Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Tried for a run but not quite there, so headed for the pool instead - already starting to get warm (it wouldn't have been a pleasant experience going there in the evening). OK once in the water; seemed to be working reasonably solidly.

Still not really able to loosen myself up, and left it too late in the morning for any alternatives, although on a day as hot as this the commute ride probably counts for something (certainly wasn't setting any speed records on the way home).

Woke up with an ordinary back this morning (and still feeling like I had a bit of a cold too, although that seems to have improved during the day - probably as well not to turn up to an international airport with a sniffle at the moment).

Headed back to Australia today after part of the day in Wellington (partly making a social visit to Metservice at the invitation of a friend who works there, which ended up with going out for coffee with the CEO, whose view of my importance might not be quite in tune with reality). Good to have the break, although having seen the forecast for the next three days I'm thinking perhaps I should have stayed longer.

The view of Wilsons Promontory (which, as of 9.30pm on 29 January, has not yet caught fire this summer) on the way in was impressive.

Breaking up the road trip to Wellington with a swim at Palmerston North, feeling in the process as out of place as I would at an Australian pool at a similar time on a weekday. Was feeling the effects of a substantial lunch early on but the second half felt reasonably good.

Today's main scenic highlight was early on - walked to Taranaki Falls from Whakapapa (despite its name, the falls are nowhere near Taranaki, but are on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu). Fairly easy walk not too far away from the contour, but good views of the falls (which had a decent amount of water), and the cloud on that side broke up enough for some good views of Ruapehu too.

Caught up with some old friends from Australia for dinner in Wellington; taking me back to familiar territory because they live only a few blocks away from where the rest of my family were in 1993-94.

Didn't have a partner but ran the sprint relay anyway. Was in the opens and, somewhat to my surprise, was not last to the start triangle, but was definitely off the back of the pack, and a steep stair climb to 2 reminded me that my body doesn't like these at the moment. Managed to get through the rest of the course (though walked the remaining steep climbs) - a bit disappointed that two of the three men I beat across the line mispunched...

Definitely good to have a relay like this, with the number of competitive teams in double figures - much better simulation of a WOC (or JWOC) situation than a domestic relay which might have at best four or five contenders.

Generation gap moment: Fredo and Tara ran in a team together and wore French tops. I made a remark to some of the Australian group about how France might not be so popular in this part of the world and then realised no-one I was with was old enough to have heard of the Rainbow Warrior incident. (Perhaps there's still an enduring curse, because Fredo mispunched).

A lot of the others headed off in the afternoon to make attempts on Taranaki (there will be some sore quads tomorrow), but I was moving on in the direction of Ruapehu, via the Forgotten World Highway - not as wild as I was expecting (mostly hilly farming country with a 15km forest gorge section, and no peaks much above 500m), but interesting nonetheless. The side trip to Mount Damper Falls revealed some nice country but not much water; the scenic highlights were the views of the central volcanoes from every high point on the road. Also saw the aftermath of a motorbike crash, but the situation was under control by the time I got there and the rider was conscious and talking, so hopefully whatever injuries he got are not life-threatening.

Sprint in Pukekura Park - a botanical gardens-like set up with lots of weaving tracks creating route choice, though not much fine navigation. (I know this park chiefly for its postage-stamp cricket ground, which featured a 320-apiece 1992 World Cup match between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in an era when 220 was a decent score). Never felt comfortable running, but only had to walk the two big stair climbs, and only one minor wobble technically. A little closer to Matt and Magnus than yesterday, although Bruce, running 40s today, shifted the bar three minutes higher when it came to actually winning.

We weren't the only public event centred at the racecourse today: there was also an American classic cars meet. Wasn't too hard to work out which vehicles were headed for which event (the bright yellow Corvette was a particular giveaway).

Thought I'd struggle to put five races together in 48 hours, and so it proved. Didn't have much energy and looseness in the warm-up, and after a rather adventurous start to the first leg (part of which was done on my backside), my back largely refused to function. Kept going for a few controls in the hope that I might be able to loosen it up, but eventually decided that it would be better to try again another day.

