Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Ended up a letdown after yesterday. Started with the intention of 2 hours, and the first 40 minutes or so were encouraging, if not quite as good as yesterday. This time, though, instead of starting iffily and warming up, the Achilles started flaring up about 40 minutes in and got progressively worse - not that it was excessively painful, but I was clearly limping and didn't want to do further damage. I sometimes think that I'm giving it away too easily in these situations at the moment, but there was enough post-run tightness in the calf to suggest that pushing much further would have been more trouble.

Hopefully it will be more settled this week, although it will be tested - I'm at a conference at UNSW this week and there aren't too many options around the local area which don't involve some sharp ups and downs: Centennial Park is perhaps the best of them.

A bit of a change of scene today: my parents were keen to go to a nursery in Mount Evelyn to check out plants for the new place (among other things), so I dropped them off and then went for a run on the Warburton rail trail, turning around somewhere between Wandin and Seville. I expected, and got, long gradual hills, and a decent amount of shade on a warmish day (about 25).

The first 2km was downhill (with obvious consequences for the finish), which was good for settling down, and from there it was a pretty solid run - had a decent amount in hand for when the hills did come, and handled them reasonably well. Achilles a bit sore in the first 10 minutes but fine after that. Not sure it was quite as good as the time suggested, though - it's the first time I've been under 5.30 pace on a "normal" training run for more than a year. (Perhaps being more awake counteracts being warmer). Still, I'll definitely take it as a positive.

At Northcote, earlier than normal - which meant it was somewhat suboptimally crowded (the squads take up a lot of lanes here) and I spent a fair bit of time trying to stay out of other people's way. Still seemed to work out OK.

A physio appointment was the reason I was early (normally I do these in the evening not the morning, but the timing didn't work this week). The Achilles is still intermittently troublesome (there was a bit of soreness coming off the long downhill yesterday) and she decided to try shockwave treatment - which involves applying an instrument which sounds a bit like a jackhammer. This sounds painful and is, but it does seem to have had the desired effect, at least for today.

Last day in the usual office for a while. Got everything I wanted to done, more or less.

Able to come up OK on Thursday morning after a bad Wednesday evening, which doesn't always happen these days - it probably didn't hurt that the first half of the run was pretty flat along the Yarra Flats, but coped OK with the climb back across Heidelberg. Slowed a bit in the later stages, and Achilles a bit iffy after the long downhill back into Ivanhoe.

It was the coolest morning for a while, and I spotted someone else out running who looked like they were dressed for -12, not +12.

No, I still can't run uphill after a day sitting at work. It took a bit longer to find this out than it sometimes does, because the first part of the course was mostly downhill (hills not being in short supply in this part of Croydon).

Back in Canberra for the day - this time for a work thing which got called at fairly short notice (by which time it was too late for me to change my flights to stay on after the sprint).

Flew up last night and was staying in Forrest, so headed for the vicinity of Red Hill. This being my first run longer than 22 minutes for a while, I didn't go as far as a full frontal assault, instead doing the bulk of our old school cross-country course which ran along the back of the houses on Mugga Way, as far south as Hindmarsh Drive - a long climb if never a particularly steep one. Hard work on the uphill sections (and back was a bit iffy early, although it's not used to an uphill start), better after that but never especially smooth. A humid morning.

The workshop itself featured people from a wide range of (mostly) government agencies looking at climate risk. This was interesting, but perhaps more interesting is that everyone wanted to talk about Cape Town - clearly this has been a massive wake-up call as to what impacts climate extremes can have. It's a positive story in some ways, although a scary one in others, that a couple of decades of policy decisions (and good underlying science) in WA probably saved Perth, which has a lot of climatic similarities with Cape Town, from having its own Day Zero in 2010-11. (I've been suggesting that one of my colleagues, who led the work on the project which dealt with climate change in southwest WA, should be given the key to the city the next time she fronts up in Perth).

Going back to what I think of as a 'normal' weekly schedule, notwithstanding a fairly low-volume weekend (the fact that today's minimum was 27.8 provided a certain amount of encouragement to take to the water). Quite busy given the aforementioned warm conditions (and not the coolest water temperature I've ever experienced, either). I often struggle to get going at Northcote, and today wasn't really an exception. Looking forward to getting out in running - in considerably more friendly conditions - tomorrow.