Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Australian Relays, in an M45 team with Fredrik and Dion. Going into the event, I thought we were in a good position - there were other teams which had two good people but we had the most depth. Tasmania was potentially the strongest opposition - I wasn't confident of defending anything less than 6-7 minutes against Jon if it came to that.

Fredrik and Dion did the work to put us in a good position. Fredrik had a 6-minute break on Anthony Stoner, who can be very fast on his day, and as long as Dion had a decent run I was going to take over with a good lead (it turned out to be 8 minutes over NSW and 18 over Tasmania, although of course I didn't know that for sure), so I just needed to avoid doing anything stupid.

This mission was duly accomplished. I became a little bit scrappy in the technical erosion stuff in the second half (but I think most did); avoided anything bigger than 20-30 seconds. The running was also somewhat better than yesterday (i.e. I could actually run most of the hills). While our lead in our own class was comfortable, there was potential for some battles with other classes on the same course. I couldn't run down Warren (in the winning M55 lead), but went out with a small lead over Tara (W20). She caught me at the first control after the spectator but then lost time on the next one; I saw her again 50 metres or so back going into the second-last and thought I might have had a fight on my hands, but she must have lost a little time there.

Jon did have a flyer on the last leg and did 31, but Tasmania were too far back to challenge for anything higher than second.

Event: AOC2018
 

Australian Middle Distance Championships, M45A, 7th. An interesting area but a disappointing run - really struggled with the running side of it, especially in the sandier parts of the ground (and there were quite a number of sandy climbs). Hit all of the controls well, on a course which wasn't quite as technically challenging as I thought it might have been (we didn't spend much time in the heaviest erosion), but at the speed I was going I should have been hitting the controls well. Carsten did 23, which was about where I expected the winning time to be.

A short run and a fairly ordinary one before hitting the road northwest. Went past the Arthur residence just as they were heading off, which gave me the opportunity to point out that the Victorian schools team trip was already more successful than one past one (the one where the team bus slipped its handbrake the night before the trip and wrote itself off in Peta Whitford's driveway).

This was a reasonably relaxed road trip, partly because I wasn't doing much of the driving. Went a slightly extended route (Kerang-Swan Hill-Robinvale), mainly because my parents hadn't been there for many years, and saw a lot of unhealthy-looking crops (at least until we got into the irrigation areas).

Finding places open for stops on the holiday was somewhat challenging, and lunch at Swan Hill was slow, but it did give me the chance to check out the local paper (whose existence I knew of because I've talked to them on numerous occasions). Like a lot of papers large and small, the local Magistrates Court provides them with a fair bit of their copy, but there's not quite as much raw material to work with in the crime department as there is in the big city, so it started with the front two pages about the fallout from an altercation outside a Swan Hill nightclub (which presumably means that Swan Hill has a nightclub), and finished up with the toilet roll holder from the public conveniences in the main street suspected of being stolen by a person or persons unknown sometime between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Not, I suspect, for the first or last time, the letters page was devoted to grievances over water management in general and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority in particular.

Feeling a bit more lively than the last couple of days (probably because I slept more), but still not really where I'd like to be two days out from a national championship. Still, an unpromising build-up doesn't always mean an unpromising performance.

Today was the first dry cool change of the spring (where a solid northerly switches to a squally southwesterly, typically in the afternoon, with no rain and often no cloud). Living in the northeast suburbs offers the advantage that on such days you get tailwinds on the bike in both directions. My south-dwelling bike-riding colleagues were not amused (but then they should have known what Melbourne's winds did before deciding to live there in the first place :-).

Hitting the road in the morning.

Had hoped for something a bit longer today, but felt rather run down and didn't want to push it too hard at this stage. Hints of Achilles soreness but better than yesterday. Checked out the latest status of the Chandler bridge before heading back via Darebin Creek (the reverse of what I've done previously on that path since it opened).

I took a fairly close interest in events at the ABC today, and a particularly close interest in what it showed about the capacity of ministers to get public employees whose work they disagreed with sacked.

Woke up with a sore Achilles - the sort of thing I'd try to push through if it wasn't a pre-championship week. Felt rather tired and flat this morning too - limited sleep for a few days seems to have caught up with me a bit. Took me a long time to get to sleep last night which didn't help - started thinking about issues to do with the JWOC long distance just before going to bed. (It was perhaps appropriate that I was doing this coming off the Brownlow Medal presentation; both are sporting occasions which must look strange to outsiders but are much appreciated by those who are actually involved).

C • Brownlow 2

Continues to get a little easier each time, although I was still half-asleep after getting to bed at midnight (after a trip back which was considerably smoother than the trip there). Most eventful bit of the session was discovering during one of the exercises that I'd brought a couple of WA souvenirs back with me - a post-session consultation with Dr. Google revealed that WA ticks generally don't seem to carry any of the nasties that European or North American ones can.

Bit of a false start as my goggles came off on the first lap; got going again once I worked out that the strap had just come undone and not broken (and dog-paddled into water shallow enough to stand up in so I could check it out). Once properly under way, was a fairly standard session - not as energetic as I was in the later stages of last week, and consequently a little slower.