Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Woke up this morning with a sore back (not usually the way my back issues behave). Knowing from experience that sometimes when it feels bad walking it's OK running, I still headed out (early enough to get me back before the 1500 had I lasted long enough for a long run), but it was reasonably apparent early on that it wasn't much good running, either (and felt particularly iffy afterwards).

Plan B was to see if it was any better in the water. It was, more or less, so at least I could do something useful today. Rained most of the time.

Event: Rocky Orienteering Circus
 

Bendigo Saturday event at Sedgwick, a decent gully-spur area. When I first moved to Victoria this was the traditional home of the Blodslitet, and my first two courses here were both in excess of 25km. (Both times I used the solo breakaway strategy, for one narrow win and one narrow loss).

I certainly wouldn't have appreciated 25km today - 7.5 was more than enough. I was feeling every contour, which might have had something to do with there probably being more climb in today's course than there was in all my runs of the recent trip put together. (Back wasn't great either, but hamstring was fine). Didn't feel like my terrain sense was great either, and was lacking confidence in my footing going across or down the steeper slopes. Concentration wasn't always brilliant and I might have paid for it more in a more technical area, drifting a little on 7 and 10 and dropping 15 seconds in the circle at 12.

The forest is looking very good at the moment with the wet winter, and sometimes I had the sense that this would be a very nice place to run if I was running better.

Was doing a talk up in Maryborough today so went a bit later than usual on the way up there, trying to find a slot late enough so that I'd miss the worst of the traffic but early enough that I'd get it in before the heavens unloaded. This mission was more or less accomplished, although it was very windy, which pushes you around a bit in a pool (probably a good thing from the perspective of the workout).

The rest of the country now knows about my exploits of recent weeks (and years).

Once again trying my hand at something a bit longer. A few minor twinges at times up hills (more so than the last couple of days, although that might be because yesterday had no hills), but nothing to worry too much about. Endurance felt OK although another 30 minutes would be a proper test.

It's no longer as dark in the mornings as it was.

It was a bit of variety to see headlines about "robbery in Rio" which referred to allegedly dubious boxing decisions (something of an Olympic tradition). An Irish boxer made his displeasure particularly clear, after losing to a Russian, by describing the judges as "all f***ing cheats" into the ringside microphone, and then (possibly somewhat courageously) directing a tweet at Vladimir Putin "Hey Vlad, how much did they charge you bro?". In somewhat more diplomatic language, some quotes from the secretary-general of the international federation suggested that he agreed that some of the judges were indeed f***ing cheats (and indeed six of them have received their marching orders).

Returning to other types of robbery (or allegations thereof), the thought did cross my mind that when it comes to getting out of a country that the authorities don't want you to leave, Olympic swimmers have more options available to them than most of us do. (Actually, from my experience, leaving Brazil at land borders often doesn't involve any formalities at all - I had to go to quite some effort to get a Brazilian exit stamp, and only did so because I'd heard Paraguay wouldn't let you in unless you had one).

As noted yesterday, although the hamstring has been OK for a couple of days now, I didn't think it was worth testing it with anything faster yet, so this was a fairly mundane and short run. Once again, didn't feel like the most brilliant of runs as a run (although better in the second half), but once again getting through without injury issues was a definite plus.

Had another rather late night last night - got into the mode of "I'll watch one more event and then go to bed" and it was almost midnight by the time I pulled up stumps. (Speaking of watching sport, I'm not quite sure how we ended up in the situation where the first two WOC events are on at the same time as the Olympics, albeit at times of day which are relatively flat spots in the Olympic program).

C • Olympic clash 10

The bad news is that this one was sleepy and sluggish (particularly in the first half), the good news is that there were no injury issues - although I'm not going to tempt fate by attempting to do speedwork tomorrow as I would on a normal Wednesday at this time of year.

Was up until 1am watching the Olympic marathon so didn't feel particularly inclined towards an early morning start, and instead went out at lunchtime on what felt like the first day of spring, on the reasonably standard lunchtime Tan loop. After dodging numerous Southbank pedestrians (who may or may not have been in pursuit of Pokemon) paying more attention to their phones than their surroundings, I got to the Tan, including the biggest hill I've run up in about three weeks (an admittedly not hotly-contested title).

Loosened up nicely after the first few minutes, with the hamstring only at nuisance level for most of the way and getting better as it went on. A good day to be out.