Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

State Series at Petticoat Gully - I know my current limitations enough to know that an 11km M21E course was beyond them. Back wasn't great this morning and for quite a bit of the course I was thinking that 60% of that was going to be beyond me too; walked almost all the hills (even small ones) and jogged the rest, but hit all the controls - at the speed I was going I would want to have done. Only really unplanned thing was going further north than I'd planned mid-leg on 12, and I think that worked out OK anyway.

For much of the day I was dicing with Tim Hatley (who I first saw at 5, having caught him a minute). It wasn't quite the (in)famous Rowdy Flat race where Bryan Keely passed me eight times, but it was a regular pattern that Tim would run away from me early in a leg and I'd then catch him up at the end of it (although there were only a couple of controls that I got ahead of him).

Warren did 62. The best two junior girls (on the same course) were in the upper 60s, but I was ahead of the rest. Felt somewhat tired afterwards, perhaps not surprising as I've only done one run longer than this since Oceania 2019.

Random post-event cafe encounters (this one with Asha, Liv and Lanita - all of whom, especially the first two, can feel pleased with their weekend's work - and their entourage) are definitely something I've missed in the last year.

NOL sprint at Gisborne. A day with good and bad started with the good - while we won't get too excited (and I only narrowly achieved my prime objective, not coming last), this was definitely an improvement both on my earlier sprint races this year and my runs of the last couple of weeks - no significant issues with the body (other than being slow). Fine navigation was relatively straightforward but quite a number of interesting route choices around the irregularly-shaped main school buildings.

Definitely good to be out there again, even if the fields were a little depleted. The arena didn't have the feel of an NOL race but given the uncertainty as to whether the event would happen, you can't expect organisers to put a lot of effort into that at this stage - better to make sure you've got quality maps and courses. It's just over 12 months since the last NOL race; Liv won the last one, and she won this one too...

If this morning was decent then this afternoon was ugly. It was quickly apparent that coming back for a second time in a day was more than I could handle at this point - I might have got away with it on a physically easier area but this one was tough even by Mount Alexander standards. After five controls, at which point I'd run maybe 20% of the course, lost a bit of time on 1 and 4, and the back was giving me trouble even walking up hills, I decided that slogging around for perhaps 90 minutes wasn't going to do me any favours and that tomorrow was another day, but still managed to make a bit of a mess of the descent to 17 cutting there from 5. (It probably didn't help that I'd taken my northern hemisphere compass).

With rain developing a bit earlier than I expected, I suspect going out on "dry tyres" would have been a bad call had I lasted longer.

Times were pretty slow on the NOL courses (especially for the juniors), and more so on the others - only 20 of the 45 course 3 runners finished. This was definitely a shock to the system for a lot of people who've done little or no forest orienteering in the last year.

First time for a few years I've ventured into Harcourt, which has definitely changed since the mountain bikers hit town (the general store is definitely considerably more upmarket than it was the last time I was here). Heading back to Ballarat, where I'm staying tonight - partly because there was nothing in Castlemaine, and only the Lake House at $1500 a night in Daylesford - was also a first for a while, in which I noticed a couple of new housing estates popping up of a very outer suburban style, one in Harcourt and one in Campbells Creek. Tells us a bit about the changed dynamics with people leaving town. (Another local change, so Neil tells me, is that a lot of the apple orchards around Harcourt are going, which is a pity).

C • Apple Orchards going? 11

Another struggle this morning, and decided not to be too ambitious, but did fill in a few more spaces on the map in the Penders Grove area. Not a run which filled me with confidence about the prospects for this weekend, but we'll have to see how it goes. Will be good to go orienteering after a heavy week.

Pilates, a bit later in the week than usual because of the holiday, and also a somewhat differently sequenced session to usual because of working around other people using the same bits of equipment. Didn't loosen up quite as much as usual (something which showed when a planned run post-session proved abortive).

With a run not working out, lunchtime at the pool was the plan B. Felt a bit sleepy at the start (probably reflecting the sort of week I'm in the midst of), but got into it reasonably quickly. Oddly enough, the lunchtime crowd at Fitzroy was almost all blokes.

On a morning when I was doing something I haven't done much of in the last year - positioning myself pre-commute to best suit logistics at the end of the day, namely a gathering in Thornbury - I took advantage of a start in an unusual spot (Merri Park) to collect some new territory, starting out with my first run over the new CERES bridge and then clearing some streets on the other side. Didn't do quite as much as I'd hoped to (the area around Croxton station will need to wait for another day), but I've now done everything south of Normanby and between St. Georges and Merri Creek. (You don't complete many streets doing this, as most of the east-west streets in this area continue east under the same name to High Street, or at least to the railway line).

As for the run itself, for the first few minutes I was wondering whether it was going to get much further, after that it settled down, though still fairly hard work - I feel pretty unfit at the moment. Back was OK after the initial bit but some hip flexor soreness at times. Also unusually slow, which I'd like to think was a product of doing this earlier in the morning than has been usual of late.

Ended up having dinner at 9.45 (at least I didn't burn it this time). It's one of those weeks.

Stiff when I started, quite relaxed by the end. Did seem to be drifting a bit and that showed in the time (Northcote doesn't have a working clock easily visible from the pool so you don't get real-time feedback on your pace, or lack thereof).

It's the last week before the submission deadline for the bulk of the IPCC report. (The actual deadline is 2359 CET on Friday, at which point I will probably be doing the last few controls in the NOL sprint). This means not too many meetings (the main ones are 7pm Wednesday and Thursday and 6am Friday), but lots of other things to be done. I got a bit too absorbed in one of those other things late in the day and therefore failed to notice that what I had on the stove, like some of the places I'm writing about, was suffering from excessive heat and a lack of moisture.

You learn something new every day: according to the Global Methane Budget, the world's termites produce about 9 million tons of the stuff each year. (This compares with 110 million for farm animals, so in a global context it's small but not negligible). Some further digging, so to speak, revealed that the world's total termite population is probably somewhere in the order of 10^17 to 10^18 (or, to put it another way, several tens of millions of termites for every human).

Last of the Melbourne sprints, at Carlton Gardens. My main objective today was to see whether I could get through four days in a row (something I haven't done for a long time but will need to do at Easter). Loosened myself up enough in the warm-up to think I could make a go of that, and did, but the pace was pretty ordinary. At that speed I couldn't really afford to do things like run from 11 most of the way to 13 (through not concentrating at the junction rather than misreading the leg per se). Some decent route choices to make use of a small area with some interesting angled laneways (a pity we couldn't go into the buildings north of Elgin Street as we did in training last year, but crossing Elgin Street isn't practical in an organised event).

Today's entry in the list of juniors blowing me away in the finish chute: Maya Bennette (W14, I think). W14s have been blowing me away in finish chutes since at least 2008 so I'm not too specifically concerned about this.

First sighting at an event for a while: Adrian Jackson, taking his son (who I'd guess would be about 6) around.