Tuesday Oct 14 |
 | Run intervals 38:00 [4]9 km (4:13 / km) | |
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| Fartlek on the old course. A bit more lively than some recent sessions but still not quite at the level I would like (9.19 fastest). Feeling as if I was attacking the hills with a certain amount of vigour, though.
Mystery of the day: why is it that I can break 5 min/km in a technical sprint at Cantara Dunes but not at the Maryborough Showgrounds? |
Monday Oct 13 |
| Swimming 31:00 [2]1 km (31:00 / km) | |
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| A nice session at Fitzroy as the change came through, feeling stronger in the water than in recent weeks. They've finally got their changeroom renovations finished too (started May, target completion date June, actually finished October).
There was a piece in yesterday's "Age" evaluating the claims of real estate agents that certain premises were within "walking distance" of shops/schools/other facilities (you'll be shocked to learn that many such claims required a very generous definition of walking distance). Obviously someone hasn't been reading this as I saw a property on the way into work this morning whose 'for sale' sign promised, among other things, "stroll to exclusive schools". I'm sure the nearest school, Westgarth Primary, would be flattered to hear itself described as "exclusive" (and even Westgarth Primary is a kilometre away). The nearest non-Catholic private school is Alphington Grammar, about 2.5km away, and on the evidence I see regularly whilst commuting, the only thing Alphington Grammar has exclusivity on is the worst standard of driving of any school community in Melbourne (among other things, one of the teachers managed to accidentally squash a Year 1 a few years back). |
| Run 38:00 [2]7 km (5:26 / km) | |
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| A Monday night session from Zuzana's in Coburg. Easy even by Monday night standards, which was as well because I was feeling pretty ordinary (almost certainly related to a big lunch at work). Interrupted with some exercises in the middle which tested me rather more severely - arm and upper-body strength are not exactly my most sterling qualities. |
Sunday Oct 12 |
| Run race ((orienteering)) 58:39 [4]**** 7.1 km (8:16 / km) +200m 7:14 / km | |
| spiked:16/21c |
| A longer course getting into the more complex and heavily vegetated parts of Cantara. Nowhere near as good a run as yesterday, never capturing quite the level of mental intensity (which probably had something to do with its being a less significant race). Missed 90 seconds at 4, the first difficult control, having failed to register that it was very close to one of yesterday's controls (and been confused by a depression when the "knoll" I thought I was looking for had its tag-line buried under the red line). Held it together through most of the course after that until the last bit, but then blew a minute on 19 and two on 20, turning what would have been a reasonably narrow loss to Simon into a substantial one (52 to 58).
It's definitely a fun area to run on if you approach it in a certain state of mind. The vegetation is probably too much of a lottery now for the less open areas to be used for a championship, but it's a definite challenge trying to stay in contact when you're continually being pushed off line. Pleased to have come. Also a novelty to get home from an interstate O trip before dark (more or less).
Oddity of the trip 1: the pint-sized school bus shelter on the road west of Frances (on the SA-Vic border). It looked just tall enough for a five-year-old - perhaps it hadn't occurred to its builder that the five-year-old would be six next year.
Oddity of the trip 2: Sophie Arthur (not quite two) obviously hasn't yet quite worked out that not every mid-thirties man wearing an MFR top and running towards her is Daddy.
Oddity of the trip 3: seeing a minibus-load of men (probably a football team on their way back from some serious drinking) relieving themselves en masse by the side of the highway between Horsham and Stawell. |
Saturday Oct 11 |
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| Event: SA Sprint Champs
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| Run race ((orienteering)) 14:47 [4]**** 3 km (4:56 / km) +70m 4:25 / km | |
| spiked:16/17c |
| SA Sprint Champs at Cantara. Perhaps my best run in Australia this year - a high level of mental intensity from the start, flowing nicely and running strongly. It helped that I had Jim to chase through the middle of the course (something other than the terrain and the quality of the run that today had in common with the middle part of the WMOC sprint final). Only one very slight miss, and that was only a few seconds. 47 seconds is definitely as close as I've been to Simon for a long time. |
Friday Oct 10 |
| Swimming 32:00 [2]1 km (32:00 / km) | |
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| Back in Melbourne briefly and did a monring session at Richmond. Good loosener, but faded away after a promising start. |
Thursday Oct 9 |
| Run 1:51:00 [3]23 km (4:50 / km) | |
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| Out early this morning and got what will probably be my last taste of frost for 2008. Started out around the east side of Bendigo (complete with some kangaroos around the La Trobe student residences), then up through Ironbark and Golden Square before finishing through Diamond Hill. A little longer than planned because I'd forgotten how far south the mine extended.
A fairly lacklustre run for the most part, without a lot of hill strength, although better than the equivalent effort last week. Picked up a bit in the last quarter.
Finished up at the Elmore Field Days today, which was a reasonably intense days, featuring some long conversations, some of them very interesting (the former Nationals MP for Swan Hill, now heavily involved in the northern Victorian irrigation project which includes the north-south pipeline, something that has placed him very much at odds with his former colleagues) and some of them very uninteresting (someone of reasonably advanced years who expounded his theories of the universe to us for 45 minutes non-stop). There's no rest for the wicked - I'm off to Cantara tomorrow night.
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| C • Wicked? 1 |
Wednesday Oct 8 |
| Run 47:00 [3]8 km (5:52 / km) +180m 5:17 / km | |
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| Early morning terrain run on Diamond Hill, sort of running controls from the 1990 Vic Champs course (or at least such parts of the course as haven't disappeared into the mine). Not a bad run, although a bit tentative in the rougher and thicker stuff - a bad habit I get into in non-flat-out runs in terrain. |
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