Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Continuing the Easter challenge, I made my first attempt at some Strava art, drawing a sort of thermometer. The run itself wasn't anything to get greatly excited about; I started thinking I might have a go at stretching my distance further from last week, but felt rather flat (and some quad soreness in the middle) - perhaps not surprising coming off a tougher Saturday than I've done for a while. At one point I thought I might call it a day after finishing the artwork about 40 minutes in, but managed to stretch it out in ever-decreasing spirals to beyond an hour, which I consider a more-or-less respectable long run at the moment.

C • Thermometer 1

Passed on the beep test yesterday (after all, the prologue isn't part of the overall Easter result for M45s), but thought I'd give today's session a go. I haven't done anything like the Mona session for ages. It therefore wasn't surprising that I found it a struggle to get through it, but at least it was a struggle because of fitness - the last few sprints were very lactic - and not because of injury.

Planned my route so that the slight uphill gradient out would offset the tailwind (and vice versa), and finished within 10 metres of my start point. Chose a somewhat unglamorous venue in the name of flatness, lack of traffic and lack of road crossings; the Darebin Creek bike path and then the East Thornbury industrial estate.

Warm-up and down. Given how I felt at the end of the fast bit of the session, the warm-down was better than I expected.

Might be something to this mid-morning thing: after an uncertain start ended up as a fairly reasonable run, with only a slight quad twinge in the middle, and the climb out of the Yarra was a positive rather than a negative. Included the single track on the south side of the river for the first time since it was blocked off for bridge construction around this time last year. Lots of people out, and not always easy to give them space (especially on the pipe bridge). In particular, while the legality of learning to drive may be questionable, there was plenty of learning to ride (perhaps I'd better not say that too loudly in case an overzealous cop somewhere starts booking five-year-olds).

Spotted Bruce on his run while I was going for coffee earlier in the morning.

In the book I mentioned a few days back, I'm now as far as the 1400s. Have seen enough to ascertain that some of the Crusades exhibited about the same degree of competence and planning as the blokes who got picked up on Cape York a few years back with the apparent intent of sailing their tinnie to wage jihad in the Philippines.

Yesterday ended up with a fairly significant back flare-up, so it was the bike today for a lunchtime session on the La Trobe loop - mild and sunny (in marked contrast to some previous outings on this loop). Most of the climbing on this one is early, and went reasonably smoothly; quite relaxed for the remainder.

Had a 4am IOF meeting (no scoops really beyond what they've already posted) which finished earlier than expected, so went back to bed for a couple of hours (without really sleeping) with the plan of running at lunchtime, with the standard All Nations interval session at an unusual time.

As is often the case here, I saw some flagrant law-breaking - not this time in the form of illegally unrestrained dogs (although there were a few of those too), but instead a mother and young daughter peacefully sitting on a park bench eating lunch. Declined the opportunity to call a SWAT team in on them (and not only because I didn't have a phone).

The session itself was pretty ordinary - didn't really push through the ends of reps.

An unusual failure mode this time - getting there was passable (though hardly convincing) but hips flared up on the way back. Hopefully nothing too significant but I pulled up a few minutes short.

Just as well this year's Easter weather wasn't last year's (or 2011's) Easter weather; the forecast for York on Friday and Saturday is 39. (As far as Orange/Molong goes, we're missing out on showers/rain on Friday and dry after that, with fairly cool days - mostly high teens).

C • Temps 3

I'd assumed that Pilates was off the agenda, but discovered when I was in for my physio session last week that they were still doing one-on-one classes for the price of a group session (from their perspective, I guess it's better for them to be making 25% of the money than 0% of the money). This actually went really well - the exercises felt better than on almost any previous occasion (and the instructor thought so too).

No, my back doesn't like evening runs after working at home any more than it does evening runs after working at the office.

C • 10 am 3

Boulevard loop again. Incrementally faster again. Forgot to change my watch from running mode to cycling mode which meant that (a) I was getting kilometre splits rather than 5k ones and (b) my watch thinks I now have 5k and 10k PBs on a par with Mo Farah's. The kilometre splits were more even than I thought they would be - I guess the Boulevard has very few kilometres which are either all uphill or all downhill (and is almost never flat).

C • Awesome splits 3