Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

After a run as bad as last night's I'd normally defer the Thursday long run to Friday, but that wasn't really an option this time (with plans associated with spending the new year in Adelaide), so I headed out to see how I felt, with no great expectations and happy enough to settle for 90 minutes. Turned out to be not as bad as last night, but still not great (especially on hills), and I wouldn't have wanted to stay out for much longer - especially since, as it turned out, it rose from 27 to 33 in the half-hour after I finished (on its way to just short of 40).

I didn't lose as much time to injury in 2015 as in the previous two years and therefore got a few more hours under my belt, but injury did flare at inopportune times, and I also had an unwanted tendency this year to make a mess of the navigation on days when I was feeling reasonable (with the WOC long trial at the Sandhills as exhibit A), so there weren't a lot of good results on the board this year - perhaps the NSW Long Championships were the pick of the bunch (given that Easter was against very limited opposition). As for the event I enjoyed the most, I think that the Port Lincoln events (especially the middle in the limestone) were at the top of the list, although the Swiss WRE sprint in April would be up there too, despite my coming a long last.

Perhaps Metro was trying to send me a message. I was 20 minutes later than I'd planned on after falling victim to their occasional practice of station-skipping - the performance indicators in their contract are the percentage of late trains and the percentage of cancelled trains, but they're not penalised for missing stations so they sometimes do it to make up time. I think you can reasonably call this a rort.

I eventually did get to the venue around 6.45, to be greeted by the news that the ABC had apparently given me a gender reassignment. Perhaps they added 30 years to my age while they were at it, because that's the way I ran tonight - and I can't even blame the heat (which was significant, around 34) because I felt terrible inside the first 200 metres, and within a few hundred more concluded that I would be doing well just to jog around the course. No idea what went wrong given that I've been running well the last few days, and not sure what it means for subsequent training.

One novelty tonight was the first colour map I've seen in Melbourne street-O for about 20 years. Hopefully it starts a trend. I think I got the route choice pretty right, although I forgot to take my watch out so it's hard to be sure.

Other news of the day was an entry into the ranks of the World's Dumbest (would-be) Terrorists, in the form of a man who faced a British court yesterday, having come to the attention of security services when he posted on Twitter seeking advice from readers on what he should bomb.

And I thought I might be able to put my knowledge of potential lack of cricket next week to profitable use, but an inspection of the odds suggests that the TAB can read a weather forecast too.

All Nations intervals. Going pretty well by the second half - certainly significantly faster on the last three or four reps than I've previously managed with this session (which may or may not have something to do with being somewhat later in the morning than would normally be the case). Seem to be in a reasonable patch at the moment; will be good to put it to the test tomorrow night, although conditions don't look like they will be especially kind.

Warm-up and down. Went the right way this time.

The position of minister (or parliamentary secretary) responsible for the Bureau of Meteorology tends to have a fairly high turnover (normally as a consequence of more general reshuffles rather than anything specific to the organisation). However, I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've lost a minister to a nightclub incident.

A bit of a session swap because I don't want to take my belt to Adelaide (where I'll be later in the week). Also a bit later in the morning than usual, under a pleasant (if cool) summer sun. Seemed to be working pretty well, especially later on.

Must have been slightly absent-minded this morning as I left my phone behind in a cafe (and then almost did it again a couple of hours later).

A somewhat unusual late afternoon run after a day watching the cricket, reviewing papers and sorting out eight months' worth of orienteering maps for filing (among other things). As is sometimes the way for a run at this time of day, felt a bit blobby at the start but settled reasonably quickly, and flowing nicely by the last 20 minutes. Noticeably quicker than most recent non-speedwork runs.

Shortly before heading out on this I read the latest piece of conspiracy-mongering by Maurice Newman (or, to be more precise, the Guardian's report of his conspiracy-mongering in the Australian). This contained the line "The media, in step with the Green Machine, will bombard us with climate alarmism", which of course meant that this was running through my head for most of this run. (Do I qualify as a "fearsome man from the ACT"? Probably not).

