Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Melbourne Bush-O at Eaglemont Flats. Didn't feel as if I was horrendously tired but the stopwatch doesn't lie (and the back wasn't really playing ball again); was a good 3-4 minutes below par when comparing against the rest of the field (and doing close to 6s on straight legs in open country is also indicative). One trivial but careless slip (looking on the wrong side of a track) which only cost me a few seconds.

Great turnout again today: 172 entries, which with a lot of groups probably translates to over 200 people, many of them juniors and family groups. Shows what can be done when you can put worthwhile events on close to where people are. Wouldn't have hurt that it was such a nice day (after a very cold start, at least by Melbourne standards).

Started out with thoughts of 2.30 (after a somewhat later start than usual for a Saturday because I was waiting to take possession of a new washing machine; removal of its defunct predecessor revealed the whereabouts of two of my many missing socks, matching in colour - mouldy black - after an indeterminate number of years under the old one, but definitely not a pair).

The late start did mean I missed the last clearing showers on what turned into a reasonable, if cold, day, and it was a decent run through the first half-hour. It was OK through the next section too, a hilly section through Lower Plenty, in pursuit of Amberley Way, a part of town which features mansions as grand as what you'll find in Toorak and large semi-rural blocks, some of them behind formidable fences (presumably Mick Gatto's place is one of those). By the top of the Bonds Road hill, though, my back was starting to give trouble, along with related places like hamstrings. I pressed on for a while but it was gradually deteriorating, and when it failed to loosen up on the downhill section into Macleod I decided to make discretion the better part of valour and came more or less straight in (via the Cape Street route so that I could get as close as possible to home before hitting a significant hill, in case I found myself unable to run significant hills - an unnecessary contingency as it happened). Wouldn't have wanted to be going much further.

I'm keen to get at least one run in the 2.30 range behind me before the Ultra-Long. Today wasn't it, but hopefully I'll be able to manage it on one of the next two weekends.

One of those "nice once you're in" mornings at Fitzroy. (Perhaps it's as well that it's not next Monday and Tuesday, when the heating system is being replaced and signs warned the pool temperature will be "colder than normal"). Working reasonably solidly this morning and worked any stiffness from yesterday out nicely. Even managed to miss most of the rain riding, both to and from work.

Longest run since I've been home. It was another windblown effort (although the wind had its advantages later - with the front passing during the afternoon, I had tailwinds on the bike in both directions). More awake starting out than I sometimes am at this hour in the morning, and for once didn't negative-split on an evrly morning long run. This had something to do with the wind balance for the first and second halves, but also had a bit to do with tightness which surfaced in the second half and caused me to back off a bit - more the groin area than the hamstring this time. Not desperate to do extra at the end; I currently have something longer still earmarked for Saturday, but will wait and see how I come up (tonight's massage, punctuated as it was by numerous foot cramps, will help).

This morning definitely felt springlike (the evening certainly wasn't), and the sound of willow on leather in the nets at the Bill Lawry Oval was a reminder of that.

This ended up being an evening session of 250s on the Tan after a day when other windows of opportunity disappeared - was doing a blood test eaerly which I couldn't eat before and wasn't keen to run without having eaten anything, then had to drop something off at lunchtime (as it turned out a late-running meeting would have stopped me going at lunchtime anyway).

This was a rather strange-feeling session on a crowded Tan - never felt even remotely fast and ended up as a bit of a token-gesture session. Felt a little tight again without the specific hamstring issues of the last couple of days.

Went into this one feeling a little unsettled by the day's news. I've seen enough of the wilder shores of rhetoric circulating in regional Australia to fear that one day the violent rhetoric might turn into actual violence (and it's never been far from our minds that if it did, those of us working in climate change featured amongst the candidates to be potential victims), and now it has. This should, but almost certainly won't, be treated by the media and the community as seriously as they would the murder of a policeman (already the alleged shooter has been the subject of a fair bit of vaguely sympathetic public comment, not least from Barnaby Joyce).

Going to/from the Tan. Lots of traffic (not surprising in peak hour), and also had to dodge some flooding underneath the Swan Street bridge - the southwest swell is already causing a decent storm surge in the bay (although tomorrow will be worse).

This was a pretty familiar story - struggling for the first half-hour then improving steadily after that. Slightly longer than usual for recent Tuesdays in the name of street collection (Amber Ct, Bundoora). Hamstring again a bit tight but better than in the later stages yesterday.

Somewhat blustery, but certainly not as blustery as Tasmania (where Maatsuyker Island has just clocked a 174 km/h gust as I write, with 140-150 being observed at a number of mountain sites; with temperatures just above freezing at 1000m and steady rain, wouldn't be nice conditions to be out on the Overland Track or similar places).

The local indigenous calendar recognises three seasons, not two, in what we would describe as winter and spring; what one might call "core winter" (June and July), late winter/early spring (August/September) and late spring (October stretching into December). This morning, windy and dry and not particularly cold (and dewless) had a bit of a change-of-season feel to it.

The swim felt OK but was slower than it felt.

Sign going in at the Welsh church in La Trobe Street: "There is no angry way of saying 'bubbles'". In a similar vein, not too far down the road I was struggling to find a non-angry way of asking a taxi driver "why did you open your door in my face". (No contact made, in case you were wondering).

Tan at lunchtime. Felt reasonably lively at times, although it didn't really show in the numbers because of a lot of traffic delays. The most significant concern is that some left hamstring tightness started to emerge in the last 15 minutes; I've had no trouble with that previously this year, but given past history of the injury it's one I'll treat with some care.

Went past a restaurant on Southbank which was doing a Scottish Commonwealth Games special: a deep-fried Mars bar ($10) and Irn-Bru ($4). I'm guessing you can get both of these in Glasgow for less than half the price. I'm also assuming they don't feature at the athletes' village, although the efforts of the Scottish marathoner yesterday make you wonder. (Someone suggested that it was hardly the first time someone had had a spew in the street in the East End of Glasgow on a Sunday morning).

Did quite a bit of finding out stuff today, which is the way I like to be doing things. Among the things that I found out today were that the 12 months ending this month are the driest such period for the NE NSW/SE Queensland region since 1901-02, that Melbourne is having its 16th driest year to date (which I suspect will come as a surprise to many Melburnians) but Adelaide is having its 13th wettest (and has had nearly double Melbourne's rain, and more than Sydney's), and that the period between 1960 and 1982 when I'd been puzzling about why Moree was cooling relative to other sites in northern inland NSW was also the period when irrigated cotton started to become established around Moree. (Still trying to work out what's driving an anomalous post-1980 cooling trend at Robe; I suspect upwelling of cold waters along the coast has something to do with it, but am fairly sure we don't have sea temperature data close enough to that coast to be able to put that to the test).