Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Pool running session to start the week, a bit earlier in the morning than I've been managing recently. (My start time recently has been governed by the arrival time of the morning paper, which has been creeping later and later but got back to a reasonably respectable 6.30 this morning). This meant more sunglare, but apart from that it was quite a nice session.

School holidays have started and traffic going into the city was fairly minimal, but not so minimal as to prevent one element of it having a deep and meaningful conversation with a William Street power pole.

Australia's headline-writers obviously aren't as well-educated as I thought they might have been, because I have yet to see any of them take the opportunity to use the headline "Something Rotten In The State of Denmark" after the disappointing outcome in Copenhagen.

C • a rotten deal 1

At lunchtime from work, taking the next step up - 1 min off/4 min on. The Polly Woodside provides quite a nice 4-minute loop for this, which I'll be hoping not to have to use on too many more occasions. The foot has improved considerably since Saturday (in any case it was more of an issue walking than running), and doesn't seem to have pulled up sore afterwards either, but the main injury still doesn't feel quite right and I don't feel that I'm making huge progress.

Use of AP for work-related purposes department: I'm currently in the process of updating the Australian long-term high-quality temperature data set (which is what has been keeping me occupied to sometimes-outlandish hours), and in particular scouring it for suspect observations. One which was flagged by one of my original checks was a maximum of 34.8 at Wagga on 24 March 2007. A look at the hourly observations showed hot conditions overnight, steady rain starting in the early morning, temperature dropping to 20 at 9 a.m. (which is the cutoff for maximum temperature - anything earlier goes into the previous day) and then continuing to fall through the day. I thought that sounded familiar, so I checked my log and it was familiar - 2007 NSW Sprint Champs day at Charles Sturt Uni. This enabled me to confirm that the 34.8 was definitely wrong.

(Another use of my training records for this purpose - my hard-copy diaries this time - was to resolve an inconsistency between a maximum of 13 and a highest hourly value of 17 for Canberra on 16 November 1988, a run I remembered well for being long, cold and very wet - it was in the middle of the HSC and one of the few occasions I ran home from school. On that occasion it was the hourly value that was wrong).

A final note on the interplay between training and weather is to note that the beach where I did the intervals session in between the fishermen and the 4WDs on 23 June is pretty well right in the firing line for Cyclone Laurence. I don't expect too much of the beach to be there tomorrow morning. Sand dunes give the caravan park (where I believe there are a few holdouts) some protection but if they get breached it could flood in a hurry; hoping for the best.

A shorter but more ambitious route than last week: Wattle Glen-Kangaroo Ground-Warrandyte-Donvale-Eastern Freeway path. Almost continuously hilly until hitting the path at 38k; most of it manageable, but the climb out of Warrandyte on Harris Gully Road was brutal (will be interested to look at a contour map but wouldn't expect much change out of 15%).

Reasonably strong through the first two-thirds but again hit a bit of a flat spot around 45k (I took a banana with me this time so there goes that theory). I think it might just be a case of muscular endurance in muscles that aren't used to this level of work on the hillier rides. I hope it's a function of hilliness rather than distance, as the (by my riding standards) epic I have tentative plans for (watch this space) will only be starting to hit its most significant hills at 45k.

A sign soliciting funds to build an indoor sports stadium at Diamond Creek said 'we're almost there!'. Evidently 'almost' has a different definition in Diamond Creek as they're $250K, en route to $1M. The local school also had a sign wishing everyone a merry Christmas, which reminds me that I haven't seen a seasonal staple this year: a news story about some inner city school/child care centre which has allegedly "banned Christmas" out of political correctness. Usually any connection between such stories and reality is tenuous at best.

C • When Christmas was banned 1

C • Amy's Ride 2

Usual Saturday loop. Felt stronger on the hills than I have previously, which showed up in the time; was particularly pleased with how I worked the final hill back to my place. They must make a better class of dog owner in the eastern suburbs because the on-leash compliance rate was 100%.

Going past Doncaster Shoppingtown there was already a kilometre-long queue of cars waiting to get into the car park at 8.45 in the morning. That certainly made me glad that my plans for Christmas shopping (most of it to be done today) didn't involve any big suburban malls.

I had more tastes of the season last night. At the moment I'm working something bordering on Liggo hours (even in the most intense, five-hours-sleep-a-night-if-lucky, phases of Year 12 I didn't work Friday nights), and was making my way home at 9.30 last night. Just about every establishment en route had a party of some kind going, and some of it was inevitably reflected on the street; my scoreboard for the night was two pedestrians wandering aimlessly down the middle of the road, and one driver who was too tired or drunk to notice that the light was green and had been for the last 30 seconds.

