Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Sprint training at Uni of Canberra. Didn't feel as if I was going all that fast, but handling the navigation OK (a bit more local knowledge than last year helps).

As those who've been following a somewhat feisty discussion on my Facebook page will know, I've been doing a bit of work lately investigating the meteorological background to the 1851 Victorian bushfires, which has involved a fair bit of newslpaper-trawling. Just to show that some things don't change, the big news of the day (before the fires started) was a move by the liquor licensing authorities to control rowdy behaviour at the races by banning the sale of alcohol at the St. Kilda racecourse.

The orienteering race at the Stromlo Running Festival. Felt ordinary from start to finish and got a very ordinary result (although it looked a bit worse than it was because I think most other people took at least one route through the "uncrossable" marsh). It's tempting to blame the heat (34) but the problem with that was that I felt as bad at the start as I did later. Also got tangled up a couple of times in awkward erosion gully crossings - I don't recall it being as junky as that in 1991 (and it probably wasn't).

Was a bit surprised that Simon sat behind me for most of the last loop - I suspected (correctly) that he wasn't trying all that hard at the time. Made a silly mistake on a late control which saw him go through me. A pretty disappointing effort.

Event: Stromlo Running Festival
 

Swim at Ivanhoe before hitting the road for Canberra. Felt very sluggish early on but settled down OK.

Stopped off at Benalla to check potential control sites for the sprint. The grass isn't anywhere near as bad as it was at the end of November; what it will be like in early October is anyone's guess.

First foray into Night-O for a very long time, at Bluetts West - so long that I suspect at least one of the participants hadn't been born the last time I did one.

I don't normally run on Fridays these days and treated it as a slow training session. This meant I fell off the pack immediately, but it also meant I was out on my own which meant I think I got more out of it technically than would have been the case in a pack. Only one control where I had any substantial trouble, although a couple of others which I was grateful to see. Only ran one of the two loops.

The latest chapter in my experiment with long interval sessions - 20 x 400 at the Clifton Hill track on a 2.5 minute cycle. Really happy with how this went - unlike last week, never really tired during the session until the last couple of reps, and never slowed down at all.

I wasn't quite sure what pace I could sustain during this session; after the inevitable slow first one, I settled into about an 83-84 pace which dropped to 81-82 by number 9 and stayed there; this is probably about 3km pace for me these days, perhaps even a little faster. Still holding 82s on the 19th and 20th reps, although it was getting harder to hold it together on the final straight by then. Definitely good to have a session where I stressed my body and it responded positively, and a good counter to the equivalent session last week.

Warm up/down from the intervals session. Starting to feel a bit wobbly on the way home, a pretty good indicator of having worked hard during the session.

I'll be on the 7.30 report either tonight or Monday night (depending on what other stories come up - the interview was recorded on Tuesday). Might get a few people excited, although I don't think I said anything especially controversial.

Morning run after a very poor night's sleep which I'll probably pay for this afternoon. As seems to be usual these days, took a while to loosen up but reasonable once I did, gradually gaining pace but never particularly fast. Dealing with a strange foreign substance falling out of the sky for much of the run.

On the way into work, saw a few people who clearly hadn't read the piece in the Herald-Sun about the corner of Flinders and William Streets playing host to one of the state's most lucrative red-light cameras.

Street-O at Forest Hill. Got caught by surprise by the 'go' signal and found myself 50 metres behind Adam almost immediately. I wasn't making any inroads on that after four controls (and was also struggling to make ground on the bunch of Scotch boys just behind) and went for the radical-route-choice option, thereby finding myself on my own (at least as far as A course runners were concerned) for the rest of the night. From there the question was going to be how the route choice (one of several options on an interesting course) worked out. As it happened it didn't make a lot of difference as our options were of similar length (although Andrew Baker found one a couple of hundred metres shorter). I next saw Adam on an in-and-out exiting from what was my second last, and knew then that I had no chance - the gap was about 45 seconds in the end, I think. Not sure what became of the Scotch boys but I assume they made a mistake somewhere.

Running solidly with similar pace to last week whilst going solo most of the way, but I'd still like to be much closer to 4 mins/km (as an aside, I suspect control punching is worth a minute or two over the course as plates on the ground require more slowing down than a stand does, but I've never tried to measure it). Had a couple of surges later on when participants 20 or more years younger than me on other courses (it was the first night of the schools comp) took my presence as an opportunity to sprint flat-out for 200 or 300 metres.

Stopped at a traffic light on the way home and put the time to good use taking a swig from my water bottle, then looked sideways and saw that the car in the next lane was occupied by a fellow participant doing the same thing.

The traditional fartlek loop at Banyule. Felt not-so-energetic on the warm-up, quite aggressive on the sprints themselves, but I must have taken a while to warm up because my time for the first loop was still pretty slow. The second loop was much more like it - 9.23 is not stellar but it's definitely an improvement on recent weeks. A pleasantly cool morning for the first time in a while.

Swim at Fitzroy. A promising start, putting some extra effort in to deal with a bit of slow traffic (yes, even slower than me) in the lane, but drifted back into the usual mode soon enough. A bit of top-of-foot soreness in the right foot for no obvious reason (particularly as it wasn't detectable either walking or running) - felt a bit like the Birdsville Track syndrome (overuse of accelerator foot) of the July 2007 trip.

A lunchtime run because of a meeting this evening, which meant confronting some reasonably hot conditions (32 degrees). Felt rather dry, especially later on, but running reasonably smoothly. Might cause a bit of confidence to return for hot-weather running after some bad recent experiences.

This evening's map-and-fire update - I suspect a fairly significant part of Lake Wombat has burnt. This fire is likely to cause trouble further south on Friday.

