Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: NOL/WRE & Vic Bush State Series 3 - Eldorado - Kangaroo Crossing
 

NOL long at Kangaroo Crossing. Much better run than yesterday - both technically and physically, and ended with a decent midfield result, though still a long, long way down on Simon.

Had a curtailed warm-up because I'd got my start time 10 minutes wrong (first time I can remember doing that), but it didn't seem to be too much of a problem once started. The first leg was long and downhill and I was pretty tentative coming in, but didn't actually end up missing the control, then got an early boost when I started pulling people in - Jemery Day and Peter Hobbs at 2, James Sheldon at 5 (which I also missed slightly, but others must have missed it more because it was my best split). Jemery and James were with me, more or less, for the rest of the course - not blindly following by any means, but they were definitely faster runners and I was navigating better. Took wide route choices on 8 (not obvious) and 11 (obvious). By then it was clear that the course was going to be a fair bit shorter (in time) than anticipated - kilometre rates here depend a lot on exactly where the course goes. Not a great line on 13 and took 20-30 seconds to see the flag at 20, but otherwise pretty clean through the finish, and reasonably solid with the running too.

Picked up almost as many points today as I did in all of last season.

Event: NOL & Vic Bush State Series 2 - Yackandandah - Rowdy Flat
 

Middle WOC trial at Rowdy Flat. A very poor run - never managed to get any sort of proper concentration, which is something you can't afford to do on any technical area, let alone one as intense as this. I'm probably underdone on the technical side - because my training off-season was focused on the Six Foot, I've only had a handful of sessions in terrain - but even so I was very disappointed with this.

Perhaps the lowlights were (a) mistaking 7 for 17 coming out of 16 (not a massively costly error because they were all in a line, but embarrassing) and (b) losing time between the last control and the finish, but the big time losses were elsewhere - most notably at 12 where I convinced myself I'd climbed one gully earlier than intended (just after the Bruce train had gone through me) and thus ended up overshooting, losing about 3 minutes. Also a couple of minutes lost at 16, and smaller errors in half-a-dozen other places (and didn't have much of an idea what I was doing at 1, though sort of stumbled across it). Also lacked confidence scrambling in and out of erosion gullies (something you do a lot here), and won't want to have any TV appearances lined up this week as the result of a tumble on the way to 1.

This was a fairly straightforward session at Ivanhoe, which doesn't appear to be any more of a construction site than it was the last time I was there. Starting to get my sleep patterns a bit more on track.

As an Essendon supporter I've become used to opposition supporters making references to drugs, but tonight's was at least entertaining - a North supporter frustrated at his own team's poor manning-up saying "Get on them - the drugs they took aren't contagious!".

Not a full-blown Thursday long run, given the racing ahead on the weekend, but something of an approximation of it. Not a particularly sparkling run but not too bad on the whole. Achilles a bit dicey around the hour mark but then settled down again.

At the end, going past the Heidelberg oval, there was a young artist painting the scene; a throwback to something that was happening a lot in approximately the same venue approximately a century ago.

Spent quite a bit of this run thinking about possible ways to move things forward in Queensland (Queenslanders will know what I'm talking about). Without saying too much publicly at this point, developments and discussions today make me much more optimistic than I was this time yesterday about an end result that gives us (a) a functional Queensland organisation and (b) a Queensland orienteering community that isn't split down the middle.

The time of sunrise is moving later rapidly; it takes until 7 for the first hint of daylight now, meaning the first half-hour was well and truly in the dark.

C • Good luck 1

Jogged around street-O at Maroondah Triangle - not really energetic enough to do any more (though lasted through the day better than I thought I might). Some dubious route choices at the start (though less dubious than some), but did a reasonable job for the remainder. Definitely more hills than Amsterdam.

Saw an item of political history in the warm-up: a banner urging people to vote Yes on 3 September 1988 in the referendum to recognise local government in the Constitution. (It went down, mainly because the then Liberal Opposition was opposed to the other three questions on the ballot and thought people might get confused if they campaigned for a No-No-Yes-No so campaigned for No-No-No-No instead). It turned out the banner had been recycled and its other side was advertising the Ringwood Highland Games next week. Also spotted, on the way to the second-last control, was a church advertising a "Bible archaeology display", which could have been (a) information about significant historical sites in Palestine and surrounds or (b) an attempt to provide "evidence" for the proposition that humans and dinosaurs were on the Earth at the same time shortly after 4004 BC. (Given the sort of church it was, I suspect it's (b)).

The presentations were tonight (alongside a dinner provided by the local Scouts). I did the honours for part of it, which had the handy side-effect of placing me in the right position to be at the front of the dessert queue - a much more useful presidential perk than a personal parking spot at the golf club.

I have no plans to leave Australia in the next three months, or even Victoria in the next four weeks.

In the air Amsterdam-Hong Kong-Melbourne, eventually getting in the door at home a couple of minutes after midnight (and then not sleeping that well, with some assistance from (a) my Garmin making various random beeps in the recharging process and (b) forgetting to reset my watch alarm from its Monday-morning 5.55am). Didn't sleep that well on the plane either, thanks in part to persistent turbulence through a stretch I'd expected to sleep through, over Kazakhstan and western China. Suspect I'll pay for this tomorrow.

A final jaunt around Amsterdam before heading home - fairly slow, although my erratic splits suggest the GPS may not have been giving me full value in the more densely built-up areas. Main destination was the Vondelpark, Amsterdam's largest city park, with an approximately 4k loop around it which appears to be as well-used by local runners as the Tan in Melbourne (although the nearest equivalent to the Anderson Street hill is at least 100 kilometres away).

I steered clear of the "official" red light district when booking somewhere to stay, but the area within a few hundred metres of the station in general is a bit on the seedy side (although a sign of the times was that one of the people sitting in the window of a house with red lights was surfing an iPad between "engagements"). Not exactly the world's only city where the station area isn't its most salubrious (though the hotel was fine).

Also spotted was the memorial to the world's victims of persecution of homosexuals; there are a few places in the world where I can imagine such a monument being erected, but I'm struggling to think of anywhere other than Amsterdam where it would be built next to one of the city's major churches.

And, just to prove that the Netherlands is not completely flawless as a cycling paradise, I saw someone get doored this morning (no obvious damage to any parties involved). As a pedestrian, one of the most significant local hazards is people who ride while using phones (I'd guess something like 10% of people I saw on bikes were doing it) - not sure whether or not there are any laws against it but if there are no-one takes any notice of them.

At the airport now; home tomorrow night if things go to plan.