Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

First time down to the river since I got back - out through Wilson Reserve into the east end of Ivanhoe. Always nice to be down there even if it meant picking my way across the Heidelberg Road early-morning traffic jam (possibly soon to disappear, at least temporarily). Working fairly hard on the hills and a bit of Achilles soreness later (although not on the scale of last week), but in general reasonably satisfactory as a session.

Got a reminder in the last couple of minutes of the run that I'm definitely back in Australia, in the form of a driver launching into an F-bomb laden tirade against a cyclist. I didn't see what the cyclist had done to upset him (and it's usually a him, although the worst abuse I've been on the end of myself was from a woman), especially as it was a quiet back street.

C • Cyclist 1

On the improve on all counts and decided to give a short run a go. The usual sluggishness early but settled into it quite nicely in the last 10 minutes or so. No injury issues. Doing this quite early before my first stint of state election campaigning (spruiking solar panel subsidies at Alphington station).

Florence may be getting all the publicity (and it certainly deserves some), but there's also a typhoon currently forecast to make a more or less direct hit on Hong Kong and Guangzhou on the weekend at category 4/5 intensity - I'm starting to get a bit nervous about whether the forest in the World Cup middle area will still be standing this time next week. (That said, the uncertainty in both track and intensity forecasts is such that I suspect the chance that Guangzhou will actually get a hit at that intensity is only 10-20%).

Feeling somewhat better today but thought it best to stick to a single session - the regular pilates engagement. Seem to be getting back into this and not getting lazy on a few of the exercises as sometimes happens.

It's going to be a pretty full-on week workwise (the first significant IPCC deadline is at the end of the week), so definitely don't want to burn myself out - on the other hand, runs later in the week might be good for collecting thoughts.

Woke up with something of a cold this morning, which was gratifying in one sense as it gave me a reason for why I ran so badly yesterday. Still thought I'd go out and see how it felt, not expecting it to be an especially physical course - sometimes I start feeling better running at the stage where I start sounding worse. As it turned out, I never really got the chance to see how that side of things held up because my hamstring flared up again coming into 2; at a level where I might or might not have been able to push through it (certainly would have tried harder to do so had the event counted for something), but not worth it here.

Bruce brought up his 300th NOL race today, and made a much better job of his 300th than I did of mine, getting his best result of 2nd (albeit in probably the weakest field to contest a men's NOL race since the first couple of years). He'll probably overtake me (306) sometime next year. Don't think anyone else is likely to get to 300 any time soon; Jim's in the 280s but not running many NOLs these days (although he got round today), then amongst active people you're down to Simon and Anna in the low 200s.

Event: OY10 - Wilmot's Waterholes, Applethorpe - Qld Middle Champs - NOL 11
 

I did get my top-10 place, but not especially convincingly; this was a disappointing run, feeling without any real energy (perhaps a bit better later on), and being 4 minutes down on Jim and Geoff was a good indicator of where this run was at. Didn't miss a lot but the biggest mistake was an annoying one, missing 30 seconds on the one at the start of the spectator leg (15) by misreading where the edge of the yellow was on the ground. Ended up beating two home, so 8th in the end.

Felt like the sort of run where I'm about to get sick - was certainly glad that it wasn't a more physical course - but I guess we'll find out if that materialises tomorrow morning.

Even by its usual standards, the quantity of roadkill on the Warwick-Stanthorpe road was truly impressive.

Headed up to Brisbane first thing in the morning (starting to get used to 5am starts), so today's options involved doing something after work before going to Warwick. Wouldn't normally leave work quite this early but it was forced on me by the fact that the car rental place closed at 5 and Brisbane pools on Fridays close at 6 - in any case, by 4.30 I was in "my brain hurts" mode after making some headway on the (virtual) pile of 231 papers on my reading list.

My chosen pool was the Centenary, on the north edge of the central city. Seemed to be working reasonably hard without moving all that smoothly through the water. Still not a bad session, and got out of there 5 minutes before closing time...

Did think it was a little unusual that there was an RBT set up on the highway 30km from Warwick last night, but having read this and this I'm suspecting that they were really looking for something other than drunk drivers.

Felt like a bit of a plod but got through the distance OK, at least in an endurance sense. Hamstring and back fine but left Achilles a bit troublesome in the last 20 minutes, which deterred me from trying to do any more. Got to see the rebuilt footbridge across into Bellfield (after a false start last week); the suburb itself is no great shakes to run through but it sets you up for the nice gentle downhill path back to the creek.

Media question of the day: "Does the Bureau of Meteorology believe there is evidence that praying for rain can lead to rainfall?". I suggested that we should respond that, as we have no records of prayers for rain and the places and dates they were applicable to, we were unable to assess that question, but I think we just declined to respond. (In fact, there is one case we could study - every year, Fred Nile prays for rain for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and it should be possible to see how the frequency of rain on Mardi Gras night compares with the long-term average for late February/early March in Sydney - but I couldn't find a handy list of Mardi Gras dates).

C • Question 7

C • Dates 13