Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

A pleasant if somewhat unadventurous session in the water at Fitzroy. Once again, sunglare an issue in the early part of it (and sun is not in short supply at the moment).

Some of you will have noticed the discussion on Boris's log about Martin Regborn doing a 30km straight-line leg (all on O maps, with no deviations more than 100m either side) in training. This naturally made me think about the longest possibilities in Australia. One possibility I thought of was the Castlemaine Goldfields-Wattle Gully-Mineral Springs-Glenluce-Porcupine Ridge combination; you might potentially get 25km or so out of that, although I'm not certain there's ever been an edition of Wattle Gully that has gone all the way north to the highway, and it would be hard to find a line which both took in a legal crossing of the railway, and avoided the private property in the Chewton area.

C • Straight line leg 7

The annual foray onto the football fields with the Bureau. Not as many matches this year because CSIRO's recent practice of giving free transfers without doing any recruitment in return (as well as a clash with a climate modelling workshop) left them unable to field a team, making it a three-team competition with Melbourne and Monash.

We drew both matches 1-1. The other match was almost drawn 1-1 as well (which would have made determining an overall winner a challenging problem) but Melbourne scored a last-second winner. My contribution was reasonably marginal but at least the Achilles stood up to the sprint work well.

C • Pace 2

One of those nights which my back took off: hopefully this isn't going to become a regular evening theme as it was last year (although I had a sense during the day that it wasn't feeling too good).

Occasionally some odd ads turn up on the Bureau's website. Today's was one of the better efforts, featuring military scenes and wording in Spanish. I thought perhaps they were recruitment ads for the defence forces of a Latin American country but they were actually Australian government ads spruiking for (presumably Spanish-speaking) investors in Australian defence industries.

This is turning into a rather strange week. I don't feel especially sick in the course of everyday life (bit of a sore throat, bit of congestion), but yesterday I fell apart at 30 minutes and it was a similar story today; I'd hoped for at least an hour but was struggling badly well before that. At least the Achilles continues to improve.

The warmth is a bit draining too. The media have started to pay attention to what's going on, and I spent a bit of this afternoon dealing with that.

You probably won't be too surprised to hear that by-election post-mortems occupied a fair bit of tonight's Northcote Labor meeting.

C • Symptoms sound familiar 1

Didn't seem to feel any worse this morning in an illness sense (although didn't sleep that well). Run was a bit of a struggle but no worse than plenty of other Monday morning run over the last year or two. Achilles not too bad. Continuing warm and humid, and plenty more of that where it's come from.

It's definitely a different crowd at Fitzroy at 6.30 on a hot evening to what it is at 7.30 on a Friday morning in July, but the actual lap lanes weren't much more crowded than usual. This swim never really got going - started off with getting a foot cramp on the first lap (the foot cramp is not an unknown problem for me, getting one on the first lap is), and by the last few laps, I felt a bit like other bits of me were threatening to cramp as well. Perhaps I'm more drained than I thought I was - will say it by ear tomorrow.

Took a tip on this one from Asha (for whom it's a reasonably regular haunt) - I was looking for something which was flat (because of the Achilles), interesting and preferably shady, and the O'Shannassy aqueduct track ticked all these boxes - it runs along the north side of the upper Yarra valley, along the lower slopes of Mount Donna Buang, perhaps 100-150 metres above the valley floor. (The idea of going out east of Melbourne had also been planted in my mind when I thought I might have had to go to the Marysville half last weekend for a Two Bays qualifier, but the organisers decided that my record of several finishes in 2016 and earlier years was good enough).

Started with plans of something between 60 and 90 depending on how it felt (having walked up the hill from the Don Rd car park to the aqueduct initially - starting on a 20+% climb would have been asking for trouble). There were just enough twinges from time to time to make me happy to settle for the lower end of this range, which took me as far as the end of Dee Rd. A steady run on the whole in a nice area, and I appreciated the forest cover on another warm and humid day (plenty more of those to come).

Some of the rest of the day was spent doing the Warburton-Reefton Spur-Marysville loop - winding hilly roads (very popular with those on two wheels, with or without engines), and nice forests where they haven't been burnt out. It's the first time I've been to Marysville since the fires; it's not obvious in the centre of town that virtually nothing here is more than eight years old (90+% of the town's buildings were destroyed on Black Saturday), although the damage is still starkly visible in the surrounding hills. Lots of people around, so at least the local economy was doing OK today.

I've developed a reasonably sore throat in the second half of the day, so probably won't be at my best through the early part of next week.

C • That is some hill 1

Sprint Series in Royal Park. Thought this would be a running race and to some extent it was, although the complexity of the vegetation added some interest to the early part of the course (as well as reintroducing us to the joys of grass seeds). Seemed to handle this better than some but still no pace once it opened out. Was wondering what was happening when Peter Dalwood caught back up to me, but it turned out the reason he'd caught up was that he hadn't been to as many controls. Not quite as far back as the last couple.

It was reasonably hot and humid for the run and at that stage there was no sign of the promised thunderstorms, but they developed and unloaded shortly after 4 - just in time for my shift on the polls at Fairfield. This could be said to be a bit of a metaphor for the sort of day that Labor ended up having (something I didn't see coming) - even retreated to a nearby underpass for a bit after a couple of very close lightning strikes. (19mm was the final score).

Got quite a few items in scrutineers' bingo, but was missing two (the phallic symbol on a ballot paper, and the write-in vote for someone with no connection whatsoever to the election). As usual, there were a few screeds written upon ballot papers, one of which even consisted of grammatically correct sentences containing correctly spelt words, none of which were 'f**k' or derivatives thereof. Highlight of the informals was someone who drew a pawprint in the box for the Animal Justice Party.

C • election result 15

C • Informal pawprint 3

A fairly conventional session of this type. Once again, sunglare was a bit of a problem on the return legs at this time of day. (It's also a problem in the office, thanks to reflection from a new building, between about 5.45 and 6.15 - perhaps someone is trying to tell me that I shouldn't still be around at 6.15?).

The ankle stiffened up again today much as it did last Thursday, from which I conclude (on the basis of two data points) that there's a fair chance this session has something to do with it. Not quite sure why.