Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Two Bays. The good news is that I got my Six Foot qualifier. The bad news is that my performance was such that Six Foot is not going to be a comfortable experience unless I improve a fair bit in the next eight weeks.

Felt fairly reasonable on the first half. They didn't have wave starts this year, and they needed to - congestion on the narrower tracks, especially early on, was significant (although it was a lot worse a bit further back in the bunch, as Jenny found out). I felt as if I could have run all of the initial Arthur's Seat climb but there was no point in trying to fight the (walking) crowds for the sake of an extra few placings - at the time I tried not to get too frustrated and thought that the energy saved might be useful for later on (so much for that). It was a bit more frustrating on the single track across the top between 3-5km as I was clearly faster than most on the more technical tracks but couldn't use it.

Got the first sign that all was not well on the deceptively hard climb on the dirt road through 12k. At this stage I was close to Tash (I'd been 50 metres off her for much of the way), and seemed to settle again through the next bit, but then got knocked around by a climb I'd forgotten about at 15-16k. At this stage, I didn't think 2.30 was on, but was hoping for something in the low-mid 2.30s. The mostly flat or downhill (and very nice) stretch from 16-21k was reasonable, but then it fell apart totally. Had to walk many of the uphill parts of the next 1.5k (and they weren't that steep), then managed to plod the last 5k apart from a very unconvincing attempt on the stairs out of the gully at about 2.5k to go. The final adding-insult-to-injury bit was mistaking the 56k start line for our finish line and stopping 20 metres early (which probably cost me another 15 seconds or so, and four places - not that I was really counting by then). At least I didn't throw up in the finish area toilets this year....

Tash did 2.33, which is a pretty good indicator of where I should have been had I not blown up.

Lessons learned:

1. I might have been able to get away with doing 2 1/2 hour runs without eating in the past but not any more. Time to start experimenting.

2. The new pack is good for carrying water comfortably but the flow rate isn't great and I didn't take in enough - the weather was cool but fairly humid and I obviously lost a fair bit of fluid judging by the amount that I've taken in since the run (and not come out the other end).

3. I'll have to be more conservative with my pacing than I had previously anticipated. Everything I've heard about Six Foot is that those who get to the Black Range in reasonable shape can take 30 minutes or more out of those who don't, which is an incentive to be part of the former group rather than the latter.

4. Orienteers are definitely a lot better on technical downhill singletracks than normal trail runners. I don't want to be stuck behind too many people - although I'm led to believe it's almost inevitable. One possible positive of today's poor performance is that I suspect it means I'll go into wave 3 rather than wave 2, and it may not be such a bad thing to be in the front of a slower wave rather than the middle of a faster one?

Will be interested to see how I come up in the morning. Given the forecast, I wouldn't mind too much having excuses to back off on the midweek training this week...

C • Sounds tough 2

C • Orienteers 5

Knowing that I was going down for Two Bays, I was attracted by the fact that there was a Surf Coast series event at Queenscliff - was thinking of leaving the car in Sorrento and getting the ferry across, but it turned out to be more efficient to drive down on the Geelong side.

The drive may not have done me any favours as I was horribly stiff for the first kilometre, but it gradually improved and was quite a reasonable run by the end. I was treating this as a training run and didn't really care about the result, which was as well because my strategy was highly non-optimal - there was a set of four low-scoring controls in Point Lonsdale, a good 1.5km across the isthmus, and while all the Queenscliff controls could be cleaned up in well under an hour (probably 45-50 minutes), there wasn't enough time to get Point Lonsdale and then the remainder of Queenscliff. (Had I not had a race the next day, I might have been tempted to stay out - the late penalty was small enough that getting them all and being 10-12 minutes late would probably still have yielded more points).

Had some terrible fate befallen the ferry across to Sorrento afterwards, at least a higher-than-usual percentage of the passengers would have been able to swim to shore - a very high proportion of them were on the way home from doing the Pier to Pub swim at Lorne.

A sign that this wouldn't be quite the usual Friday session at Fitzroy came when I turned up to see dozens of police stationed in the Alexandra Parade median strip, which I assumed (correctly) was associated with some East-West link protest action. Of course, this being inner suburban Melbourne, you can't have a riot without a coffee van being present (as it turned out, today's protest was peaceful).

