Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: Gunapin Ridge Badge Event
 

Didn't get a brilliant night's sleep before this - noise carried in the place where I was staying and someone saw fit to watch the 5am Christian TV shows. By 6.30 I had definitely heard the word 'Jesus' enough times to feel in a blasphemous mood.

The warm-up didn't really work that well and I felt sluggish on the first couple of legs, also missing 2 a little. Settled well after then into the pattern of the area, long bland transport legs in between areas of interesting detail. (The last time I was at Gunapin, the Middle Champs in 2003, we were mostly in the semi-open, but didn't see much of that until the end). Pretty smooth through the middle stages, only missing a little at 15. There was then an annoying time loss at the end - 1.5 minutes on the third-last control - but I thought something was strange on the map there and Tooms and Fletch confirmed afterwards that the control was misplaced. (It's extremely rare for me to screw up an otherwise good run at the end, and I'm not sure whether this should be added to the list). Physically a reasonable run but not stellar, but a nice hit-out in pleasant terrain.

Craig didn't finish and neither did Fletch (he punched an inorrectly-numbered 24 which was about as far from the centre of the circle in the opposite direction as the correctly numbered one - would have done 87 otherwise). Tooms and Oscar were in the mid-90s.

C • I'll take the blame 4

Course 1 - Splits

Stayed with the Posts in Gwelup, northwest of the city, and ran from there, with the main target being the Trigg bushland reserve - like Bold Park, lots of bush tracks with a hard base but sand-dune contours (probably shorter and steeper than Bold Park). A reasonable run although drifted away a bit in the last 15 minutes. A little bit of left foot soreness but nothing to worry too much about.

There was a sticker on a power pole "Keep WA Cane Toad Free". I assume they haven't got this far yet.

Spent the rest of the day looking around in places I haven't been to - up the coast to Lancelin then inland to York. A bit of extra excitement was provided on the Lancelin bit by the presence of a large number of big bearded blokes on motorbikes, accompanied by several carloads of WA's finest.

Wouldn't normally run on a Friday - this is normally a pool day - but there isn't a pool within easy reach so decided on a recovery run again, through Peppermint Grove and Mosman Park before returning along the Cottesloe foreshore. A fairly humdrum run physically. Would be interesting to count the value of the houses I passed in the course of this run - suspect the answer would be in the billions.

C • Billions 2

C • Pool 4

Left myself on Melbourne time, sort of, last night - something which makes getting up at 5 a bit easier to take.

Route for this one went broadly up the coast from Cottesloe, except for a detour inland to get around the Swanbourne military base (I imagine going along the beach is an option when it's light). The coast road seems, unsurprisingly, to get a fair bit of use from cyclists in the early morning (although not quite as much so as beach Road in Melbourne). Turned inland at Floreat, then a section on the bush tracks through Bold Park (a more extensive section than I'd planned on because the track on my map exiting at the SE corner didn't exist and I ended up doing almost a full circuit) before heading back.

Nice morning for a run and I usually enjoy exploring. The run had its moments, especially in the middle, but I was a bit down on strength on the hillier bits, and was hanging on a bit in the last half-hour.

Spotted a sign for a new development at Floreat "only seconds from beach". Well, yes, but it's a three-figure number of seconds (it's about 2km inland). Dodgy claims by real estate marketers have, however, been with us for at least 1000 years, since Erik the Red returned from a barren icy island in the North Atlantic and called it "Greenland".

The workshop is in the very posh surrounds of the Peppermint Grove yacht club, a place where you could start a riot by expressing support for the Resources Super Profits Tax. The views out the window were very nice and you could look at a lot of expensive real estate if the talks were getting boring (and reflect on how much of said expensive real estate would be rendered worthless by a metre of sea level rise).

C • Interesting run! 3

I imagine this is a classic West Perth lunchtime run - a circuit of Kings Park with a bit of a side trip to UWA thrown in. Thought I might struggle a bit with this one after four hours in the plane and a hurried exit from our WA office (having been tipped off that there was going to be a fire drill in 10 minutes); it was OK in the first half, although a bit more of a struggle in the second.

This run also doubled as a damage survey, looking at some of the worst-hit areas from the March hailstorms, notably an area of stripped trees in the southwest part of Kings Park (quite a similar look to The Gap in Brisbane). UWA also got hammered; they seem to have fixed most of their damage but there is still one shattered greenhouse remaining for posterity. I did wonder what happens in the building signposted "Large Animals Facility".

More families out than I'm used to on a weekday lunchtime - probably a visible sign of fly-in-fly-out mine workers on their off weeks. Surprisingly I haven't yet heard anyone (taxi drivers included) say anything about the mining tax.

And it looks like a speaker isn't required to go to Normanton after all.

C • Mining Tax Surprise 1

8x400 on a 2.5-minute cycle - sans dogs this time. A very mediocre start for the first three (85-87), but then snapped into a nice rhythm from the fourth rep onwards, significantly faster and feeling quite strong. Finished off with three 80s, better than anything I'd previously done this year although still short of what I was doing last year (when I was normally getting down to about 77 in this session). A solid session which showed some promise.

Going to/from the Clifton Hill track from where I was parked. Sluggish going there, not sluggish coming back.

I'm off to Perth in the morning and will be there until Sunday. After a relatively calm few weeks (apart from the National League in NSW), my travel schedule is about to get hectic again - WA this week, SA the following weekend, and potentially some far-flung parts of northwest Queensland a couple of weeks after that (although the last of these isn't definite).

C • Perth Visit 2

Morning swim at Fitzroy. Started out reasonably promisingly but rather faded away. Left arm even weaker than it usually is. Quads felt quite stiff again this morning, although the swim helped.

We've come to know and love the quirks of Eurovision voting, and we got another one last night - after 65 years, Israel are still not prepared to let bygones be bygones and give any votes to Germany. This had gone unnoticed for many years because in most recent years no-one else was voting for Germany either, because their entries were rubbish. The only other obviously mutually hostile pairing at Eurovision are Armenia and Azerbaijan - even Serbia and Croatia happily vote for each other these days.

Around the Tan from Clare's new premises in some trendy East Melbourne apartments (complete with excellent view). The run didn't live up to the surrounds - I was never really with it tonight, and certainly not enough with it to go with Simon when he decided to stretch out. Also an Achilles twinge at one point of the first time in a couple of weeks, but that settled quickly.