Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Middle day of QB3. Another day where I couldn't quite finish it off technically, spoiling a clean run with a late mistake (45 seconds at 19 this time). Not running quite as well as yesterday (and back wasn't great today); in particular fell away when speed was needed at the end.

Caught Rob Bennett at 4 after he made a mistake there; we were close to each other for the rest of the course, only separating significantly when we traded mistakes after the spectator control (16 for him, 19 for me). Just held onto 4th overall against Greg (by 5 seconds) - this must be the first time in recorded history where I've got a multi-day result by getting a jump on someone in the sprint and getting enough breathing space to survive losses on the middle and long days. Shep won with 36.

The name of today's map was South Central. Unlike its LA namesake, there were no muggings or drive-bys witnessed as far as I know.

Annoying ancillary problem of the day was a pair of underpants whose elastic had gone - eventually got them into a position where they stopped moving. They were subsequently donated to science*.

So ended an enjoyable three days of competition on some great terrain - it was a long haul home (10 hours or so) but definitely worth it.

Random homeward observation #1: some of the signage on the Newell is less than accurate - between West Wyalong and Narrandera the signs take 100 off the distance to Tocumwal, and there's one past Narrandera which gives a distance to Finley which is actually the distance to Jerilderie.

Random homeward observation #2: one could be forgiven for entering the Narrandera-Jerilderie stretch with some apprehension - at one end you will find Poison Waterholes Creek and at the other end Turn Back Jimmy Creek.

(* - i.e. they were dumped in the rubbish bin at the car park of the CSIRO Australia Telescope, a.k.a. The Dish, where I stopped for lunch and a bit of sightseeing).

Day 3 Hard 1 - Splits

The long day of QB3, returning to Sappa Bulga for the first time since 2008 (at least for me). I had forgotten just how magnificent this area is - there are plenty of places where you have to work hard, but there are also plenty of places (especially the hanging long gullies with the cypress pines, and the plateau that the later part of the course spent a fair bit of time on) where it is difficult to imagine more enjoyable terrain to run in.

It took a while for me to get my running going this morning, but built into it on the first long leg at 3, where I went left (Shep went through me here from 4 minutes back). Got through the technical section up until 10 quite nicely, and then set myself the goal of getting through the whole course with no time loss. Steady on the two long legs, was probably overly conservative with my route choice to 13, and then finally made a small mistake at 16, 15 seconds or so (I clearly wasn't alone because in percentage-behind terms 16 was actually my best split of the race). Nailed the dangerous 17, lost 15 seconds in the circle at 18, and then dropped another 30 seconds overshooting the second-last, which was annoying (and cost me fourth against Greg). Still a decent run. Shep won with 77.

You know you're in the country: pride of place in the regional art gallery was a photographic exhibition featuring women and guns.

And it's nice of Telstra to send me a text reminding me that I've used up 50% of my monthly data allowance, but I would have preferred them to do it at some time other than 5 on Sunday morning.

C • Probably wasn't 1

Hard 1 Day 2 - Splits

QB3 sprint at Brummagen Creek, essentially one eroded side branch valley from the Macquarie River - a travelling stock reserve which could have done with a few more travelling stock (it's the worst area I've been on for seeds since Easter in Queensland, though I didn't suffer too badly from the tiger pear). It's on the Narromine side of Dubbo.

The start list offered a certain amount of ego-damaging potential - Alistair George, running up (and fresh from knocking off his father, always a landmark in any junior career, in the NOSH last weekend), was starting a minute behind me. I'm not quite ready to get beaten by M14s yet*. (As it turned out I never saw him, but he ran well and would have been about 1.30 behind me had he not punched the wrong last control).

Jock was starting a minute in front of me. I lost 15 seconds or so at 1 (running to a wrong control, but realising immediately); he lost more, and I was on him at 2. From there he was in sight more or less the rest of the way, gradually edging away from me (I caught him again briefly at 11 when he stopped to extract a tiger pear, but lost that ground again when I had to do the same halfway on the next leg). It was a lively contest for a while and I actually managed to win a split at 4 - which may be a first for me in a sprint race (maybe one of the old town legs in the WMOC 2008 final?), but was running a bit harder than I've been used to of late and was going a bit lactic by the end. Still, this was a decent result (6th in M21), 4 minutes down on Shep but 2 back on the next couple.

Biggest disappointment of the day was that the sign near Parkes which I remembered for 2007, 'You Are Now Entering The Bogan Catchment', no longer exists.

And it was impressive to see Hermann Wehner compete (and get round a course in a respectable time) on his 90th birthday. I'll certainly be pleased if I can still manage that come July 2061.

(* - I think Patrick Jaffe beat me in a Melbourne Bush-O in his M14 year, but it was one I was treating purely as a training run after 2+ hours on the Saturday).

