Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: 2011 Victorian Sprint Champs
 

Victorian Sprint Championships at Monash University Churchill, south of Morwell. This is not exactly the usual territory for Victorian orienteering - symbolised by passing the hopefully-soon-to-be-former Hazelwood power station on the way in - but Rob's doing his best to get things going in this part of the world. The terrain was reasonably standard campus-sprint variety, although without enough breaks in the main building complex to set up a lot of really good route choices.

(Another bit of quirkiness was that the assembly area was next to, among other things, a Muslim prayer room, which reminded me of the 1980s ACT event which started next to the Canberra Mosque, and had the master maps lined up so you were facing Mecca as you marked your course).

Didn't have a lot of pace on the first couple of uphill legs. Got into it after that and was navigating pretty well, just a couple of trivial hesitations at the start of legs, and avoided falling into any of the traps which were set. Ended up about where I expected to be at this stage, a bit under 3 minutes down on Bruce, which is probably about a minute away from where I'd want to be, but there are still seven weeks to do something about that.

Ran the short course backwards as post-race training, not at full racing speed but faster than just a warm-down. Didn't feel too bad and navigated reasonably well, on a course which was probably more technical than ours.

Lovely morning to be out - cool and sunny. Not such a lovely run, although certainly improved on Wednesday and Thursday - getting back into a normal sleeping pattern helps. Achilles not having the best of days.

Noticed that Bundoora Secondary College now has a proper running track - worth noting for future time-trial reference.

Back in the pool for a nice recovery session. Seemed to be working fairly well, after a first night of sleeping properly (and of still being asleep when my alarm went off). Plenty of people at the pool despite the cool morning - it's school swimming carnival season and a squad was there a couple of lanes across.

Statistics interpretation fail of the week: to those (and there have been multiple offenders) who have included a reference to the Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi in reporting on the latest economic growth figures. This sounds all very well except that the figures were for the quarter ending in December, and unless consumers and businesses are much better forecasters than I think they are, it's hard to imagine how they could be affected by floods that happened (mostly) in January and a cyclone that happened in February. I'm not sure if blame lies mainly with the journalists or the politicians whose quotes they were reporting.

A Wednesday/Thursday combination which I haven't attempted for two years, prior to which it was a regular feature of my training. After last night's dismal effort I thought it might be hard going and it was, with hills particularly weak. Slow early on with some newsletter-delivery (and the darkness), before heading out along the river to Finns Reserve and back, and a final loop through the lower part of Heidelberg. Picked up a bit in the last third, and the last 10 minutes were the best of the whole run. Had originally gone out with 2.10 in mind but was happy to settle for something starting with a 2 in the end.

It's tempting to attribute this performance to the first attempt at a demanding combination, but as I was starting to feel not quite right running yesterday morning, I suspect sleep issues may have something to do with it too. Hopefully I'm not in the process of getting sick (although with all the recent travel it would be no great surprise if I did).

Not quite with it this morning for a run from near tonight's street-O venue, then down through Toorak and Malvern, taking a lot of expensive real estate en route as usual in these parts. It must also be private schools athletics/cross-country time as I saw groups of runners from Carey and Scotch on my way to the start, and then Mandeville Hall while I was running. The run improved a bit at the end.

That then set me up to negotiate the obstacle course involved in riding from there to the city these days. I'd hoped that a month away might have been enough for at least one of the building projects currently obstructing access to Docklands to be finished but no such luck.

Really not with it tonight - perhaps my body still thinks it's midnight (or is expecting the driving blizzard I was running in this time last week). Weak throughout but especially up the hills. The one positive to draw from this is that I produced a similar performance on a bad night to that which I was producing on a good night six weeks ago.

Hanging off the back of a bunch until about halfway when they went their separate ways, whereupon I was more or less on my own for a few controls (amongst A grade anyway). Rejoined 100 metres behind Ian Davies with three controls to go (somewhat to my surprise, as I thought his option wasn't a good one at first glance). Took enough ground out of him by the last control to give me some vague hopes of pulling him in - Ian doesn't have a sprint - but it didn't happen. About 3.5 minutes behind Bryan; Bruce didn't show tonight.

I suspect this map has different contour intervals in its eastern and western halves (5m in the west, 10m in the east). Not quite as bizarre as the map (no longer in use) which has different north-south and east-west scales.

8x400 on a 2.5 minute cycle at Clifton Hill, times 81-87. This was the first time I've tried to go really hard for a while. Was worried based on my performances in events like the 5-days and the January street-Os that this was going to be totally embarrassing, but it ended up being on a similar level to most of last year - still not great but a platform which can be built on. Faded away a bit on the last couple. A blustery morning, although the tailwind was in the last 100 which is better than the alternative.

Had a massage afterwards, which was definitely badly needed. Legs still feel a bit swollen post-flight but better than yesterday.

Warm up/down from the intervals session.

MFR Monday night from Ilka's around Royal Park with a pretty good crowd. Even slower pace than normal - a mere 40-odd seconds per km slower than I did for four times as far on snow and ice last time out. Not too asleep but still felt pretty dismal running. Legs seem quite swollen after a long time in the plane - hopefully this will settle down tonight.

My first day back brought the news that the powers-that-be have decided that the project which I was essentially carrying single-handed through last year is now worth throwing four or five people at, which should at least mean I'm less familiar with the post-9pm train timetable and which lunch places open Sundays than I have been recently.

C • Project 2