiry into the Australian media. The recommendation which got my attention for blogs which got more than 15,000 hits per year to be classified as a media outlet (and therefore subject to the proposed complaints-handling procedure). If I'm not mistaken, my AP log gets this many, so if you're upset about something I've written you'll be able to complain to whatever replaces the Press Council and they might be able to tell me to do something about it. (Shep might get into this territory too; please don't tell Mr Baker).

My sleep patterns are still not what they should be and last night was particularly ordinary - didn't sleep much after 3. Didn't go into the run with great expectations. It was a slow plod, all right in its own way, but indications whenever it got a bit more challenging that a slow plod was going to be my outer limit today (although the last hill, which I thought might be a problem, went OK - perhaps because of the knowledge that there is only 90 seconds to go at the top of it).

Steady light rain at the start easing off by halfway. The run took in a couple of Darebin Creek crossings but nothing too exciting to see (and certainly nothing as exciting as what's going on in the old home town).

Something I'm struggling to see the (claimed) logic of is Gina Rinehart's current course, in which she is trying to get a suppression order on reporting of a family dispute, ostensibly on the grounds that reporting on the family's wealth would pose a threat to their security. I guess the idea is that if the media weren't reporting on the court case no-one would know that Gina Rinehart was rich.

And non-running excitement of the day was the lunchtime brawl in a shop entrance between a couple (whom I gather were alleged shoplifters) and a number of shop staff. The couple, setting a fine example, had their youngster in tow; one imagines he has high potential to be a future customer of Victoria's beleaguered child protection services (who have been in the news this week).

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