Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

A pool session down at Belconnen. Nothing to get massively excited about but not too bad either. Got this in before my latest session with Cathy, who seems reasonably happy with my progress on the things she'd originally identified to fix up, but found a few more things which needed fixing too (even before my afternoon misadventures).

2nd stage of Sprint Canberra at Radford. A mass-start sprint race is hardly a format well-suited to my abilities (although one advantage of falling off the back quickly was avoiding the worst of the congestion at the early controls), and my principal objective was not to come last. I was, however, feeling a lot better than yesterday, and settled into a good scrap in the grupetto - the (mostly) old men's bunch also featuring Jim, Jase, Eoin and Matt Purcell. A couple of slight wobbles through being not quite sure what was and wasn't legal, and had trouble getting used to just how quickly things came up on the 1:2000 section in the middle, but was really enjoying myself - until taking a big stack on the stairs coming into control 22 and landing on my backside. (I have a somewhat unfortunate history with sprint races in the wet in that respect, although I'm pretty confident that, unlike Auckland 2005, there are no broken bones this time). Took me most of the next leg (the third-last) to get back above jogging speed, taking away any chance I might have had of making a late attack on Jim and Jase, but did beat a few home on time (as well as the DNFs) and was nowhere near as far back as yesterday, even allowing for the shorter distance. Lanita didn't seem too pleased that I'd got her by two seconds (the women had the same course, though not at the same time).

You had to be young and crazy to do well today - juniors filled the first three places.

My rear end was pretty painful for the hour or so post-run, and still isn't great; it seems to me to be a slightly more severe version of the injury I did in Brisbane in July, in which case I should still be OK to run, if not necessarily comfortably. Will have to tell David Mulford sometime that I stacked it on the front steps of the building that's named after him. (He's the former principal at Radford - was a teacher at Canberra Grammar when I was there, and while I never had him as a teacher, he and his wife became family friends when Mum was working at the primary school there).

Day 2 Radford Course 1BA - Splits

Event: Sprint Canberra
 

It's a slightly odd few days: I want to do the Sprint Canberra races, I want to do more training than 20 minutes a day, but don't want to spend the time sprint training (which is what the camp is about). Not sure if what I'm doing is quite the optimum when I'm trying to build endurance, but I'll see how it goes.

It was good to get back onto Black Mountain but the run itself was fairly mediocre, particularly uphill. Had a brief encounter with Al and Belinda going the other way; not sure too many sets of 30-second sprints will be in my Six Foot preparation (though it was the end of a session of mostly longer hard bits for them).

First stage of the Canberra Sprints, at AIS. I have good days and bad days; yesterday was a good day, today wasn't. Never really loosened up properly and struggled for any speed and power, and was even less competitive than I expected to be.

I think my route (northern) to 5 was marginally better than the southern route since it was one of my least worst splits. Best stretch was through the more technical legs between 8 and 13; Jarrah had not long gone through me there and the detail (mostly fences) helped keep me sort of in touch. A slight wobble coming out of 1 when I briefly misread 21 as 2.

This is, I think, the first time I've run twice in a day in more than a year.

Elite - Splits

First time in the bush for a couple of months (since the last time I was in Canberra, in fact), at the summer series event at the place which I used to refer to as Ainslie Transfer Station. (The only remnants these days of what used to be the tip are a couple of incongruously-placed bitumen roads and an elongated clearing).

Wasn't quite sure how my rusty terrain-running skills or my rusty navigational skills would function. The first control was a bit of test of the latter, a small termite mound in the middle of nothing much, and I was a bit hesitant on it but got it with only marginal time loss. After that I was clean, and although the climb from 7 through 11 was hard work, from then onwards I was really starting to enjoy myself, at a pace which was a little higher than jogging but not pushing too hard (there will be plenty of opportunities for that over the next five days). Even appreciated the "support" from some of the local talent at 17. Haven't enjoyed myself on a run this much in ages.

Our efforts over recent weeks are attracting some attention (some of it from people who are helpfully copying their correspondence to the Minister). One of these correspondents started out by demanding a retraction of a statement one of our people had made about Canberra never having had four 40-degree days in a row (it still hasn't), and quoting some data from 1939 which failed to contain four consecutive 40s, then followed up the next day by claiming we'd left something out of one of our reports which was in fact explicitly in it. I'm presuming it's not the done thing for Ministerial correspondence to read: "Your correspondence of 20 January demonstrates that you can't count to four and your correspondence of 21 January demonstrates that you can't read; now nick off and stop wasting taxpayer-funded time" (although I bet plenty of ministers have fantasised about sending such letters to their more vexatious antagonists).