(The police food truck was also doing good business, although the box of apples appeared to be largely untouched, no doubt to the disappointment of the Victorian equivalent of Tooms-in-a-past-life).

None of this got in the way of anything once inside the pool, and it ended up as a fairly routine session (not as much to recover from as there would be on a normal Friday). The usual company was there as well as some less usual company, including someone with a jet-black and limited-maintenance beard who definitely looked like he wouldn't have been out of place out the front chaining himself to an item of construction equipment.

Heard today of an apparently-stating-the-bleeding-obvious headline from a local paper in southern England, 'Shell Found On Beach'. Apparently it relates to some WW2 remnants which washed up after one of the recent storms.

Much later and shorter than usual; later because I'd had a teleconference until 1.30am (and consequently wasn't going into work until mid-morning as a trade-off), shorter because I'm having an easy week ahead of Two Bays. Despite being later than usual, it was still a decidedly sleepy run, although muscles were functioning OK - expected the sleepiness from the way I was feeling at the start (and seriously considered deferring it to lunchtime, but decided I preferred sleepiness to heat - today was the first day in the 30s for a while, although it pales in comparison with what we're getting next week, which in turn pales in comparison with what Adelaide or Bendigo will be getting).

Ships getting stuck in the ice in the Antarctic have been much in the news of late, but clearly the ice wasn't where it was needed.

C • Adelaide or Bendigo 2

Street-O at Croydon Hills. Felt better than the last few runs but still not pushing any real speed - probably a bit improved on last week, given the hills (and a couple of bits of terrain in the mix). Reasonably happy with the route - others managed a little shorter but I seemed to miss most of the steep hills. Started out with Bryan (on the comeback trail) for the first few, then on my own through the rest of it. Back not 100% early on but definitely better than yesterday. Decent conditions - certainly better than it will be next week. An excellent course on which I changed my mind three times between the start and halfway.

Had the slightly surreal experience of listening to myself on the radio (talking about Queensland drought) coming into the event. The sudden flurry of media interest in Queensland drought has at least had the useful effect of producing some rain (10-20mm today in some of the core drought areas around Charleville).

And the "oops!" award for the day goes to the hoon down Wonthaggi way who decided to do what hoons do and abuse a group of cyclists he was passing. He probably would have done better to choose a group of cyclists which did not include the Chief Commissioner of Police.

Not a good day - back was definitely playing up today and only really started to ease in the last couple of kilometres, despite the fact that this route didn't have all that many hills. Certainly won't want anything like this to happen on Sunday (although it's not the sort of thing which would stop me dead, just make things unpleasant and slow me down).

Not really looking forward to next week's forecast, although I guess we've dodged a few heat-related bullets so far this summer. (On the subject of matters meteorological, for all the media hype the current situation in the US is getting, the (relatively) coldest parts of North America have only been about as far below average over the last month as the warmest parts of Scandinavia have been above).

Street collected: one close to home, Alfred Street, Heidelberg Heights.

And the reviews of Cory Bernardi's book on Amazon are entertaining, if you feel inclined to read them....

C • below and above 10

I've been involved in discussions of fires on a couple of other logs but it was a fire of a different sort that gave this session a slightly delayed start (in the form of a shop fire in Clifton Hill which caused a traffic jam). Feeling a lot better this morning, and once in the water, a comfortable if not overly strenuous session - which was the objective of the exercise.

The swim was a good deal less exciting than it would have been if I'd been trying to do it in Mount Isa.

First excursion to the Tan for 2014. A reasonable run by recovery run standards, a grind at the start but reasonable after that. Lots of people out and about on Southbank, it being school holidays. Encountered Bruce at the Tan start/finish point where he'd just finished a session with the Midday Milers, and ran with him for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, my greatest success of the day was managing to get a report on the heatwave through all approval processes in a single day. This is a feat at least as challenging (although probably less painful) than breaking 4 hours for the Six Foot*.

(* - disclaimer: this should not be taken to imply that I think I'm going to break, or even go especially close to, 4 hours for the Six Foot).