Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

This time the wind was light enough to go out to Gabo Island, which was my start to the morning (they like to get out as early as they can as the wind often picks up during the day). Mallacoota has an airport vastly in excess of its needs, a legacy of its role as a WW2 air force base - these days its main purpose is as the main DSE firefighting base for far eastern Victoria. (You know you're in the bush when the electric fence around the airport is directed at wildlife, not would-be terrorists). I was surprised how little it cost to get to the island by air - $100 including a lighthouse tour. (The pilot is also principal of the local school and I think he does the flights as a hobby and/or to keep his flying hours up - I can't believe he makes much money on it at that price).

With the Gabo Island mission accomplished - 90 sites down, 22 to go (next target is Cape Moreton in the week after Easter) - it was back to the mainland and time to go out for a run, this time northwards along the edge of the inlet and reaching the start of a walking track at the far end after leaving Mallacoota behind (I suspect this track would make a good longer run). The setting was very nice but as expected I found it hard to come up after the long day yesterday, and found this run a bit of a struggle. Also took a while for what seems to be fairly general soreness in my right foot to warm up, although it did eventually.

Couldn't help thinking, on visiting a cafe post-run and hearing the people on the next table in approving discussion of what Andrew Bolt had written in that day's paper, that they might be dissecting my character this time in a fortnight....

With Monday off, there was no rush to get back to Melbourne so I didn't, instead making a fairly leisurely way back as far as Metung on the Gippsland Lakes - not a bad spot, although the food at the local pub, while perfectly adequate, wasn't quite as good as its reputation had led me to believe.

C • fence 2

Waiting for Gabo (thanks to a commenter on my Facebook page for that one): the word came through that it was too windy to get to the island today, something I'd half-expected (the forecast had always suggested that today would be marginal, tomorrow more promising). That then meant I swapped my planned weekend sessions and went long today, an out-and-back southwest from Mallacoota, sort of along the coast, going almost (but not quite) to the end of the road at Shipwreck Creek. This is a gently rolling route, bitumen for the first 5k as far as the airport, then a forest dirt track into the national park.

The start was again slow but by 2k I'd settled down into something a lot closer to normal than any other run I've had this week. By usual standards it was a steady run, not as good as a couple of the long ones I had in January but a decent accumulation of distance. Started to tire in the last half-hour and was hanging on a bit at the end (probably slightly influenced by the biggest hill of the run coming with 1k to go), but then it's the first time I've gone much beyond 90 minutes since coming back from Europe.

The afternoon seemed to disappear doing nothing much except walking to the beach at Bastion Point and spending a couple of hours on it. Like a lot of coastal towns, it's packed in January but seems pretty quiet at this time of the year, although the caravan park was still pretty full (with a disproportionate number of Queensland plates, suggesting that at this time of year it's a favoured grey-nomad haunt). At the moment it's very pleasant by the bay - lots of green and the forest all around (not sure I'd want to be here if/when there's a big fire, though - the only realistic escape option is into the water).

The Garmin must have turned itself on in my bag because it was almost out of battery despite being charged on Thursday, but it did last long enough to confirm that I'd settled into about a 5 min/km pace, so I've assumed that for the weekend.

Navigation epic fail of the day:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/taking-...

C • What were they thinking? 4

Pool running at Fitzroy, starting in the dark which always feels a bit strange. It rained very heavily just before I started but then cleared for the remainder (which meant I got out with a dry towel). Starting to feel a bit more normal.

I'm taking advantage of a clear weekend (and Monday) and a decent weather forecast to tick another one off the list of temperature stations to be visited - Gabo Island. Unlike the people linked to above, I'm well aware that you can't drive to islands (and I have a somewhat unfortunate history in any case when it comes to remote weather stations and water crossings) - it's a small plane from Mallacoota instead. Should hopefully be some nice running to be had around Mallacoota too.

A bit later in the morning than usual for a Thursday (thanks to a 9am date with the auditors) and also shorter than I'd planned on at the start of the week - feeling that I still need to back off a bit. Certainly felt improved but still pretty slow - not much faster than this time last week.

Thought my route up through Springthorpe might take me past the location of the news of the morning, but the fire turned out to be at the junior campus of Charles La Trobe College which is somewhere else. There was, though, one memorable sight, one of the most spectacular rainbows I've seen in a long time as rain developed to the west about halfway through with the sun starting to rise properly in the east (later there was a bit of light rain, taking a bit of the sting out of a warm morning).

Not as out of sorts as the last two days but still well short of what I would hope for. Started reasonably well and got a bit of a jump on the field by noticing that a fence was uncrossable before committing myself to a route choice involving it, then took another original route choice - having noticed that the only plausible way to get 15 (which most people dropped) was 10-17-15-19 - and was on my own for most of the rest of it. Thought I'd made a good job of the route choice (on an excellent course) so was a bit surprised that Bruce was shorter (although not many others were).

Blackburn is one of my favourite street-O areas - the bush around the lake and the bushy streets on the south side of that - so I was keen on a night where otherwise I might have been tempted to take the easy option. Started out OK physically and was good for about 25 minutes before falling away, on the first warm night (29) since returning from Europe - good practice for Queensland. A bit of random shoulder soreness too. On the good side, an ankle which I rolled a little on Saturday and has been a bit stiff and sore during the day warmed up fine.

I'm clearly still struggling but there were some signs of improvement tonight. Will still back a bit off original plans tomorrow but hopefully things have turned the corner.

And the latest on the ten-green-bottles competition that is the 2011-12 Swiss national football championship: we're now down to seven (two teams bankrupt and one on -1 point after being penalised 36 points for fielding ineligible players). The way this is going, actually managing to get to the end of the season solvent and unpenalised is going to be enough to get a Europa League place.

Standard loop from home but really only a token effort - am not really making much progress towards returning to par, despite only displaying slight symptoms outside running. Will back off a bit tomorrow (i.e. only running once) and see how that goes.

The long weekend didn't seem to put people in a good mood - plenty of gratuitous horn-blowing from people with a limited understanding of give-way laws, both whilst running and later on the bike.

C • Kalumburu Road just got worse 3

Down on the Peninsula for the day, and headed out for a fairly standard run to the back beach at Blairgowrie (somewhat to my surprise, the rock tower that everyone jumps off hasn't been fenced off yet, despite the Herald-Sun beat-up mentioned previously on these pages). Could barely get myself moving for the first 10 minutes; loosened up after that but still left in no doubt that (a) I ran a race yesterday and (b) I still have a cold. Reasonably relaxing day after the run, though (even if I did have to wrestle with the OA accounts for a couple of hours before finalising them).

Hopefully the weekend was an aberration, but it will need some good runs at Easter to be confident of this. I find it hard to believe that I've gone backwards so quickly in six months (or they've gone forward so fast) that juniors who were considered to have done well to get within 10 minutes of me last September at the NSW Championships can now take 15 minutes out of me.