Event: Christmas 5 Days
 

Sunday isn't normally the day for a recovery run. At least this one was less abortive than last week's equivalent; in fact it was a fairly reasonable run, apart from a nuisance-level problem with a toe (the nail of one dug into the side of its neighbour in the later stages of yesterday).

Someone clearly forgot to tell Metro that there was a game of cricket on: they were operating on their usual assumption that no-one goes anywhere before 11 on Sunday, so the train I got to the MCG was the first for 50 minutes (and was predictably packed to bursting point).

Radically different conditions this morning - heavy rain through the early hours, which had eased off a bit by the time I set out but continued to fall at times for the first hour of the run, and rather cool.

Plan was two hours minimum, and hoping for more, starting with my classic Peninsula route to London Bridge and then back along the back beaches for as long as I felt like. Had the sense this was going to be a pretty good one as early as the second kilometre, despite Achilles still having some residual soreness at that stage, and that was how it went. A good climb up the Sorrento hill gave me further confidence for when I hit the sand. Initially, this involves going along the beach for about 3km (wild and stormy, but the wind was more tail than head and the waves were avoidable), then a steep climb out of the beach, then a track through the dunes - lots of up and down, generally reasonably firm underfoot but with a few soft sections. Continuing to handle this reasonably solidly, and decided that on a day when I was feeling good and the conditions were good I wanted to make the most of it. Finished off solidly too. I've got a couple of long trail runs ahead in the coming weeks, and this one should give me a fair bit of confidence for the Two Bays (which doesn't have soft sand, although it has a much bigger hill), although I probably won't get conditions as kind as this for the Two Bays.

Running for this long in wet gear has consequences - chafing in quite a few places (including reasonably spectacular red streaks originating from both nipples, which somewhat perturbed various assembled relatives when I finished).

For once, Christmas morning didn't feature something long - this is the first time in eight years that I haven't run or ridden for at least two hours on the day. (Only doing 60% of the distance does not mean that I only ate 60% of the food afterwards). Normally I wouldn't run on a Friday at all, but going to the pool wasn't an option today (and the weekend's weather will be much kinder for long runs).

Got out early given the forecast heat; conditions were manageable, with temperatures in the mid 20s and relatively low humidity. A somewhat patchy run, featuring a few short sharp climbs out of valleys which I didn't always take kindly to (the sand dunes of the Mornington Peninsula may be interesting tomorrow), otherwise reasonable. Fairly slow.

Always nice to get one run a year on near-deserted roads, although I did see a couple of new bikes in action.

Christmas Eve is an odd kind of day - it's sort of a holiday and sort of not. It wasn't a holiday for me (desperately trying to get another issue of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal out before the break), but clearly was for some others - I'm not used to seeing people sunbaking at the times of day I'm usually at Fitzroy. The warm clear morning contributed to this, although it was also responsible for sunglare which was a bit of an issue on the stretches coming back (more so early on). Ended up a fairly standard session.

Unsurprisingly, there was some - well - "interesting" driving and parking on display in the vicinity of the Queen Victoria Market.

And my work mission was accomplished in sufficient time that (unusually) I wasn't the last one out on Christmas Eve. Quite a few of us regarded our most significant workplace achievement of 2015 as being to outlast Tony Abbott.

Warmth in unexpected places update: +11 is expected as far north as the Hudson Bay coast of northwest Quebec tomorrow (which, if it happens, compares with the December record of 7.2, and a highest of 11.8 in any month from November to March). Low or possibly mid 20s are expected in the coastal northeast of the US, touching 30 in parts of the southeast.

Warmth in expected places update: Melbourne is heading for 35 tomorrow. Hot Christmas Days have been surprisingly rare in recent decades - it's only reached 32 twice since 1966, and this year could (if it outdoes the forecast a bit) be the hottest Christmas since the 1940s or early 1950s. (In contrast, there were five 35+ Christmas Days between 1940 and 1948).

