Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

A bit earlier than I'd usually head out on a Saturday (just early enough not to be caught up by the parkrun people), on a somewhat autumnal morning, down into Yarra Bend. Not feeling especially awake at times, but OK on the injury front.

The rest of the day was then spent at a series of Labor policy workshops. Often going to these means you learn something new - and today's bit of insight is that under the current contracts, the State Government doesn't actually have any control over where bus routes are, how often they run or what their timetables are (beyond a fairly minimal guaranteed level of service) - this is all up to the bus companies. (The Government intends to do something about this when the contracts are up for renewal next year, which will no doubt result in said companies squealing like stuck pigs and their squealing being amplified 100x by the Herald-Sun). This goes a long way to explaining why there is no co-ordination between buses and trains, and why the Mornington Peninsula route only runs every 50 minutes despite the fact that it's so routinely overcrowded that at peak hours your chances of getting on anywhere north of Dromana are somewhere between minimal and non-existent.

C • Trains 4

Back still struggling this morning, and by the time I worked this out I hadn't left myself with enough time to do anything else before going to work, so instead headed for a rare evening swim at Fitzroy. Started promisingly, drifted out of it a bit but found a bit of a burst for the last lap (i.e. I swam one lap in roughly the same time that it takes a friend's 7-year-old to swim two).

Thought it might have been crowded but this evening, although clear, is one of the cooler ones we've had in recent weeks and the crowds were fairly thin.

Riding has had its moments over the last couple of days. One memorable one came this evening, when a driver decided to follow me rather than do his own navigation (a not totally unfamiliar experience for me on the orienteering course). He was last seen attempting to reverse back off the Harbour Esplanade bike path.

A strange morning, with a change approaching after a very warm night and a weird orange light with the sunrise (which is getting increasingly late). By the time I was in the pool it had started raining (with a suitably photogenic rainbow for the first half of the session). Didn't feel as if a run would have gone that well, but this session was OK.

I've been doing a bit of historical work this week, but it was from somewhere else that I found out that 50 years or so ago, somebody chained themselves to the front of the Bureau building (shared at the time with numerous other Commonwealth agencies) in support of the cause of equal pay for women and men. That sort of protest is one bit of excitement we haven't had on our premises in my time. There was a protest by the No Carbon Tax people in 2012 against our alleged cooking of the books, but (a) they went to the wrong building, (b) the presumed primary target of the protest was otherwise engaged on their way to an NOL race in Canberra and (c) only four people turned up (eight if you count the police).

(The concept of equal pay for men and women still isn't totally accepted by some people - a Polish MEP, demonstrating that the Anglosphere doesn't have a monopoly on political dinosaurs, was in hot water this week for saying that women should be paid less than men because they were "smaller, weaker and less intelligent").

Street-O final at Maroondah Triangle. I saw Tony Bird before the start and we reflected on our sprint finish across the oval for the title 13 years ago. (I lost, and thought I'd missed out on a countback, but in fact there was no countback and we were equal winners - the only time I've won the Summer Series).

Both Tony and I are a fair bit slower now than we were 13 years ago, and tonight ended up being close to a repeat of the last two Wednesdays. It wasn't quite as bad as those two, but the back still wasn't good and I still didn't feel up to running up any hills of significance. Managed to run the rest of it, for a certain definition of "run", which is at least an improvement on the last two weeks. Still rather disappointing.

The cryptic question-and-answer format was probably not to the advantage of anyone under 40.

C • Blast 8

Hobart has lots of interesting places to run but all of them involved more vertical than I felt up to this morning, so instead I found a not very interesting (if mostly traffic-free) place to run, along the bikeway as far north as Derwent Park. Felt sluggish (but uninjured) most of the way, but picked up a bit in the last 15 minutes and handled the climb back to where I was staying reasonably well.

(Scored nicely in respect of places to stay - I'd planned to move out from the three-bedroom apartment where the nine of us into a one-bedroom one, but the owners were quite happy for me to stay in the original one at a $50 discount to what I would have paid for the one-bedroom - I guess getting the cleaners in on a Tuesday rather than a public holiday Monday saved them a fair bit of money).

Spent the day in the Hobart office before coming back to Melbourne in the evening (writing this as I wait for a delayed flight in Hobart).

Coming up on three days in a row was a bit beyond me at this stage - struggling badly with the running today, and might not have spent much time out had I not thought that the technical training would be valuable even at relatively low speed.

David Poland caught me at 5 (or, to be more precise, recaught me after losing a fair bit of time at 4). After the initial shock of realising he was outrunning me today wore off, this was actually very useful training - trying to stay ahead of someone who's faster than you, but not as precise, in technical terrain places a premium on eliminating the 5-10 second wobbles that are easy to accept but add up to a fair bit over a course with a lot of controls. That side of things, at least, I was happy with, with the only time loss (apart from some hesitation on 1) being a 15-seconder at the second-last.

This wasn't a day where anyone was going flat out. Fastest time when I left was 27 (Stefano), but I expect Matt Crane will have gone into the low 20s.

The occasional backdrop of aircraft noise might have been an annoyance to some but it's what's saved Pittwater for orienteering. Some of you will know that we (mostly OT, but OA provided support where it could) were doing some fairly vigorous lobbying three or four years back over a proposal to build a golf course which would have wiped out most of the good orienteering parts of the peninsula. As it turned out, the golf course was approved, but the associated residential development was not (largely because the airport successfully argued that it would jeopardise its curfew-free status), and without the residential development the golf course almost certainly isn't financially viable.

Despite the results, I do take a fair bit of encouragement from this weekend - getting through it was the first step, and I also feel as if I've got some confidence back about navigating in dunes that had been shredded in NZ last year, which will do no harm in a few weeks' time.

NOL long race at Pittwater. I had one basic objective for this - to get through it - and this mission was accomplished (in fact I lasted the distance a good deal better than I thought I was going to). Not competitive for pace but I knew that before I started. Happy with the race technically, too; a bit unsure of myself on 4 on the third loop (once again being reminded that packs of juniors should be treated with extreme caution in this sort of terrain) without much time loss, but nothing bigger than 15 seconds on any other control.

This was a mass-start race but that was always likely to be of fairly academic importance for me as I fell off the pack immediately, but there were a few reasonable head-to-heads at various stages. Actually ended up winning a sprint finish, the victim being Matthew Cohen, which was enough to get me on the NOL scoreboard for season 2017 (just).

Hopefully a few solid weeks of training will get me back into some sort of shape, but this weekend is a good starting point, with the added bonus of getting some sand-dune confidence back.