For a Melburnian, there's something slightly incongruous about the existence of the Fitzroy Surf Lifesaving Club.

First sprint. Got round reasonably smoothly, which I'll settle for - never really felt as if I could stretch out but didn't throw a wobbly when we hit a sharp climb on the way to 2 (on a 1:3000 map with 5m contours things are a lot steeper than they look). Didn't seem to have any undue route choice problem. Fairly small field (quite a few of the guns have gone up to 50s, including Carsten and Jon) and came 3rd in it, although a fair way behind.

Some might have been disconcerted by starting in a graveyard, but for the Australian the more disconcerting bit was probably starting next to a small stream which was actually running. (Looking at the graves in the pre-start was an illustration of the hazards of New Zealand's rivers - one section was a military cemetery from the 1860s Maori wars and the British lost more soldiers to drowning than they did to their opponents).

Thought I might struggle to come up twice in a day and so it proved - back arced up and I had to walk most of the steeper hills, although improved in the last third (perhaps because by then there weren't too many steeper hills). Started in the graveyard section and was fairly clean through there, but struck trouble at 14 looking for a gap between buildings which didn't exist (I'll blame the map more for this one, with some ambiguous mapping of a multi-level area). Better in the later stages. A bit further down than in the morning, which wasn't a surprise.

Knockout sprints take a lot to set up, but it was definitely good to have a race which gave people experience of the format (and in a field deep enough for the early rounds to be meaningful, which wouldn't have happened with Australia or NZ on their own).

Event: THE LONELY MOUNTAIN SPRINTS
 

Swim at Coburg on the way to the airport (coming in just behind the crowd who were waiting for the doors to open on the stroke of 6). Felt very stiff and unawake in the early laps (I wonder why?), but getting better in the second half.

The flight to Wellington went smoothly. The drive out of Wellington wasn't quite so smooth on a Friday afternoon (although at least it should be the last time I experience this particular jam - the new motorway, which I'm pretty sure was being talked about when my parents were living here in 1993-94, is due for completion this year - and those who came from Auckland said that was worse). Nice once clear of the crowds though, with some stellar views of Taranaki in the evening (to say nothing of the ice cream stop - it isn't a proper NZ ice cream unless acquired at a small-town dairy), and Thomas Garbellini, who I'd picked up at Levin, was good road trip company.

Back still troublesome this morning, which meant I didn't get caught by the last part of the rainband. By then it was clean rain, but there was plenty of evidence around of the dirty rain which had fallen earlier. Swimming wouldn't have been a usable substitute because the pools were closed due to the mud, too.

I suspected tonight wasn't going to work too well when, after an hour standing up at a seminar this morning, I struggled to bend down to pick my papers up off the desk. I was right.

There was quite a bit of interesting weather around this evening, but at least it wasn't raining iguanas.

Not a sparkling run, but an advance - it's the first time for a while that I've actually managed to get through a "normal" morning run from home on something like the standard time gap after getting up. Steady once settled down, spending some of the time going along the strongly flowing Darebin Creek (yesterday was Melbourne's wettest since 2011). Quads OK, although the small rises were still a challenge; street-O tomorrow will test them, and New Zealand will probably test them more. Physio seemed happy with progress tonight.

Typo of the week: 7 News Brisbane tweeted yesterday that "A Sunshine Coast road remains shit today after a large sinkhole...".

Not for the first time of late, not terribly awake in the morning (not sure if having very vivid dreams is a sign of sleeping deeply or not). This was good for getting me going, though, and got pointed to a couple of apparently subtle adjustments which made a big difference to the parts of my body that were working most.

Swapping sessions from later in the week to help logistics then, and pleasantly surprised that this was still in decent weather (I'd expected rain from early in the morning, but it didn't end up coming to inner Melbourne until mid-afternoon, although it did so in some style once it got here). Working OK but feeling as if it would have been a battle to come up from yesterday - which may make the weekend a test.

