Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Joined the Bridgewater run, on a morning which was a lot better for it than this time last year would have been. This was both hillier and longer (in planning) than anything I've taken on since winter, and perhaps unsurprisingly, doing both of those at once didn't work out - the actual climbing of the hills was OK (better than I was expecting), but was starting to feel some hamstring tightness after levelling out, and thought it best to turn around and leave the others to it. Got back more or less OK, and it seems to have pulled up OK post-run so I think it's just a matter of muscles which have been unemployed. Good to catch up with some more of the local orienteering crowd, too.

(Incidentally, this time last year I was doing a press conference alongside Brett Sutton, before he was famous - I was talking about extreme heat and he was talking about its potential impacts on health).

Early morning trip with Jenny (ahead of her scheduled date with the Killer Physio) out to Narrinyeri to run courses from the SA Championships earlier this year - course 5 in my case. Not for the first time, running was a struggle and I didn't do much of it up hills, but got going a bit more later on, and good to get into the terrain. Navigation wasn't too bad except for overshooting 7 a bit, maybe 30 seconds or so. Time was a bit slower than Tyson and a bit faster than Paul Hoopmann, which feels about right for this run.

The ostensible reason for my trip to Adelaide has fallen through thanks to India's batting collapse today - I had tickets for the cricket tomorrow.

There are three possibilities for this swim: (a) I had difficulty counting to 10 this morning (b) the Unley pool is longer than 50 metres (c) I swam a PW by three minutes. I wasn't feeling great this morning (in particular my upper body was stiff for the first few laps), but my money is still on (a).

The SA check-in app works surprisingly smoothly (and can be used by non-SA residents, which I'm not sure is the case for people from other states), but not so well here because it doesn't pick up on the booking information (which is all you need in Victoria) and I hadn't brought my phone, so needed to do it the pen-and-paper way. (I wasn't about to observe that the Victorian system was different; I still suspect it's prudent in SA not to reveal that you're from Victoria to people you don't know, which is one of the reasons I flew and didn't drive). The other minor annoyance was to get out of the pool to find my gear covered with grass clippings after some nearby lawnmowing.

Spent a fair bit of the rest of the day following up things around vulnerabilities to sea level rise in Port Adelaide, in the process using Adelaide's train system for the first time. (Note for future reference: get off one stop earlier so you don't need to attempt to cross South Road, something definitely only for the brave).

Over in Adelaide for a few days (the Test is the pretext), and took today to go down south with Jenny, who was taking a day off. This day had two main activities, of which the first was to go out on a lidar map of the Goolwa sand dunes that Stefano had made when he was out here.

This proved to be a seriously good sand dune area (albeit one we'd be unlikely to get permission to run a proper event on); as an open dune strip it's definitely up there with the coastal strip of sundry Wellington dune maps or the far end of Pittwater. There is some vegetation around and I was only running in patches, which may not have been a bad thing as my back wasn't great coming down and I think I would have struggled with a continuous run. Took a couple of controls to get into the map but navigating OK after that, once I got the hang of what was usable as an attack point.

Part two, the Deep Creek walk, wasn't bad either, although the climb out of Deep Creek cover itself was pretty ferocious (scrambling in places). Definitely no danger of overheating with Parawa only making it to 14.7 today.

Thought after a couple of minutes that this was going to be a session fail. Embarked on the all-too-familiar walk of shame back home, but felt better as I was getting close to home and thought it worth a second attempt in the opposite direction. It was; while this was hard work at times, the body stood up OK second time around (there's a lesson to be learned from this) and ended up adding another small increment to last week's benchmark, as well as picking up the last remaining streets on the west side of my circle - just Fairy Hills to go now.

It will be a few days before there's any progress, because I'm no longer in Melbourne. There are some things which are different about the flying experience at the moment, but perhaps the most disconcerting was the arrival - there are weeds growing up through the pavement in the southern half of the long-term car park. (There are still a couple of cars there in the vast spaces; it wouldn't surprise me if those ones have been there since March or earlier). The SA entry permit requirement was scrapped a couple of hours before I arrived, which meant there were a lot of people at desks in the airport doing nothing much.

And I think I have an answer to the mystery of the bus lane: it looks like the left lane from the Merri Creek bridge onwards is being turned into a bike lane, and since a traffic lane which lasts only a few hundred metres will probably cause more congestion than it clears, I suspect the powers that be thought that declaring it a bus lane with (almost) no buses would solve that problem.

C • long-term car park 4

Experienced in December what I normally experience in September - struggling with the first proper warm-weather run of the season (we're only talking about 27, but still takes some getting used to). Had hoped for something longer but was starting to fade away by 30 minutes. Did manage to handle a few small hills without undue incident, and to clear another set of streets around Ivanhoe Primary (which like Fairfield, is getting a new building, although I don't think it will be ready for the new school year like Fairfield's looks like being).

Monday morning Pilates. Felt pretty stiff beforehand but gradually improved during the session (which had its full complement for the first time since early in the year).

Some 'bus lane' markings have appeared on Heidelberg Road outbound at Clifton Hill outside the athletics track. While I'm all in favour of improved public transport infrastructure, I'm a bit puzzled by this one on two counts: (a) there is not normally any congestion for the bus lane to avoid (the only time I've ever seen a jam here was when a signal fault shut down every level crossing on the Hurstbridge line) and (b) Heidelberg Road only has one (infrequent) bus route and doesn't seem an obvious candidate for any more, given that it runs parallel to the aforementioned rail line. (The bus services that do badly need improvement in our area are the north-south ones, especially across the river - the Chandler Highway bridge doesn't have a regular bus across it at all).

Continued on to Northcote pool, but a different session to usual for logistical reasons later in the week. Got going reasonably well and none of the knee stiffness occasionally present last week. Cool water and a bright sun; I expect the pool was well used later in the day (even if it's not school holidays yet for most people).