Was in two minds over whether to do this given my foot soreness of recent days, but it was OK while running (still not especially confident I'd handle anything rougher, though). In Preston (en route to the markets), sharing the oval with the well-performing members of the local dog obedience club. 3 mins on/1 min off, as with Thursday.

The wonders of Facebook: a (non-orienteering) acquaintance is getting married today at Jervis Bay and one of the guests posted photos of the proud couple. I immediately recognised the spot as being one end of the intervals set described at http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_1491/p.... Very nice spot for a wedding photo (and the weather looks like it was better today than it was on 11 August too).

Pool running at Fitzroy. The same regular was there to pass the time of day with as we went past each other. In this game there's a fairly good chance other people doing it will also have injury stories to tell (although I'm considering keeping a session of this as a recovery session once this injury is behind me), and so it proved - in her case a broken collarbone falling off a motorbike. Sun glare something of an issue this morning.

Foot feels a bit better today than it did yesterday, but still a bit of a concern.

Sets of 1 min walk/3 min run, based around my parking spot outside the Arden Street oval; it's hard to believe that top-level football was ever played out of here. At least North Melbourne are no longer operating out of portable tin sheds - their new building is finished (which also happens to house the State Fencing Centre). Heavy clouds gathering but the rain didn't arrive until some hours later.

The Achilles is responding OK to this, but some soreness is appearing further down the foot; not really noticeable on the run but definitely was afterwards. I'm not sure what to make of this; it may well be a temporary response to resuming (some sort) of running, but it also feels a little like the early stages of my 2000 stress fracture. Hard to imagine that I could get a stress fracture in four days of jogging, though.

Followed the "run" up by riding to work via the usual circuitous route (i.e. through Essendon). Felt pretty smooth although noticed foot soreness a bit later on. Windy at times but only occasionally a nuisance.

To work via the northern loop again, although made my way south via the Merri Creek path to Brunswick, mainly because I had something to drop off at Clara's place. A hot day was promised (and materialised) but it wasn't too bad riding, although it had risen to 30 by the time I made it to work. Felt fairly reasonable although a little tired at the end.

The last time I came down the Merri Creek path it was blocked near Bell Street because of works associated with rebuilding Melbourne's sewer system, but it's clear now. Some of the path isn't in great condition and the dog-walkers don't take any more notice of on-leash zone signs than they did when I was running in these parts.

Saw a real estate sign, "Stunning Factory", not usually a set of words you'll see together.

One interesting feature of this morning was that the traffic was unusually heavy in the suburbs near train lines, but not elsewhere. My theory is that a lot of regular train passengers lacked confidence in the railway system's ability to handle a 39-degree day (with some reason based on historic experience, although there don't seem to have been any major meltdowns) and drove instead. A bicycle is more reliable on a hot day than either, but that doesn't make going home in 38 degrees into a headwind any easier. (I don't log "regular" commutes, but I was tempted today).

C • Thanks! 1

2 min jog/1 min walk, from home, same up-and-down route as Sunday. Good news is the tightness is gone, bad news is that I noticed the hotspot a little bit - nothing major, but then there were days before I stopped where I noticed nothing major either. Suggests a slow rehab process is no bad thing.

Out and back along the Koonung Creek path - not a commute for once as I had the ASC summit at the MCG rather than work (at least in the morning). The path is fun, the roads getting there and back were not fun - I'm normally doing them on a weekend when they're fine, but at 7.30 or 8.30 on a weekday they're the major truck route between the Hume and the Eastern. Working fairly hard on the outward trip, and cruising enjoyably on the long downhills coming back.

The ASC summit on the Crawford review was interesting, although I was hoping for more concrete indications from the ASC as to what they thought was likely to happen (to be fair, they've probably got about as much idea as the rest of us). The day was more about identifying from sports what the controversial issues were (no real surprises here) and where the gaps in the report were. It's also apparent that everyone wants more money, but I'm not convinced that more money is going to be forthcoming. Surprisingly little vigorous argument, but that may be because the real heavyweights were missing - John Coates wasn't there, and the likes of the AFL, NRL, rugby union, cricket and soccer either weren't there or were represented by low-level people.

The award for being in the right place at the right time goes to the Victorian Environment Minister, Gavin Jennings. You may have noticed press reports that he was missing from Copenhagen because his doctor had said he couldn't fly. I found out the reason why today - he had a heart attack in his office on Friday. Fortuitously, at the time there was a meeting going on in the next office between the Health Minister and the AMA, whose members were able to do the necessary.

Also noticed that for once the courts threw the book at someone who ran down a cyclist (13 years, the heaviest sentence I can remember for culpable driving), although the combination of speeding while drunk and on drugs and in the process of going to buy more drugs was never going to attract much judicial sympathy.

C • sentence 3