Prior to a day which involved seeing lots of pictures of damaged cars, I saw one myself on the ride in - a truck turning right sideswiped a car stopped in the next lane alongside it. The truck didn't stop (and I didn't have the presence of mind to take its number).

Event: Monash Uni Indoor / Outdoor Sprint
 

The indoor/outdoor race at Monash. I missed the Monash event last year (although I've done an indoor event in Denmark) and was looking forward to this one. It turned out that Frederic was reasonably kind to us indoors, although I lost a bit of time at 7, on a somewhat confusing mezzanine. An excellent sprint course once we got outside with plenty of options; I missed all the traps, but had a silly wobble when I lost concentration coming out of 27. Running better than I have for some time, although tiring a bit at the end; was in a few decent head-to-heads during the day (most frequently with Jim). Also one of my better sprint results for a while, clearly within 50% of the lead (Brodie did high 21s, though he'd have gone under 21 with a clean run) and a fair bit further up the list than during Sprint Into Spring, although Clare still got me by one place.

Must have been a consistent run because, if you count the 10-way tie on a 13-second leg as being the midpoint of that place range, I placed better on the course than on any split. Also of interest from the splits was that Daniel Stott, getting more back into orienteering now after a decade or so away from it (and now in Melbourne, and with a daughter old enough to be getting keen), completely blitzed the indoor section - 30 seconds ahead of Brodie - before losing time once outside.

This was definitely a fun experience, although there's probably a limit to the number of buildings you can do it in in Australia.

Took the chance of already being out east and a lack of other commitments to get up into the Dandenongs for the first time in years, which was nice (seeing forests with tree ferns is a reminder of how many such forests have been lost to fire in recent years). Getting lunch was a bit more challenging than I expected - I walked out of place number 1 after standing unacknowledged for 10 minutes at the 'please wait to be seated' sign, at place number 2 I cleared that hurdle but was then ignored for 20 minutes after sitting down. (You get the sense that solo diners aren't especially welcome on weekends, although neither place was full so it wasn't if I was taking up a table that could be more lucratively used by others).

Started with plans to head east, but about 10 minutes in felt as if my tyre was getting low, and thought it best not to be stranded too far away from home if it gave out. As it turned out it got no worse so I ended up doing a rather convoluted route, never getting more than about 3km from home, and going round in ever-decreasing circles once I decided I wanted to take it out to an hour. Felt rather unenergetic in the first 15 minutes but got going eventually; lots of curves, corners and intersections which slowed things down a bit.

Things to consider with modern technology: I went out with Bruce to check out the area for one of the March sprints, and he needed to remember to switch off the function which auto-uploads his track from test-running the course.

Initial plans for the morning were abortive (I've really struggled with the mornings this week), but got out at lunchtime, and after some initial difficulties got going after 10 minutes or so. For the first time in a while from work, I headed east as far as the Swan Street bridge (not quite up for a full Tan loop yet), in the process getting to see that the Australian Open precinct has swollen more since I was last there (I think rain is going to be more of a threat to the early part of the tournament than smoke). Still finding this harder work than a flat 35 minutes should be.

The conditions in the Yukon have been radically different to those which prevailed at NAOC 2018. It's been dropping below -40 in Whitehorse and to -50 further north - there was a news story I saw about how Forest Pearson's 8th-grade son rides to school on -40 days (they make them tough up there). Also in the news was an account of how some people, having crashed their car in the middle of nowhere in -50 or thereabouts, set the car on fire to stay warm. (Not sure this was a brilliant idea on a number of counts, but they lived to tell the tale).

Once again couldn't see the city from Clifton Hill, but this time it was drizzle rather than smoke which was responsible (not that drizzle and smoke are necessarily mutually exclusive, as we found out Monday last week), so no impediments to a session. Didn't feel that great through a lot of the session, but got through it without too much trouble (and the drizzle had cleared for the ride in).

