Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

I'd been waiting the best part of two years to do this route so another 24 hours wasn't going to hurt, crossing the newly-reconstructed Walmer Street bridge and then starting to make headway into the area of Abbotsford south of the brewery (not easily accessible without said bridge). Also cleared out nearly all of the remaining streets in the southwest corner of Abbotsford in the area around the Carringbush Hotel (which I assume gave its name to the not-very-fictitious suburb in Power Without Glory, and not the other way round).

This run definitely had its highs and lows. Fairly hard going through the first 30 minutes and found the climb over the Kew ridge tough, settled well for a while after that, then fell quickly into a hole around 9k and was half wondering whether I should bail while close to a station, but a toilet stop turned out to be what I needed and the remainder going home was pretty good. Glad I wasn't out later, on a day which turned quite hot.

I have become aware that certain people online (and probably offline in the US) have been blaming Boeing's woes on their being too diverse, a discussion which attracted all the sorts of people you would expect for this sort of thing (in Australia they're otherwise engaged getting outraged about the fact that a German-owned store isn't stocking Chinese-made tat with Australian flags on it). Some were even suggesting that someone should start an airline staffed entirely by straight white men, but it was pointed out that that's been done before and it didn't end well.

C • Grammar 5

It being one of those mornings when I was still asleep at 7 despite having got out of bed at 5.45, I switched to plan B (hopefully plan A will work tomorrow) and ended up in the water a bit later. By this time I was sort of awake and it didn't work out too badly, although didn't seem to be working quite as hard as I sometimes do here.

I came across a piece in the Economist (presumably paywalled) about the history of statistics collection in Britain, which started out "By the start of the 20th century statisticians had mapped where some of the drunkest people in Britain were (Swansea, take a bow) as well as the most criminal (ditto). They had chronicled the sanitary state of London’s West End (filthy) and its reading habits (also, at times, filthy). ". I can't speak for the last three, but did collect a certain amount of evidence back in July that the first, at least, has not changed much in the last 123 years.

Headed out at lunchtime for the first time in a few weeks, in conditions somewhat more appealing than those on offer in Sydney (having spent some of the morning dealing with the complications of assessing whether it really was the highest dewpoint on record there). Covered some new ground (in a running sense), mostly in the block west of Queen Victoria Market - I save runs in the core of the CBD for days when I'm feeling sufficiently bad that I expect to appreciate having to stop every couple of minutes (expect such a run to feature on my first day back from Poland, if I make it out at all). Felt pretty reasonable for a lunchtime run, including the moderately solid climb into North Melbourne.

Summer Series at Chirnside Park. A pretty hard night's work on a hilly area with plenty of traps to fall into (some parts of the street pattern were very impermeable), which I thought might lead to some big blowouts but doesn't seem to have done. Back was its usual poor evening self; knew I'd have trouble running the climbs but it was set off by the big descents too, and all I could say was that it wasn't as bad as Birralee (this will be something of a season reverse-benchmark, I think). Had to dash home for an IOF meeting.

I did notice a certain irony in one of the street names; Switchback Road is about 2km long, and dead straight (except in the vertical sense). Vista Drive was more indicative of what this area had to offer (and St. Andrews Drive indicated that there used to be a golf course here).

My next trip is not far away, to the IOF Council meeting in Warsaw. I'm keeping a close eye both on the forecast weather - snow doesn't bother me as long as it isn't falling when I'm trying to fly in or out - and the political situation; the former government is taking its loss about as well as Donald Trump and next week's parliamentary session is a potential flashpoint. Think I'll try to give any protests a wide berth - I don't know if Polish riot police are as enthusiastic in their use of tear gas as their French counterparts, but hearing about the Shinglers' experience in Paris a few years back has certainly encouraged me not to try to find out (and I expect that being on the receiving end of a water cannon would be even less fun at -10 degrees than it would be in summer).

C • MapRun 1

All Nations intervals. Not a bad session although a little slower (60/65), perhaps because the ground was still a bit slippery after all the rain. A little bit of left Achilles soreness which convinced me not to push the distance further. Nice morning to be out, with the clarity of a sunny day after (lots of) rain.

Warm-up and down, with the quirks of early January. Station Street is most easily crossed when the traffic is either very light or heavy (in the latter case it's usually at a sufficient standstill that you can go between the vehicles). On the way out today it was very light (since the tradies are still mostly on holidays), or the way back it was in between, so a bit of a wait.

China really does have some seriously awesome sprint terrain.

Not the worst of mornings to be doing something indoor (although the heavy rain had backed off for a bit at this point). Not a bad session on the whole and got a couple of new exercises in, which seemed to work pretty well.

I expected that I would have some interesting numbers to play with today, and I wasn't disappointed. (I was a little surprised that Bendigo had never previously had a daily rainfall higher than today's 91.8).

Onwards to the pool, having passed on the way large crowds at the Clifton Hill tram stop which I suspected (accurately) meant that the trains weren't running. Wasn't sure, having looked at the radar, whether I was going to get this in before it unloaded again - not that that's so much of a problem at a pool, as long as there's no lightning and your towel's undercover - but I did. Felt quite smooth in the water and seemed to go quite quickly; thought it might have been a bit faster than it was.

First proper hot night I've experienced in Melbourne this summer (having been out of town for such heat as there's been). With rain expected late morning, I was tempted to wait until then but thought there might be thunderstorms embedded in it (not the case in Melbourne as it turned out), and ended up getting the warmest part of the day - cloudy, but still humid.

Started out reasonably well and was moving along OK for the first 40 minutes or so, but as with my previous longer run in similar conditions (which as it happened had exactly the same target, the southeast corner of Kew), the humidity caught up with me from about 45 minutes onwards. By the hour I was definitely struggling and I ended up pulling up at 70 rather than the 90 I was hoping for, which was a bit disappointing. Back was a bit iffy by then too. Didn't feel as tired post-run as I sometimes do on Sundays, so must have been OK once I replaced more fluids than I did on the run itself.

A sign outside the Kew aquatic centre redevelopment rather optimistically says completion is due in late 2022. Latest reports suggest 2026 might be more like it. (Nothing of consequence has happened there for more than a year, presumably while all parties involved try to work out who they can sue).

With no other commitments today (and a forecast of nicer running conditions the closer you got to the ocean) I decided to make my quasi-annual outing to the Surf Coast series, this time at Barwon Heads (which also means I add Greater Geelong to the list of LGAs I've registered streets in). Nice idea but the run was nothing to get excited about, partly because I was struggling with the back most of the way (obviously spent too long sitting in the car beforehand, some of it dealing with some significant traffic). Ended up as a relatively suburban run as I ran out of time to get down to the controls closer to the beach (which would have involved a couple of challenging road crossings in current traffic conditions in any case). Had some issues with map/laneway interpretation at the end, failing to find one gap and then going in one lane too early because I'd mistaken an unmapped one for a mapped one and then went down the first mapped one rather than the second as I should have.

Mid-20s and quite humid (good preparation for NZ, I guess, although I'll go through some wild climatic swings before I get there) - better than Melbourne's 32.

Best route choice of the day was going round the back of the You Yangs, even if I didn't find any significant granite that I didn't already know about (I was going to take this route anyway but given how bad the traffic was on the freeway I may not have taken much extra time by doing so). Worst route choice of the day was unquestionably going past Melbourne Park on the way home - took me 30 minutes to travel less than 1km (it turned out that this was because of traffic trying to cut into the queue for the MCG car park, reducing Hoddle Street to one lane for through traffic).