Back to setting an alarm for 5.not very much and heading out for a long run before work the morning after a street-O. It wasn't a particularly special-feeling run, but the big positive from this is that for the first time in months, crunching out two hours before work felt absolutely routine rather than something big, which hopefully means my endurance is getting somewhere.

Headed out past the old stomping grounds with a target of the track on the far side of the Yarra at Bulleen, but a relevant footbridge is no longer functional (and an attempt to get back on the right track saw me go in a big circle without realising it, there not being a route through the long-since-defunct drive-in) so I spent a bit more time next to Manningham Road than I'd planned on, before coming back through Hays Paddock and along the river further down. Sore spot on quad gave a bit of trouble at times, especially downhill, but pulled up OK afterwards. Finished off well.

Sights of the big city: on a late train home, a crew-cut young bloke in a blue singlet, swigging from a bottle of pear cider and reading Harry Potter.

C • Pear cider 1

Did the Tuesday night street-O because I have another engagement tomorrow night; as seems to happen half the time when I come across on a Tuesday, it was at Williamstown.

It's a nice area but was a rather frustrating night. The scoreboard was one control missing (or sufficiently badly misplaced that neither Chris Norwood nor I found it), one significantly misplaced, two incorrect descriptions (one advertised, one not) and three minor to moderate misplacements, along with a map where the print was so poor that it was near-impossible to tell the difference between suburbia and park, or between crossable and uncrossable fences. Found it a bit annoying to be mucking around sorting all of this out and wasn't running that well in the first half, but a bit better later on; at the end narrowly failing to run down two people who turned out to be doing B anyway.

C • I tell myself that street-o... 3

Very slow early on, even though I didn't feel too bad. Got going better eventually but still not with any sort of pace (in as much as anything that I do in a swimming pool can be described as having "pace").

The traffic may have dropped away a bit this week but riding in the central city still has its moment (and I'll be making sure I steer well clear of the Queen Victoria Market on Christmas Eve morning).

For the first two minutes I was wondering if I was being a bit ambitious trying to get out today after yesterday's false start, but after that it settled down on a lunchtime with ideal conditions (certainly by way of comparison to the same time on the last few days); one of the nicer sessions of its sort I've had in recent times, despite a few traffic interruptions. Pulled up with a bit of quad tightness post-run (not one of the familiar complaints); will take some watching.

Southbank is always busy at lunchtime and busier still during school holidays (I'm assuming there was an underlying reason behind all the girls in fairy costumes). One boy of about 13 or 14 was doing somersaults and backflips in reasonably spectacular style, but with concrete below there was no margin for error and I was just starting to wonder whether I should suggest that it might be in his best interests to do it somewhere else when someone I presumed to be his mother did so.

The weather was more favourable in the early evening for running than it has been all weekend, which meant that it was a pity that I wasn't up to taking advantage of it; back was having a bad night, which I might have tried to push through on another day, but not so much on a recovery run I wasn't super-enthusiastic about anyway.

At least we weren't in Mildura, where 31.9 was the highest minimum temperature on record for any Victorian site. Melbourne missed out on any such records as a result of a seabreeze yesterday evening, although the 9am temperature of 34.0 is a December record (as was Adelaide's 37.5 yesterday).

Coming into this weekend I was pondering the question of timing of a long run - try and get out as early as possible on Saturday, or hope that Sunday's change came through early enough to get something in in the afternoon/evening? I eventually decided to go for the former option, without any great expectations - 5.30 wakeups are not normally something I do on a Saturday morning (after the MFR Christmas party, too).

The run was nothing special in its own right, but kept plugging away, taking on water at regular intervals (and needing a pitstop in the middle to get rid of other stuff). Never looking like catching alight, but at the same time I didn't have a sense that it was going to fall apart at any stage (apart from a hamstring twinge at one point which disappeared as quickly as it arrived), and still going reasonably OK by the end - although I wasn't exactly clamouring to add more on (I was more than happy to settle for two hours today).