One bit of anecdotal evidence that a lot of people have cancelled or truncated holidays; the traffic is well and truly back at out-of-holidays levels.

The house next door (derelict since I moved in here) disappeared while I was at work. Rumour has it that the demolition permit ran out next month, so I'm not holding my breath that this is necessarily a precursor to the imminent building of something (or even the removal of the rubble).

For the second day in a row, the atmospheric conditions threw a curveball for my plans, which were to do the Wednesday night street event at Mitcham. It was expected that a wind change would go through mid-to-late afternoon (which would clear out the smoke) and that there was a chance of storms with that. The storms were more intense than expected, and although we didn't get the 44mm in 30 minutes and 110 km/h wind gusts that Avalon did, I thought 'this could be trouble' when there was a lightning strike close to the rail line at Collingwood station. It was indeed trouble; we were stuck for 40 minutes before going back to Victoria Park, at which point I thought that walking home 45 minutes in the rain was a better option than waiting for buses (having heard that some people were still waiting at 8pm, I think I got that one right, although with lightning still about, some of the parkland sections were a bit nerve-wracking).

Eventually got in the door at home at 7.02 (about 1.10 after I'd planned), which obviously meant I wasn't going to get to Mitcham for a 7.00 start (especially as, as I was to discover on the run, the traffic was still at middle-of-peak-hour-in-school-term levels), so plan B was to go back out into the rain, which was starting to ease by then, and do something roughly equivalent to the C course I would have done at Mitcham. This worked out reasonably - I was certainly warmed up - although it was still rather hard work for what should have been an easy 30 minutes, and the quad gave me enough indications on the small hills here to suggest that it might have been problematic on the larger hills of Mitcham.

As you might imagine, Darebin Creek was pumping.

Finally got home to dry out properly, get something to eat and then launch into a teleconference about the finer details of OA constitutional and governance amendments. #somepeoplehaveallthefun

Knowing that today was going to be bad for smoke, I'd planned to do an indoor swim, but that plan hit a snag when the City of Yarra decided to close its indoor pools as well as its outdoor ones (perhaps they could have used the overzealous health and safety person responsible for that decision over at Australian Open qualifying).

I wasn't going to give up that easily and decided to have another go after work. Thinking that Northcote (where the indoor pool was open and the outdoor one wasn't) would be impossibly crowded - it's often difficult in the evenings even when the outdoor pool is open because it gets a lot of squad use - I decided to try Ivanhoe. It was pretty crowded too, which made for what felt like a rather broken session, but in the end it didn't go too badly.

The early Pilates session, having ascertained first that there wasn't much which had come up overnight on the work front which required my attention. Seemed to be a reasonable session and quad held up OK.

Planned to go for a post-Pilates run, knowing that it might be my last window of opportunity to do something in reasonable air quality this side of Wednesday evening (there was a layer of smoke aloft, making for an interesting-looking sunrise, but it hadn't yet reached the surface). Reasonable on the flat, but going up (short) hills was a bit of a trigger for the quad, so was reasonably cautious with it when going uphill. Not an especially convincing session.

The deadline passed at 9.59 (whereupon I headed out for a celebratory coffee with the other Bureau person on the lead authors' team). Our chapter was submitted with four minutes to spare.

One of the things which happens when there are big fires around is that the authorities pay more attention to remote rural properties than they usually do, which may be a problem if your remote rural property has things you'd prefer the authorities not to know about. This isn't the first time the country between Braidwood, Bungendore and Captains Flat has allegedly been used for nefarious purposes, although it was also the scene of one of the more notorious national-security-related media beat-ups of the 21st century when a bush block used by a Lebanese bloke from Sydney for the shooting of wild pigs (not in short supply in that part of the world), in the hands of the Daily Telegraph, became a "terrorist training camp". (Somehow, if it really was one of those, I doubt we'd have got permission to run rogaines across it).

