Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

NOL long at Mount Ainslie. This was expected to be tough - a long race, plenty of climb, and a warm day - and I wasn't overwhelmed with confidence after the last week. Part of me was thinking to treat it as a weekend long run, except for the minor detail that my recent weekend long runs have been done in temperatures anywhere from 25 to 50 degrees colder (it was 24-27 during the race, and quite humid).

As expected the first leg was very long but there was only one real option, so it was mostly a track run as I fell gradually off the bunch, realising as I did so that today was going to be about enduring rather than racing. Started to settle through the butterfly section and work my way through the midfield pack, getting to near its front by the end of that section. Hit a very low patch on the next long leg (where I went left) and had about a 10-minute section where I was really struggling. Caught Murray coming out of 10 and got a second wind from that, which meant not being too rattled by the annoyance of a mistake on the supposedly trivial 12 in the CSIRO grounds going into the map change.

I'd slowly realised on the first loop that it hadn't really had that much climb (unless you went straight on 1 and 10), so was anticipating a lot on the second loop - perhaps a leg straight up the mountain. That bit was wrong - we went up the mountain in four legs rather than one. In a sense, though, it wasn't such a bad thing for someone who was struggling a bit - I was walking for most of the big climbs but so was everyone else. Came in low to 16 and dropped another minute or so, bringing me there just in front of a few others. Several of them were gone by then and posed no threat, but we emerged from the top of a climb with a pack of 3 - David Brownridge and Matt Parton being the others.

The descent to 18 was technically scary; I wasn't sure whether I wanted to lead and told Dave so (and he felt likewise), but with a track only a couple of contours below I was comfortable with a straight attack with a ready bounceback option, which wasn't needed. A small climb out of 20 was enough to drop Matt, and by 22, the last bush control, we'd gone through Aaron and were almost on Evan. Dave, whose endurance impressed me today, had a bit too much left for me then, and we couldn't quite get Evan. I thought I'd struggle to hold a 30-40 metre gap on Aaron, too, on the last 300 metres across the ovals, but managed to do it.

In one sense I'm reasonably happy with lasting this one out, and 12th is a result I bettered only twice last season, but I was still a long way down in time, and this is exactly the sort of race which I would have expected to challenge seriously in if I was in the shape I'd like to be. If part of it is about the heat then another few weeks will help that a fair bit.

C • Talking to people on course? 1

Event: Capital Orienteering Festival
 

First round of the National League at the familiar venue of Bruce Ridge - although, as with tomorrow at Mount Ainslie, it was strange to run a proper race there (the most significant thing I've done there was winning M12 at the 1983 ACT Schools Championships). It turned out to be a bit more interesting than I was expecting, partly because it's greened up a bit (probably in part a legacy of the wet summer), and partly because it's now riddled with mountain bike tracks - Vancouver three weeks ago turned out to be excellent preparation.

This was generally a decent run technically - a few minor wobbles but nothing more than 10-15 seconds. The same couldn't be said for my physical performance - top gear is still missing and the small first hill was a bit of a shock to the system - but I did settle down a bit later on, especially after I caught David Brownridge late on the first loop (I then broke away on a route choice on the final sprint-style section). The result, just above midfield (equal 14th), is one I would have settled for at this stage; I'm certainly not hopelessly uncompetitive as I was in Armidale. Will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes; the longer distance will suit me, but I'm not sure the hills will.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the day was getting there. Our headlights blew on the way out of Albury, leaving us to continue with either high beam or parking lights - this was just about manageable on the freeway (apart from annoying a few truck drivers) but challenging at best on the non-freeway sections through Holbrook and Tarcutta. Not fancying tackling the final section into Canberra, we pulled up at Gundagai and continued this morning. Got it fixed today otherwise we wouldn't be getting back until Monday.

I wasn't required for an official Victorian team - we've got a surplus of blokes - and hence decided to sit out the mixed relay, in the hope of keeping myself a bit fresher for tomorrow.

Felt significantly better this morning. A reasonably routine session at Fitzroy; the other regular in the lane must be very observant as she'd spotted that I'd had a haircut since last week.

I was here a bit earlier than usual and thus found that the traffic in Alexandra Parade was worse at 6.55 than it is at 8.30, presumably because the clearway further up the road starts at 7. This was changed back from 6.30 by the new government (after complaints from all the struggling small businesses which were going to be sent into oblivion if people couldn't park outside their front doors between 6.30 and 7) - if the local ALP were suitably opportunistic they'd be out there with signs to remind people in the traffic jam who to blame for it.