C • Ministerial Correspondence 3

Run from Richmond before a massage session, starting up through Toorak and coming back along Gardiners Creek (always nice to be on the springy surface there, even if it is the scene for the Commuter Olympics time-trial at this time of day). Started sleepy - sleep has been in short supply in recent days - and was struggling badly through the first half-hour, but gradually built into it, and by the last 20 minutes was feeling as good as I've felt in the last two or three weeks, and definitely energetic enough for a final short loop up near Dimmey's to squeeze the last bit out of the available time. (You'd probably want to be careful as to what you bought in Dimmey's closing-down-sale, given that the reason they are going out of business is their inability to pay a fine of something like $3 million for selling unsafe products).

Hit the road to Canberra this afternoon. I'm making a bit of a habit of doing this trip to a backdrop of sporting epics (and hoping that the ABC Melbourne signal will hold out because Canberra wasn't broadcasting it): 18 months ago it was Tom Hawkins kicking the winning goal after the siren against Hawthorn, this time it was Djokovic-Wawrinka (although I made it in time to see the last few games on TV). Perhaps the most memorable, though, was a trip back (with Bruce, and I think others but I've forgotten who) through Gippsland from an ACT Championships at Badja in 2003; it was Davis Cup semi-final weekend and we picked up the signal with Lleyton Hewitt two sets and a break down against Roger Federer. Lleyton doing what Lleyton does best, he managed to come back to win the third set in a tie-break, and then win the last two.

And for what it's worth, the currently smoking parts of the Murraguldrie fire don't seem to be particularly close to Burngoogee.

It's definitely a different crowd at Ivanhoe in the mornings to that at Fitzroy; my entry into the water lowered the average age of the pool by about a decade, and its average weight by about 20 kilos. This meant there were quite a few people in the lane who were even slower than I was, which meant a slightly awkward swim on a day I wasn't feeling too sparkling anyway. Back a bit tight at times.

The report on the heatwave ended up hitting the (virtual) streets late in the afternoon, which takes a fair bit of pressure off after a few days when I've definitely been too intense for my own good. It was somewhat flattering that the major agenda item in today's section meeting was how we could build a computer system to at least partially replicate the knowledge base and analysis capabilities that reside inside my head (the fact that I'm going to be away for most of the last quarter of this year has concentrated a few minds).

Many of you will have noted in the news of late the various Australian naval vessels which have "accidentally" entered Indonesian territorial waters. Many have probably wondered how a naval commander could accidentally do such a thing, but at least some of them were probably at ADFA in the early 1990s, and having seen the navigational capabilities (or absence thereof) of ADFA cadets at ACT orienteering events in that era, I'm not quite as surprised as many people are. (There was one honourable exception - Jason Markham - but he was a Kiwi anyway).

A bit later than usual after a 1.30am finish last night (or to be more precise, a 1.30 exit by me from the meeting, which I think ran until 3 or 4 our time) - at least it was cool and cloudy so the delay didn't hurt too much in terms of conditions. My quads are fine now but still thought I might be best to be at the low end of long-run ambitions today given the week that's just gone, and did a not-excessively-hilly two hours. Quite decent through the middle hour, but struggled a bit in the last 30 minutes, more for muscular endurance than anything else.

Streets collected: Alfred Ct, Bundoora and Alfreda St, Rosanna. It will be a while before I get another one because the next one's in St. Helena.

Really faded out this evening (after spending a fair chunk of the day not making as much progress as I'd hoped in hopefully having a Special Climate Statement ready for release tomorrow). These sorts of weeks stretch us pretty heavily and I'm definitely feeling it at the moment. At least in a few days any subsequent events (none of which are on the radar at the moment) become someone else's problem.

Perhaps lost in the translation was a report of a joint action by the Italian football authorities and Disney to launch what was described as a "Mickey Mouse initiative to combat racism". Racism seems to be getting the Mickey Mouse treatment elsewhere in European football, after the Polish authorities decided that Lech Poznan supporters singing things like "Your home is at Auschwitz" and "we're sending you to the gas chambers" did not constitute incitement of racial hatred because the comments were supposedly directed at all supporters of the opposition team (which was Poland's approximate equivalent of Spurs) and not just at Jews.

Certainly much improved on anything else this week; it helped that the conditions were a little kinder (though not dramatically so). This meant that it was a reasonably standard run, a little later than usual for a Saturday after a late night on the IOF teleconference last night. Spent a bit of time on the Yarra singletrack (as expected, completely dried out now), having to dodge the odd mountain bike en route.

It's a measure of how quickly one acclimatises that a humid morning in the low 20s felt cool, and that everyone thought that it was a cool night when the minimum of 21.5 would have ranked as the hottest night of the year in about one-third of the years in Melbourne's historic record (though none since the 1980s).

Having accumulated something like seven days' worth of excess working time since the New Year, I'm taking a few days off post-Canberra, initially "down the coast" in Canberra parlance, then making my way round through Gippsland (fires permitting). Anyone interested in a long run at the Prom on Sunday 2nd February?

C • Long run 4