Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Mass start race at Kangaroo Gully. A bit more encouraging than yesterday, although it wasn't looking that way early on when first I had a back spasm a couple of minutes before the start (this disappeared within the first leg), then after spending Friday night watching February football I spent the first loop practising February orienteering, with small time losses on three of the first five. At that point I was being both outrun and out-navigated by Lanita Steer (which says a bit about me and a bit about her present form).

Settled down early on the second loop and hit pretty much everything thereafter. On my own for the first half of the final loop, steady, still not great uphill but much better than yesterday. From 9 onwards a pack started to gather - initially James Robertson and Simon Rouse, then Aislinn caught us at 12 and Geoff Lawford was also getting in contact without ever quite getting onto the front of the pack. James pulled away from us from 14 onwards, and I got a little bit of a jump on the others coming into the second-last, but it was only 10 metres and that was never going to be defensible. Ended up only beating Geoff. 67 (against a leading 53) is about where I am at the moment, but it's not totally out of touch and gives me at least a hint of progress.

The Australian must have used up its weekly quota of sensible with Rebecca Minty's article - the weekend edition was a shocker (although I suspect the expression 'Education hijacked by PC Left' is programmed into a hot key in the editorial office).

Bendigo sprint. First bush race hit-out of the season, and underlined that I'm starting this year coming from a long way back - a reasonably clean run but no strength uphill and got blown away by various people in the process (notably Bruce on two occasions - the fact that it was two doesn't mean he made a mistake, rather it was due to the configuration of butterfly loops). Another hot night but that's almost routine now.

Nice piece in the "Australian" by someone who will be a familiar name to many of you at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/world-comm... (google the headline if you need to get around the Australian's paywall). Good to see that the "Australian" is against torture even if I disagree with them on just about everything else.

A fairly standard session at Fitzroy. Felt a lot better for having slept well (if not for long enough).

Most entertainment of the day was scanning a publication on climate change by one Malcolm Roberts, which contained all the usual wingnut conspiracy hot buttons (Agenda 21? Check. Fabian Society? Check. Rothschild? Check. Trilateral Commission? Check). It ran to 700 pages and has apparently been sent to every MP in Australia. As you'd expect, it's highly defamatory towards at least a dozen of my scientific colleagues, a fate I missed out on myself only because he misattributed some comments of mine to the ABC journalist who was interviewing me.

Better still was a link contained therein to a website where someone (who clearly has too much time on their hands), in an apparent attempt to establish the existence of a tight-knit incestuous scientific cabal, has been trawling publication lists, IPCC reports, the Climategate e-mail database and who knows what else to develop, for a list of thousands of people, things like the Maurice Strong degrees of separation factor (Maurice Strong being a former head of the UN Environment Program who occupies much the same place in Agenda 21 conspiracy mythology as Prince Philip does for the CEC crowd). I'm slightly disappointed to only manage a 3, although their search was less than thorough since they failed to notice the one step between myself and my father, who scores a mention because he reviewed a chapter of an IPCC report in 2007 (Cassie must be disappointed to have missed out).

And people like this will probably have a serious influence on the people running the country in seven months' time....

Continuing the slightly incremental improvement from last week's equivalent; still slow but slightly less slow, and no injury issues once loosened up over the first few minutes. Some reasonable stretches, more so in the last third, and decent on the last hill after struggling a bit on earlier ones (not that there are too many of those on a loop which went along Darebin Creek and then across to Bundoora and Macleod).

There were a few balloons up, presumably on flights associated with February 14. Not sure I'd have been keen to go up in a balloon with this morning's level of atmospheric instability (there were storms on the central ranges, although none reached Melbourne).

Didn't sleep well last night, but it took until late afternoon (especially the train home) for it to catch up with me.

And I notice that Mark Heikoop (a perennial Dutch WOC representative who must be in his 50s by now, and is usually pretty close to the bottom of the table) has finally won something - a Trail-O race in Portugal.

Street-O at Kerrimuir on another warm night. This was my best Wednesday night performance for three weeks, which isn't saying much - all it means is that I finished. Still, I'm finally getting a sense that things are heading in the right direction, although at an agonisingly slow pace. No strength up the hills, but none of the bits which have been hurting intermittently of late did so tonight, and having a kilometre rate which starts with a 4 fits into the "a long journey begins with a single step" department. Didn't make a great job of the route - someone went 550 metres shorter than me, and most of the A course leaders (who I wouldn't have threatened tonight anyway) were close to 9.

It's been three pretty full on days with the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society conference (the other half of my organisation presidential responsibilities at the moment). It was the biggest conference we've had and seemed to go pretty smoothly (even if I did forget to announce that next year's Hobart).

Starting the process of learning to run fast(er) again. Certainly slower than last year but not as catastrophically so as I thought might have been the case (fastest loop 10.37), especially as I didn't feel terribly awake at the start (after the first of what will be two conference-related late nights). Faded out a bit in the second half which was a bit disappointing.

It's a conference week, on home ground but still an early start (especially as I was giving the opening address), so in the interests of not having to get up totally ridiculously early, I got the train into work (only 10 minutes walk from the conference venue) and did a run from there - standard Tan stuff. Starting to feel a bit more normal on these (and quite happy about it because of (a) a longish run yesterday and (b) no loosening-up swim - no time for it). Saw the Hoggster (also at this conference) at one point, but he was just finishing and I was just starting so we only stayed together for a couple of hundred metres.