Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Another solid effort, in much less humid conditions than yesterday. As with last week, did an initial loop of 90 minutes or thereabouts with Bruce before striking out on my own, with the first loop up the Yarra as far as Banksia Street (getting within about 1k of my place), then the second southwards into Kew. Had the chance to reacquaint ourselves with foreign substances like puddles and mud in the early stages thanks to 15mm of rain overnight (doesn't sound a lot but it's the best we've had since May). Some very good patches in the middle, a bit more of a grind in the last hour but still lasted the distance well. Thought it was a bit faster than it actually was, particularly early - the slippery ground must have had a bit of an impact.

Spotted a car in Kew with Arizona plates 'LOST IN OZ', and another one back at the Fairfield boathouse car park, 'TAXMAN' (it was a Mercedes). I don't think the latter belonged to Michael D'Ascenzo (the Tax Commissioner, and a reasonably regular sighting in M45AS up in Canberra - which may come in useful if I have any awkward GST questions).

A solid run but one I wasn't upset to have over - haven't run in humidity like this since Beijing a couple of years ago. Not something you see much of in Melbourne. Some steep hills in the middle out at the upper end of Templestowe to add a bit to the degree of difficulty.

Planned to go to the tennis today, but with intermittent rain I suspect there won't be a lot of play on the outside courts.

Noticed that the current Melbourne weather report on AP is 'unknown precip'. Presumably this is because the observers have forgotten what the word is for that strange wet stuff that is currently falling out of the sky.

(From the rainfall totals coming in from SA, might be worth keeping an eye out for unmapped new erosion gullies on the Easter maps).

C • In the media again 4

Swimming at Richmond. Took a while to loosen up but did so nicely by the end. Nice to see some of that strange wet stuff falling out of the sky again.

An unspectacular but solid effort, taking advantage (as with last night) of the narrow window of opportunity provided by 24 hours of southerlies. Hit a flat spot at about 90 minutes but came good again closer to the end, in marked contrast with some other efforts this year.

Another day with difficult conditions - I'm almost getting used to it being over 30 at 6 a.m. now. Held up better than I thought I would, although definitely appreciated being able to get some water with about 20 minutes to go.

Riding home last night was interesting, although only one set of lights was out and 40 degrees was almost manageable. Would have been much worse on the trains. Power stayed on at my place throughout - one of the advantages of living a block away from a major hospital.

Plan B for avoiding the eastern suburbs traffic was to leave the car at Surrey Hills station for the day and therefore stay south of the Springvale Road bottleneck. It proved to be about as successful as plan A from two weeks ago, thanks to Connex who decided to cancel the one train every 20 minutes which stopped at Surrey Hills rather than one of the expresses running every 5 minutes. (Actually, I suppose it was a bit more successful because I made it at 6.54 instead of 6.57).

I've always liked Bellbird Dell as an area (and it's where I ran one of my first ever Melbourne street-Os back in 1993). As someone who has only rarely been the fastest in the field, I've also often had my best results on "wild-card" nights where something unusual happens, whether that's extreme heat, heavy rain, big hills or an unusual event format. The extreme heat was gone, but the format was a little unusual - we only had to get 15 out of 20 controls, opening up a lot more options than the usual 18 or 19.

Given the constrained warm-up I thought it might be a struggle. I did get jumped early, but hit an excellent rhythm by the third control in what developed into my best street-O run for the season. I actually thought the route choice was pretty obvious - leave out the three in the steep and convoluted south-west cluster, plus two of the four in the east-central block - but it can't have been too obvious because no-one else did it. In a way it was a bit disappointing to see Adam Scammell and David Kipp go the other way because I was feeling good enough to fancy my chances in a running race, but it settled the result - I don't think I've won by as much as four minutes in years. Fell away a little from my peak in the third quarter, but revitalised again by a lovely finish, doing the last four controls downhill through the Dell (one of the nicest pockets of bush to be found in middle Melbourne suburbia).

Just heard that there have been "hundreds" of small fires started by lightning this afternoon in an area "west of Wadbilliga National Park". This probably means Badja. Hopefully they don't do too much damage but I'm not optimistic.

C • And how is the Dubbo fire going 5

Standard fartlek loop. Took a while to get into it but ended up being reasonable (fastest loop 9.12). Doing multiple loops means that you notice the specific sights more - in particular the fact that at 7.30 on a Tuesday morning half the even side of the street is out watering (Tuesday and Saturday are the allowable days for even-numbered houses).

C • Watering 1

Back into Fitzroy pool for the first time in a long time. This is probably my favourite spot for a swim - partly because it's right on the way to work and partly because the place has a fair bit of character to it. (Getting between the change rooms and the pool, which is outdoors, also requires a certain amount of character on mid-winter mornings, although it's lovely once you're in).

Fitzroy pool became a cause celebre in the mid 1990s because of the attempts to close it down, which became the symbol of everything that was unpopular under the previous government's local government "reform". It didn't meet national cost-recovery averages but hardly any Victorian outdoor pools would (something to do with being cooler than Queensland), and was almost certainly in the firing line because it sits on potentially valuable inner-city real estate. Anyway, it's still there and will hopefully remain so.

The swim itself - a nice recovery effort and the shoulder seems fine. A few twinges in the elbow this time round but I think this is just rebuilding muscles.

MFR Monday night run from Warren and Tash's place. Got into quite a bit of reasonably rough stuff around the smaller Yarra Bend tracks, including a couple of very steep climbs. Felt good after working a bit of initial stiffness out of system.