The conditions were manageable in the earlier stages - the surface layer from last night's seabreeze was still there and it was in the low 20s (although very humid). I knew from the Ferny Creek observations (as well as past experience) that the temperature would jump as the northerly kicked in, and it certainly felt hotter in the later stages - but I must have been handling the conditions OK because I thought it was in the mid to high 20s, and it actually hit 35 just as I finished. Don't think I've ever done a long run in anything quite as hot as this before, on a day which will certainly be valuable for building up Harden Up credits.

Not sure I would put a lot of money on the Borhoney Ghurk forest still being there by this time tomorrow.

A change of scene today to fit better with the rest of the day's logistics, going to Northcote. Already hot early on (it was 30 by 8.45, which has caused me to shift my start time tomorrow even earlier) and a good day to be in the water. Worked some early stiffness through OK.

Northcote only has one lane open for non-lap swimming at this time of day, but there were still a couple of lap swimmers in that lane (one of whom crashed into me). One of them had a good reason to be there - a disability which means he can only enter/leave the pool via the ramp - but the other one didn't. Whatever the mertis of the situation, I always feel as if I'm on other people's turf in this sort of situation.

The random bus-stop encounters yesterday morning set the scene for today's run, with Rob and Andy joining me for something resembling a proper midweek long run - on Black Mountain (reasonably hilly without going to the top) for the first 50 minutes before Andy peeled off to go to work, then back through Bruce Ridge and Gossan Hill before Rob did likewise at the ABS. I then headed back to Aranda, although this being Canberra, I wasn't going to be able to do that without encountering anyone else I knew - saw both GrantM and Prong riding on the opposite direction on my way home.

Still feeling a bit flat and working hard to keep up on the climbs (particularly the steeper ones), but no sign of Achilles, hamstring or back trouble today. Didn't quite make the two hours because of an eye on a bus departure time.

I didn't realise it at the time, but the Calvary hospital multi-storey car park we went past was brand new. It was officially opened today, by means of the responsible minister driving a car through the ribbon rather than cutting it with scissors. (This being the ACT government, naturally it was an electric vehicle which was used to do the honours).

Heading back to Melbourne tonight, and pondering the timing of a weekend long run, with 21/41 forecast for Saturday and 28/35 on Sunday before a change which may or may not come through in time to get something in in the last afternoon. I think I'll get out as early as I can on Saturday and hope for the best.

As I sometimes do in Canberra, took advantage of the existence of bush out the back fence to run in it, on Aranda Hill and Black Mountain as far east as Little Black (which seems finally to be thinning out nearly a quarter-century after the 1991 fire which was responsible for most of its undergrowth). Not especially fast, and didn't have an awful lot of strength on the hills, but not too bad. A rather humid morning as a prelude to storms later in the day, although nothing on the scale of what happened in Sydney (it would be fair to say that office productivity, at least on matters relating to our normal work, was somewhat down today).

I'm definitely back on the old home ground, seeing numerous familiar faces (such as the Hoggster and robw in the process of accompanying kids to school on bikes) going past in the five minutes I spent waiting for a bus on Bandjalong Crescent.

First intervals session since I got back, on the usual ground at All Nations. Felt a bit sleepy early on (which may explain my going in one street too late on the way there), and never an especially strong-feeling session but got through it OK. No hamstring issues in the fast section itself but a little sore going home.

Off to Canberra for work for a couple of days tonight.

Going to/from All Nations. An even slower start than usual (although traffic didn't help).

A bright sunny morning and plenty of people in the pool (for once, most of those in my lane were actually slower than I was). Didn't feel as sore in the quads as I thought I might have been given the way I finished yesterday's run, but still a bit of stiffness to be worked out of the system. Picked up a bit in the second half.