(One other revelation here is that the "locality" of Harolds Cross, whose Census population of 53 would seem to be overestimated by at least 50, has a Wikipedia page, albeit a small one. It's also a fine example of an Australian place which bears little resemblance to its northern hemisphere namesake - the other Harolds Cross is a Dublin suburb - although not as much so as St. Kilda (the Melbourne one)).

The IOF joint Council/Commissions meeting weekend is always a challenging one for those of us trying to join the meetings from this part of the world - for me, that meant teleconferences yesterday from 6-8am and 11pm-1am (and the second one was about event quality issues in general and the China World Cup in particular, so was reasonably intense). That's without throwing into the mix that it's the weekend before an IPCC draft submission deadline (officially 10am our time tomorrow), which means e-mails going around in all directions at odd hours (for us), apart from trying to tie off a few loose ends myself.

Strangely I was tired this morning. I made two attempts to run, either side of a coffee date with my old next-door neighbour from Canberra (who turned out, apart from the social catch-up, to be in search of advice on how to talk to her climate sceptic parents). The first time it was obvious in the first 30 seconds that it wasn't happening, the second time I tried to pretend for five minutes that my back was functioning before deciding that it wasn't. (Still put something into Hanny's fundraiser). Felt somewhat better after falling asleep on the couch after lunch.

Finally did something in the pool late in the day after a two-hour session trying to track down missing reference citations - it was a fairly cool day so relatively uncrowded for a summer afternoon. Felt like I was working pretty hard but at least got through it.

C • How to talk to climate skeptics 9

Still on advice not to try running successive days so took to the bike today, after an early start for the IOF teleconference - headed out towards Ivanhoe and La Trobe Uni. The conditions and wildlife were both more friendly than last time, though still a bit of a slog into the wind later on.

Didn't feel quite right through the day, although I'm not sure whether that's getting sick or just tiredness.

The Institute of Public Affairs distinguished itself yesterday by having an opinion piece published in the Financial Review which proposed that bushfire-affected communities should be supported by declaring special economic zones exempt from taxes, charges and regulations (IPA reports are nothing if not predictable). If such a thing actually happened, presumably half the businesses in Australia would, in short order, be operating out of a Mallacoota post office box.

C • Regulations 5

Not entirely convincing on a warm morning - even the minimal climbs in this part of the world were a challenge - but at least the quad got through this OK, so I'll consider that to be a positive.

It won't exactly be a restful weekend, with the combination of the IPCC draft deadline (Monday morning our time - although I feel more confident about being on top of that than I was 24 hours ago) and the IOF joint Council/Commission meetings, which means early morning and late night sessions on Saturday. Probably as well that I'm not doing Two Bays this year.

I've occasionally mused about the vast gulf in the amounts of money available in different sports, but I was also thinking about it in science after reading a paper about a satellite observing program where the paper talked about its strict and fixed budget - of US$805 million. This made me a bit frustrated knowing what we could do in my field of surface observations data sets with, say, US$8.05 million. (The cynic in me suggests that governments are quite happy to spend US$805 million when most of the money is going to aerospace or military contractors but are rather less enthusiastic about spending it on scientists).

In the water on a sunny morning - perhaps a bit too sunny as sun glare was a bit of a nuisance when heading towards it (which was at least an indicator that it wasn't excessively smoky).

A busy day as you might imagine - the annual climate statement was issued today, which made official that it was Australia's hottest and driest year on record (although the numbers themselves have been out there for a week). Didn't do as much media as I sometimes do with this - just a couple of radio interviews in SA.

Somewhat to my surprise, my physio didn't want me to stop running altogther but suggested alternate days, so I ventured out to Deepdene in the hope that this time it would work out. It sort of did on the flat and downhill, but back wouldn't really allow me to run uphill (and there are a few uphills here) - a bit of a struggle most of the way. Quite an interesting course; for one leg (10-4) I think the fastest route was actually to go off the map, but I didn't do it.

