Run 1:10:00 [3] 14.0 km (5:00 / km)
A reasonably mundane run, starting from home which has been a bit unusual for my runs lately, then up through Macleod and returning through Viewbank. Once again taking a long time to get going but better in the second half. Hints of left groin tightness at times; will have to see how it responds to going faster tonight.
In elections, both major parties often have difficulties finding candidates for the other side's safe seats (and the minor parties even more so). This sometimes leads to people with rather oddball views getting selected (most infamously Pauline Hanson, who was originally a Liberal candidate), or to desperate searches for people who will put their names on a ballot paper. I almost ran for Doncaster in 2002 in such circumstances (would have done had I not been sidelined with compartment syndrome surgery at the time); the person who did ultimately lost by 200 votes despite zero campaigning. In Labor's case, the candidates for the further-flung country seats often come from a long way away, but it's unusual to find someone as candid as Mark Platt, a Brisbane uni student who's the candidate for Hinchinbrook. He admitted to the ABC that he had no real connection to the electorate, but had driven through it once on the way to Cairns.
Run race ((street-O)) 44:49 [4] * 10.03 km (4:28 / km) +160m 4:08 / km
spiked:17/18c
Street-O at Canterbury. Needed to win this one to keep my series hopes alive but got off to a bad start when I planned a route choice up a non-existent lane on the first leg, and never got back into it from there. Some good course-setting split the field from the middle onwards; when we regathered at about two-thirds distance Adam was about 150 metres ahead of me, a gap which held but which I couldn't make any impression on. Also saw Matt Schepisi at the third-last and thought I might have been in for a sprint finish, but he was a control ahead thanks to a superior route choice (and superior speed) and beat us comfortably.
Had the unfamiliar experience of a wet race, I think for the first time since the WOC week in the Czech Republic last year. Even a bit of thunder at the start.
This was again an alarmingly slow race, although I didn't feel too bad on the whole.
Groin tightness was quite sharp in the first 500 metres, but disappeared after that and didn't resurface after the run.