First Tan lunchtime for a while. Originally I thought this run might have contributed something towards heat acclimatisation, but it turned out the seabreeze was stronger than expected and it was cooler (although more humid) than the later stages of yesterday. A few stiff spots which needed to be squeezed out of the system, but better than I thought it might have been. A bit of left hamstring soreness in the last 10 minutes.

The masseur definitely earned her money tonight.

Spotted on Southbank was a sign "High Pedestrian Zone". I can understand why high pedestrians are a hazard that other users of the area need to be warned of, but I didn't see any evidence today of anyone affected by mind-altering substances. Maybe it's different on Friday or Saturday nights.

Something of a change of scene for a long run today - after dropping Dad off at the airport I decided to do a run on that side of town, with Brimbank Park and the river path as a focus, starting in Keilor. As I've noted previously, the path along the river from Brimbank Park to Tea Gardens is a very nice one to run - more than 10km without any road crossings (other than the Ring Road towering 50 metres or so overhead).

Struggled a bit with the initial climb, and generally felt a bit out of sorts in the first half-hour, not dissimilar to Thursday in some ways. Gradually picked up once hitting the river section about 30 minutes in - never felt sparkling, but moving along solidly with most kilometres 5.0something. I'd started today with thoughts of 2.15, perhaps more if things were going well, but Achilles started to play up a bit from 15k onwards and I thought it best to head reasonably straight back (which was shorter than I thought it would be). Was feeling the distance towards the end and finished thinking that the distance I did was towards my outer limits today, although sometimes the last 15 minutes feel tough whether they start at 1.50 or 2.15. (I was feeling somewhat inadequate later; one of my later post-run stops, after an initial one at a Keilor cafe which hit the spot, was the Yarra Valley Christmas party, which featured Ted just back from a very respectable effort in the Kepler).

Out to the old patch this morning, on a run where I was definitely feeling better than Thursday but was generally going a bit slower. Nice conditions for it. Grinding a bit up hills but not the weakness of much of the week.

It's the first time I've been out this way for a few months, which when it means previously familiar ground means taking stock of what's changed and what hasn't. Somewhat to my surprise, the apartments behind Ivanhoe shops are under construction - it was revealed earlier this year that the developers had been marketing it in Asia without having bothered to get council approval for the project, and my assumption was that they would scurry back to Shanghai with the deposits, never to be seen or heard of again. However, the block near the intersection of Upper and Lower Heidelberg Roads is no closer to having a sod turned on it than it was a decade ago.

Into the water on a breezy morning. Quads were unusually sore this morning considering yesterday's run was (a) not particularly long by my Thursday standards and (b) almost completely flat. Worked through them OK during the session but they were sore again later in the day when getting up from long periods seated.

A rather strange run, where I felt weak and light-headed for much of it - particularly on any sort of hill - but was still turning out a reasonable performance for the most part. Perhaps that was because of the generally flat going - I went south from Clifton Hill past the MCG and AAMI Park (where a few girls were already camped out the front in anticipation of tonight's Taylor Swift concert) to the river, then around the Capital City Trail most of the way back. (I suspect I'm not quite 100% at the moment). Stopped for a bit to talk when I saw Kirsten near the Gipps Street bridge, and never quite got going again thereafter. Probably didn't help that I'd had a late night last night, including not eating until 10.30 after the Board meeting.

I'd started today with thoughts of two hours, but not too upset to fall short given that I have a Proper Long Run (tm) planned for Sunday morning - taking advantage of what should be reasonable conditions given that there appears to be significant potential for extreme heat on the following weekend.

I would suggest to the person or persons responsible for putting up the "Stop The Muslim Invasion" poster towards the north end of Abbotsford that their knowledge of Melbourne's political geography, and where they might find fertile soil for their noxious message, leaves something to be desired.