The quad sore spot (which wasn't especially noticeable running) seems to have moved up the quad a bit, which is strange.

C • I hope... 5

C • Moving up 1

Headed out for a rare lunchtime session (into unexpectedly clear air), and was thinking that it wasn't going too badly to start with; was also wondering whether someone was trying to get me in the mood when the speakers on the path outside Crown were playing this followed by this. Perhaps I needed such encouragement to function, because 30 seconds after leaving that precinct my quad started to give trouble again. At least it gave my physio something to look at in our scheduled session this evening (the outcome of which is that I'll probably be easing back a bit on the running for a bit, although she didn't tell me to stop altogether).

Today provided abundant evidence that the Venn diagram intersection between sexists and climate change deniers is substantial. (I've noted before that women, especially younger women, working in my field get far more public abuse than I've ever had myself).

Back to the 7am starts (and not feeling especially awake for them). A fairly standard session, seemed to be doing things OK once loosened up. Thought some of the exercises might have tested out the quad but no sign of trouble there.

On to the pool, in conditions radically different to this time last week (mid-teens, drizzly, and starting to get smoky). Not swimming quite as smoothly as last week either, but kept it going reasonably well.

As might be expected after the weekend's events, it was a pretty hectic day at work (with the submission deadline for the next IPCC draft this time next week, it would have been regardless), but the smoke was the big talking point of the day - nothing remotely close to what places closer to the fires have experienced (and the low cloud and drizzle made it look worse than it was), but the EPA website was still getting a fair bit of use. Would probably have thought twice about going out for a run this evening had that been my plan, but the bike commute turned out to be better than I expected.

Finally managed to do what I'd planned on at the start - a little creaky at times (and woke up with tight calves, one of which had cramped a bit at the cricket last night), but no major dramas (and quad fine). Put together a reasonably steady session, initially through Bellfield and then across as far west as the Northcote pool, and felt as if I had a bit still left in me. It's become a fairly regular pattern to get through my weekend runs but not my weekday ones, so maybe the lesson is that I can no longer consistently handle going out within an hour or so of getting up?

Very atypical summer conditions (especially this year), 12 degrees and steady light rain - excellent for running. I'm certainly glad not to be in Canberra or areas nearby - it looks horrendous (and I can't offer any significant hope for improvement in air quality in the short term).

Only managed to crack double figures in distance 10 times last year. Hopefully this year will be a considerable advance on that.

Interesting day meteorologically (although nowhere near as "interesting" as further north and east), with two wind changes around 7am and noon. I'd probably rather have gone after the second one but had other commitments in the afternoon, but the first one was enough to clear the heaviest of the smoke, so headed out around 11. Back was OK today, but quad was again showing signs of fatiguing from around 20 minutes so pulled up a bit earlier than I'd originally planned on. Also the first proper warm-weather run I've done so far this Australian summer (about 28), and noticed it.

Cassie and family left today. Some members of the family have clearly absorbed a bit of Australianness - when I met them at the airport this afternoon the first thing the boys asked me was whether Labuschagne had got his 200 yet.

C • I used to laugh at how you ... 13

Back troublesome this morning and pulled up after an initial attempt. Can't claim the smoke as an excuse because it didn't come in until later in the morning. Will be watching tomorrow with a certain level of apprehension.

C • Nothing to see here... 5

Didn't feel great for running but was OK in the pool - which seemed fairly empty from the outside but was still quite busy once there (Northcote this time). Definitely not busy on the trains, though.

My computer was working pretty hard today, with a number of multi-gigabyte data sets to get through.

After a pleasant just-making-it-past-midnight evening with the family (thereby depriving me of any temptation to call the hotline that Pauline Hanson ran for people lonely on New Year's Eve), surfaced a bit later than usual this morning and headed out to the coast on a pleasant day to get off the mark for 2020. A reasonable start but quad was starting to feel not quite right from about 25 minutes onwards, so pulled it up a bit earlier than I was planning on.

C • An opportunity missed 1