Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

The calf turned out to be a more significant issue than I'd hoped; there was some discomfort walking on it last night, and although that part of it was improved somewhat this morning, I didn't consider running. I was a bit apprehensive riding, too, when it was a bit uncomfortable pushing off, but it was fine once moving (and better later in the day). Still generally avoided hills on a loop through La Trobe (where the Sunday market is back), Reservoir and Coburg. Very pleasant morning to be out (and various pieces of good news during the morning didn't hurt, either).

This is (hopefully) the last day of having to stick to local exploration so I did a bit more of it, looking at some of the more obscure approaches to the north side of the Yarra between Eltham and Warrandyte. The back blocks of Eltham have something of a reputation as a hippies' hangout and in Saturday's Age I was reading a piece about an artists' commune on a property out there (not sure if I passed it or not) in the early 1970s which had all the features you might expect of an artists' commune in the early 1970s (especially the fornication and the mind-altering substances). Finished up this excursion by hanging out for a while in the park next to the railway trestle bridge, which a couple of years ago was the unlikely venue of a demo by the United Patriots Front or some other such outfit (although they were considerably outnumbered by locals giving renditions of "say it loud, say it clear, Nazis are not welcome here" and other such classics).

On the evidence of today, a substantial proportion of Melbourne was spending their last day of relative captivity mowing grass.

C • calf 1

Checking things at Kensington for the forthcoming Victorian Sprint Championships (yes, there's going to be one, and I'm the controller). Not a super-technical area but enough to produce traps for the unwary (including a couple of losses of concentration by yours truly). Some twinges in my right calf were a bit troublesome.

Perhaps the fastest running I did today was afterwards (preparing to walk around the controls after doing the run) when a gust of wind picked up my maps and started propelling them across Smithfield Road towards Flemington Racecourse (fortunately none of them went over the fence, and I managed to retrieve all of them). It's an indication of how abnormal 2020 is that I was able to get a (legal) parking spot just across the road from Flemington on a spring carnival race day.

Back to the home of the aqua (sic) profonda for the first time since March, to do this session for the first time since March. Felt rather tight and stressed at the start of this after a busy day at work (got something significant done just before heading out the door), but gradually relaxed through the session (which was part of the idea), and ended up getting my mind sufficiently absorbed in the question of optimal location for a possible February OA conference (taking into account who can get into which state, who can get back home afterwards, and how easy it is to get there in the first place) that I lost track of time and went a few minutes longer than I'd planned on.

Had initial plans to do a bit of a run in the morning on my first visit to the central city since June (getting a headlight fixed), but back was a bit troublesome. This run would have been a bonus anyway.

Lunchtime ride on the La Trobe loop after finding out in the morning that I'm not up to three days in row (or, alternatively, the Wednesday night/Thursday morning combination) yet. A stiff southwesterly, not a bad wind for this because it means you have a tailwind going up most of the hills, and felt fairly reasonable although the headwind was getting to be a bit of a drag at the end. A slightly convoluted route home because three different options through the semi-industrial north bit of Fairfield were closed because of works (I think on the same power line, otherwise it was a very poor piece of coordination).

It's November, but you can still find swooping magpies if you pick the wrong place.

A return to orienteering after four months, in the form of a socially distanced version of a street-O. It's definitely not quite the same (and it took me a while to be sure that I'd got the technology right), but there are still maps to read, routes to plan and (virtual) controls to find. I'm not sure if I did a great job on the second of these - and it was the long end for C as well - but still nice to be out there, especially for the brief excursion into the dell bit of Bellbird Dell. Probably at the better end of my street events from last summer - the back was functioning, although I was still short of fitness and walked the steepest hills. Gives me something to build on.

The day was somewhat unsettling, although I was more confident than many during the day that team blue is going to get across the line (albeit unconvincingly).

Small steps. Felt incrementally better today, although starting to feel the warmth at the end on the first warm-weather run of spring. It certainly wasn't the hills because this one was just about dead flat, going into previously unvisited country in the northwest part of my circle (west of Station Street, north of Darebin Road) - this has a relatively simple grid and is flat and I don't think I've run there before except on Boulder Dash street-O events.

Part of the rest of the day was devoted to exploring on the north side of the Yarra - didn't find any new spots to access the river and only fleeting views, but there are some nice bits of bush around the Bend of Islands, which looks like the sort of place where it would be nice to live in the forest but is a bushfire disaster waiting for a year to happen, with added bonus points because the only significant exit road is to the northwest which is the direction a fire would come from. (Had the wind change been an hour or two later, that year would have been 2009).

Found a decent cafe in Hurstbridge for lunch too. Reaching there involved passing through the soon-to-be-removed Doreen roundabout, which featured signs on one side of the road calling for the building of option C and signs on the other side of the road calling for options B and C to be ditched and option A to be built. Neither of them will be happy because some post-trip googling revealed option B is the one that's happening. (For those of us who grew up in 1980s Canberra, the expression 'option C' will be permanently associated with Paul Keating's abortive attempt to introduce a GST 15 years before it actually happened - which naturally didn't stop him from eviscerating John Hewson for trying the same thing in 1993).

One thing which puzzled me a bit on passing it is why South Morang's primary school is called Morang South, but it seems that Morang South is the earlier name and the school kept it after the settlement was renamed. (Checking this also revealed the answer to the question "where's Morang?" - the locality formerly known as Morang North is now Mernda).

C • Bend of Isles 16

Morning swim. Must have slept well with multiple vivid dreams, but was awake enough when I hit the water (not always guaranteed for a Monday morning session). Felt like I was going OK but not a lot faster than the last couple. Quite a busy lane but the others didn't get in the way much (I was probably getting in their way more, but if you're swimming in a slow lane you probably can't reasonably complain about finding slow people in it).

I'll be doing earlier Monday mornings soon: Pilates is back next week.