On the subject of campaign strategy, I think the anti-carbon-tax people have made a major strategic error with the location of their first demo on Saturday (outside Julia Gillard's electorate office in Werribee). Firstly they've picked Melbourne where the shock-jock culture has less influence than in any other large mainland city, and secondly they're holding it in an outer suburb which means they'll be lucky to get a quarter of the crowd they would have got in the city (and I wouldn't mind betting that for a majority of the crowd that does go, it will be the first time they have set foot in Werribee). This strongly increases the chance that the counter-demo, which is in the city, will have a much larger crowd (not that you'll read about it in the Australian or hear it on 2GB), not a turn of events I would be overly distressed by.

I thought this might be a fairly straightforward long run, partly because it was shorter than usual (a concession to the fact that I'm racing on the weekend), and partly because it was later than usual because I was picking my bike up from the bike shop which doesn't open until 9.

For the first two-thirds it was indeed reasonably straightforward, occasionally showing promise but otherwise a bit of a slog and struggling a bit on hills. However, I then fell apart badly in the last 20 minutes, to a much greater extent than I would even at the end of a much tougher run. This is a significant worry with racing on the weekend. I suspect the cause may have been salt depletion as I was cramping quite a bit in the hour or two afterwards and it otherwise felt vaguely similar, although not as severe, as January 2009. Why it happened today is a bit of a mystery - in January 2009 it was the middle of Melbourne's severest heatwave and the morning after my hottest-ever run, whereas this morning the conditions were benign, if a little humid. Hopefully taking in more salt during the day will have helped (I certainly felt significantly better riding back from work tonight).

Riding into work from the bike shop was a bit of a challenge - OK while I was moving but threatening to cramp whenever I stopped. This provided some entertainment for the busload of (at a guess) Year 2s I was next to at traffic lights when I had to dismount in a hurry and do some on-the-spot stretching.

Didn't expect a great deal of this morning, after a night which will be familiar to at least some readers - being awake from 1 to 3 and taking forever to get back to sleep. The difference is that in my case it was talking scientists (I had an international teleconference) rather than screaming small children.

My lack of expectations were largely realised, although it wasn't horrible. Rather annoying that every time I looked like getting into some sort of rhythm I got held up by traffic (the price of being out a bit later in the morning than I usually am). Humid but without the anticipated rain.

My bright idea (with street-O tonight at Scotch) was to leave the car at Kooyong for the day and get the train in (I'd normally ride in such circumstances but my bike's being serviced). I just missed the train I was aiming for, which caused more of a delay than anticipated because the next train ended up stopped a couple of kilometres up the line with someone splattered across the front of it (whose intentions can safely be gleaned by virtue of the fact that the news reports of the incident finished with the contact numbers for Lifeline and Beyond Blue). I presumed (correctly, given that various colleagues on the same line ended up getting into work well after I did) that the promised buses would be some time in coming and switched to plan B (tram to Glenferrie, then train on a different line).

Street-O at Scotch. After last year I thought it might be a short sprint-style event as it was last year, but it was a conventional scatter event, on one of the more interesting areas in the program - the Yarra, the freeway and the railway line provide plenty of opportunity for route choice triumph and disaster. Tonight's course-setting encouraged that, with an awkwardly-placed cluster of five controls which we had to get at least some of.

After a straightforward first few legs I decided to do something radical, as evidenced by the fact that no-one else was anywhere near me. This probably meant either triumph or disaster, and I suspected the former. To some extent this was true, although Bruce found a variant which was similar; we got a big jump on the rest of the field though. What's still missing is my next gear; I felt better than I did last week but ran a similar pace (although there was enough mud and stair-work around on a wet night to slow the time down a bit). I felt I needed to gain three or four minutes on the field on route choice to have a chance, and in the end it was probably more like two.

There was plenty of visible evidence of Scotch's money at work (it's rumoured that the budget of the Scotch rowing program is bigger than the budget of Rowing Australia). They haven't, however, been able to buy decent batsmen if the scoreboard on display (all out 54 in 23 overs) is anything to go by.

Every now and again I have a morning when I've slept particularly well and don't feel properly awake even an hour after getting up. Usually the start of a run is the prompt to start feeling awake (more or less). This morning it wasn't. A rather pointless exercise in the end, at least from the point of view of doing anything fast.

A rather warm morning, which will be useful in getting at least a pretence of acclimatisation for the weekend.

A sunny morning when more or less everything went smoothly (apart from the Volvo driver who was reinforcing stereotypes of Volvo drivers), and that flowed through into a good solid session in the pool. Quite a lot of people in the water this morning but most of those in my lane were of a similar (lack of) speed to me, so it wasn't an issue.

MFR Monday night from Jasmine's place in Brunswick, up Merri Creek to a point far enough north for some of the group to engage in some fig-picking. Took a long time to get going but eventually felt reasonable, not that this had any great intensity. No shortage of insects out, although still probably not as unpleasant as the Bendigo spider plague (anyone know if we've got this to look forward to in Canberra this weekend?). Followed up by dinner to the backing of Vanessa's band (or a recording thereof).