C • Potential 5

Event: Melbourne PAS Wednesday Eastern Summer Series 8 - Bellbird Dell
 

Street-O. Advertised as being at Bellbird Dell, although the actual Dell (one of the nicer bits of the Eastern Series) had been used last night and we were up at the Piss Weak World end of the map instead.

Interesting course - it often is when you have to drop four rather than one or two - with people scattering in all directions. It was a bit shorter than advertised, which was a good thing (a) because I had to dash off to get back for an OA Board hookup at 8.30 and (b) because my run was rubbish. While I wasn't having any obvious trouble with my back, I still had real difficulty in finding any strength for the hills, and wasn't great off the hills either. Still, it was an improvement on last week...

Moving to a new place means rethinking some of the logistics of getting to events. In times gone by, if Summer Series was towards the southern end of the range of venues and not too close to Eastlink, I would go to a station first thing in the morning (often Surrey Hills, although it no longer has the distinction of being the last station in Zone 1), park there and get the train in.

This is clearly not such a good strategy from Fairfield, unless one leaves quite a bit earlier in the morning than I did today; it took 15 minutes to cover the 2km to get to the freeway entrance (including a lengthy wait at the intersection next to the Grange Road level crossing, where four people decided the red right arrow didn't apply to them and overtook me to go into the middle of the intersection - two on the left, two on the right).

7am, 27 degrees and rain is not a combination one normally associates with Melbourne. I feared the worst for this run, but after the usual grinding start it wasn't too bad - indeed the final third was probably the best I've felt on a run since getting back from Europe. Perhaps the moisture helped.

Headline of the day: "Dick Smith not surprised Dick Smith shares bombed". (As many of you will know, Dick Smith (the person) has had nothing to do with Dick Smith (the company) since he sold it more than 30 years ago).

Didn't get home until close to midnight last night because of a delayed flight (nothing compared with TrishTash, but it still seems rather bizarre that a power outage in Sydney stops a flight between Canberra and Melbourne). Decided I didn't really want to be up before 6 when I hadn't got to sleep until 12.30, nor did I want to run at lunchtime on a forecast 30-degree day, so settled on a plan to run in the morning and swim in the evening. The run part was very creaky early on - going past the Melbourne Bicycle Centre felt like taking on the Alpe d'Huez. Better later on, though never great. Humid.

The swim didn't happen - there was a meeting this evening I'd forgotten about and I didn't get home until close to 9pm as it was.

In recent years the Zatopek 10k has clashed with OA Conference, a pity as it's usually a good night for the distance running community. In addition to what was happening at the front end, I had an interest in the pack through one of the Melbourne Uni climate scientists (Nick Earl, who was in the news a couple of weeks ago for a paper which found that globally fires were less frequent on weekends, whatever the weekend was in the relevant part of the world). He didn't disappoint, cracking 30 minutes for the first time.

Often in the past much of the real business of the OA conference has been done on the Sunday morning run. The composition of the conference doesn't lend itself to that quite so much these days and it was just Jenny and myself for this morning's outing; she wasn't having a great day and I quickly decided this would be essentially a social outing - a proper long run can wait until next week. Did plenty of climbing though, including the Black Mountain summit, which went more or less OK (and did a bit of bush-bashing coming off the southwest side of the mountain to get onto the western branch of the circumcision track, which I've never previously been on). Back OK on the climbs.

Not quite sure what to make of the conference; a lot of the discussion was a bit messy and we didn't come out with a lot of firm outcomes, but we have at least got some conversations started, in areas such as having national membership and other areas of governance reform. Also quite a lot of ideas as to how we can learn from parkrun's success (following a presentation by Gareth).

C • sounds 31

C • rain in NW England 4

Post-OA conference event at Bruce Ridge. After a long day it was always going to be a bit hard to come up for this but I was still very disappointed with my concentration on this run. Two significant errors, the worst being at 9 where I didn't see the control, overran it on a track and dropped a couple of minutes; both errors were contributed to by some questionable mapping but if I'd been more on the ball that wouldn't have mattered. Also felt rather sluggish on the first hot day I've run on since returning.