Hard 1 Day 1 - Splits

I had a meeting at the airport today (prior to hitting the road for the first stage of the trip to Dubbo). I didn't want to spend $39 for the day on parking (nor did I want to take the bus that was organised from the city - had I done that, I wouldn't be getting out of Melbourne until close to 7), so chose the cheapskates' option - leaving the car at Gladstone Park and get the 901 bus to the airport for the price of a Zone 2 Myki.

I also wanted to get across town before the traffic got heavy, so also thought Gladstone Park would be a base for a run - definitely not familiar territory. The original thought was to do some terrain running in the middle in Woodlands Park (about 3.5k away from where I was starting) - however, the gates in the (high) southern boundary fence to Woodlands were locked, so I couldn't get into the bush and had to settle for a track run on the boundary. In the Woodlands part that was still pretty nice, although some of the country between Gladstone Park and the Woodlands boundary gave me an indication of where Melbourne's stolen cars go to die. (I also saw an advertising board for possibly Melbourne's cheapest property: a two-bedroom unit for $285,000, in the last street on the airport side of the suburb, right under the east-west flight path).

The run was nothing to get too excited about, although nothing was hurting.

One thing I was keeping an eye open for was whether it is possible to run from the airport across to Woodlands (not something I'm likely to use unless I move away from Melbourne, but might be useful for others transiting there). There is a road/track marked on the Melway which would be less than 2k from the terminal to the bush (you'd then need to find a usable gate to get into the bush), but it's uncertain from the map (and on the ground, at least from the Woodlands end) whether it's publicly accessible.

Felt fine this morning, just had the swimming technique of a drunken elephant. (The plan was rearranged again yesterday - a meeting which I had thought was on tomorrow night was actually tonight, clashing with the MFR night terrain intervals session which I will get to eventually).

Interesting discovery of the day; working out, from the small print of the national accounts data that the ABS released this week plus a few calculations of my own, that the benefit to the Australian economy through the lack of cyclone-related disruption to the mining industry this year was somewhere around $2.5 billion. Since a lot of the usual cyclone-related costs come through precautionary shutdowns (especially on offshore oil and gas rigs), it doesn't need a lot of imagination to work out that the cost:benefit ratio for investing in improved cyclone forecasting is pretty good.

I wanted a proper long run at some point before the Sea to Summit, for my confidence if nothing else, and today was the day. If the objective was to build confidence it succeeded. Unlike a lot of my early morning runs lately, I felt non-sleepy in the early stages of this one, and while the first hour wasn't sparkling by any means, I was getting up the hills with enough in reserve to suggest that this was going to be reasonable.

And there were plenty of hills - none of them big (the largest climb in one go was maybe 50-60 metres), but from 1 to 19k, on a loop which went through Viewbank, Montmorency, Glen Katherine, St. Helena and Greensborough, there was barely a flat section longer than a couple of hundred metres. The run gradually built as it went on, and once the route finally flattened out after Watsonia, I was ready to step up a gear (even putting in what passed for a sprint to get across the main road 1.5k from home while the railway crossing gates were closed). Felt a bit tired for the first time on the last hill before home, but still had quite a bit of distance left in me.

The wall came later; it wasn't my most productive day at the office. (At least I didn't have to handle too much of the backlog from two weeks of the public feedback form on the Bureau website not passing on material as it should; in a hotly-contested field, the craziest item received via said form was probably the correspondent trying to recruit us to the cause of the campaign for Schapelle Corby's innocence).

A few niggles (both foot and Achilles) surfaced at times, but never lasted for more than a kilometre or two. A couple of streets bagged, both at the far end - Allipol Court and Allumba Crescent - last really remote ones for a while.

Came across my local state MP at the station on the way into work. He doesn't know how things are going to turn out either.

And clear, still mornings in June aren't supposed to be warm....

This didn't quite happen as planned. I had a 5am teleconference today, and thinking that it would go for an hour at most, my original plan was to shift my long run to today so that I had only one really early morning this week (and to give myself a chance to go to the Thursday night terrain session for once).

As it turned out, the teleconference went for nearly two hours (not that I was feeling that awake for most of it anyway, so the long run might not have gone that well had it happened), and I only had time for a more normal Tuesday run, which was done around the Yarra in the Studley Park area. It had some good patches (and is better than it looks because a lot of the tracks were very greasy and slow in the drizzle), but was starting to fade a bit by the end.

News of the day is that a poll has found that Tony Abbott ranks fourth in the list of most favoured Liberal leadership contenders, behind Malcolm Turnbull, Someone Else and Don't Know. (Just like the Gillard years, such polling results are driven largely by the views of people who would never vote for the party whoever was leading it, but it's nice to see this particular media boot on the other foot).