Originally at the start of the week my plans had been to go long today, but I decided to let that slide after Wednesday's problems (even before having a much heavier day than anticipated yesterday). The plan was to leave the car at Fitzroy North (location of work Christmas lunch), run from there, and then head up to the airport after the end of the lunch. This plan was slightly altered when I couldn't find my watch when ready to start the run and concluded I must have left it at home, so I ran back home (about 20 minutes away), failed to find it, then continued on west to Merri Creek and back down it. (It turned out the watch was back in the car, in a different bag to the one I usually put it in).

The run itself was quite reasonable on a nice morning, although there were signs that I was starting to tire a bit at the end. Back not really tested on a run with few hills of any size.

The work lunch included lawn bowls, but I left my year's quota of ball skills behind on the soccer pitch yesterday.

Off to Canberra for the OA Conference tonight.

C • Bowling 2

First time for this session for a few weeks. Back wasn't great through this session and I wasn't entirely sure I should press on through all of it, but it worked out more or less OK.

Thought I was through jet lag, but woke up at 4am this morning....

The annual tournament between the Bureau, CSIRO and Melbourne and Monash Unis - three 30-minute games on a small pitch (with small goals), 8-a-side (which I presume meant that the entire remaining staff of CSIRO were on the field) and unlimited interchanges.

I finished the morning session thinking I was going to pull out of this, but we didn't have a lot of players spare and I thought I'd at least go up, test myself out before the start and see how it went. The answer was fine - in fact it was my heaviest involvement yet - normally, as one of the team's, shall we say, less skilled players, I would spend a reasonable amount of time on the sidelines, but we couldn't afford that today and I ended up playing the entire 90 minutes, starting each game on the left wing and dropping back to be a defensive midfielder later on, with the main job being to close down space.

The personal highlight was very early on in the first game - the ball dropped for me 10 metres out with only the keeper to beat, and I was able to do the necessary (by no means a given). I did make it onto the scoresheet a few years ago but that time it was at the wrong end. From there on I filled my usual role of running around a lot, plugging gaps and hoping no-one noticed that I (usually) couldn't do very much with the ball once I got it.

We ended up taking out the competition again for the third straight year - won all three games, although we were a bit lucky in two of them. Feeling very drained by the end, perhaps a product of the early start.

Street-O at Harvey Heights, at The Basin at the foot of the Dandenongs. Somewhat surprisingly I've never run here before - the last time I ran a street-O on a Dandenongs area was the infamous 1998 Upwey event which started in 40 degrees and finished in a thunderstorm.

For all practical purposes I still haven't run here. I wasn't feeling too confident before the start - yesterday's run and the way I felt today had a hint of illness about it - but it was the back that wasn't playing ball. On an area where there would have been 300 metres of climb before halfway, losing power up all hills isn't something you want to happen. Looked like some fiendish route choice decisions and it would have been nice to have felt better for the technical challenge.

Noticed on the way there that St. Joseph's in Boronia (?) had a sign out the front saying that they'd come second in the Victorian Primary Schools Orienteering Championships.

I have a recent history of having very good runs on the second day after returning from overseas trips. This was not one of them.

Spotted on the way down to the river was a sign for preliminary works for the level crossing removal at Grange Road (a bit earlier than I was expecting). Melbourne has been waiting a long time for this as demonstrated in this article. Presumably shortages of materials and labour due to war conditions are no longer an acceptable excuse for delays.

Today was a quieter media day than it would have been had November been slightly warmer (both November and spring missed out on being Australia's hottest on record by a couple of hundredths of a degree), but I did have one slot on 3AW. It wasn't too hard to work out what the target demographic was because the ad break before I came on air consisted of retirement villages, mobility scooters and cataract operations.

C • Quiet 6