Mass start multi-loop race at Smiths Reef. Turned what would have been a reasonable race into a poor one with a silly mistake with a kilometre to go - I failed to notice that I was heading for an extra control before a common one and was therefore looking on the wrong side of a spur (where the common control was). This cost a minute or a bit over, and dropped me from one bunch to the next.

I was OK at cruising speed but struggling to find a higher gear, which was a problem on the hills, and in the predictably-frenetic mass start. After a first loop battling with people I should have been ahead of, things settled down early on the second loop. On the first long leg a bunch of six formed, but this split into three parts - Liggo/Kathryn, myself and Matt Schepisi, and Max and Adam. Our pair took the lead in this section (there were another 5 ahead of us), and the next 3k was a good stretch, starting to get Robbie in sight. I thought Matt might crack because a couple of times he dropped back and surged again to catch me, but he held it together, and we were set for a three-way battle with Liggo (who had recaught us after losing time on the long leg) when I had my misadventure on a brief split where they had the other option. Kathryn and David Brownridge went through me there too; I got back onto both of them by the second-last through small errors on their part, but lost the sprint. I think this is the first time Kathryn's claimed my scalp, although there have been a few near-misses in the last couple of years.

The result was not a disaster, but I wasn't happy with the way I was running at high intensity, and will want to be in better shape in four weeks' time.

C • Bushrangers v Demons 3

C • you'd better get used to 2

Event: BendiGoToDay
 

An early morning hit-out at Yea. Went out without having eaten much due to a sequence of events which started with the milk turning into an iceblock in the fridge overnight, but it didn't seem to make much difference. I headed north towards the Goulburn River, which I expected to be flat but wasn't - no bad thing, getting to cruise along an undulating country dirt road - a nice place to run.

The hostility I'd anticipated in Yea didn't materialise. In part it's probably because people in a small town are more inclined to be nice to outsiders when most of said outsiders at the moment are bushfire survivors or firefighters and not from the big, bad city (one also has to be cautious about viewing the letters pages of the 'Weekly Times' as a representative sample of local public opinion), but tensions also appear to have eased since the fires, due in no small measure to the role of pipeline equipment and crews in saving several dozen houses. One wonders if the campaign will return to its previous militancy, which has seen a couple of actual acts of violence and many more threats of it (at the very least one would hope all concerned now realise that throwing Molotov cocktails at rural construction sites in mid-summer is a really stupid idea).

I've also learned a new real estate euphemism. "Park-like appearance" = "no feed for stock".

Sprint of the Bendigo 2-Day. Navigated OK, felt terrible - not sure of the reason (if any), although being on my feet for most of the day at the Seymour field days - which were a good deal quieter than anticipated - didn't help. Almost got onto the back of Robbie early on after he made a mistake, but couldn't match pace with him, and ended up with a pretty disappointing result.

The map was the wrong scale by 50% (advertised 1:5000, actually 1:3333 or thereabouts), but I didn't notice until afterwards and I don't think too many others did either.

Early session at Ivanhoe before heading up to Seymour. Felt reasonable but kept misjudging the lane ends. A bit of hip soreness at one point but that disappeared early.

Another long set of intervals on the Tan (as with last week, 1k on, 250 off). Didn't feel great in the warm-up, started the session a bit faster than last time but quickly dropped away - obviously having the Hoggster around last week made a difference (and I think I ran harder in the last part of last night, too, than the preceding Wednesday). Whatever the cause, I seized up after 6 reps rather than 8 like last week. Still feeling my way in a rather experimental session. Average km time 3.50, 4 seconds slower than last week (losing more time on the downhills than the uphills).

Again no sign of tightness in the calf, so it looks like that was a one-day wonder.

Now off for a couple of days working at the Bureau's stand at the Seymour Field Days. This will be more challenging than usual as I suspect that there will be some pretty raw emotions in that part of the world, given the impact of fires on the surrounding area - I suspect we'll get some wild praise and equally wild criticism. We're staying in Yea on the Friday night which could have its own challenges; for some time it has been a place where being from Melbourne and from the government is an open invitation to have one's facial features forcibly rearranged (it's in our interests to make sure people know we're federal and not state). At least with the number of outsiders in town (thanks to the fires) we won't stand out as much.

C • What happened to public sector solidarity? 3

Going to/from the Tan - a longer distance than usual because I was getting my car serviced and started/finished near there. Didn't feel great on the warm-up, and as tired as last week coming home.

At the end of the day, it took an hour to drive 16km home from Docklands. How do people do this every day?

Street-O at Gardiners Bend. One of the better contests I've been in for a while but disappointed that the result didn't go the right way in the end.

Didn't get much of a warmup (no) thanks to Connex, but settled down quickly. Got a bit of a jump on Adam en route to the second control by seeing a gap in a fence, but expected him to come back at me quite quickly. He didn't, instead letting the gap grow to about 50 metres as I settled into a nice rhythm. I had a go at surging on a hill in the middle but got no further ahead, after which it wasn't surprising that he pulled me in. The gap was down to about 20 metres at the 13th control when he somewhat surprisingly pulled off - the safe option for him was to stay with me and run over the top at the end. As it was, his option was slightly longer - enough to see him come into the last control 30-40 metres behind with 3400 to go. I was running pretty well by that stage (having had to do some fancy footwork to stay out of the way of a learner driver who hasn't yet learned the bit about left-turning vehicles giving way to pedestrians), but still thought I'd struggle to defend that and so it proved. Adam almost went too early; after getting in front he slowed a bit towards the line and I nearly pulled him in, but fell a metre short.

This is the sharpest I've felt for several weeks, although the loss may be important in the context of the pointscore (Bryan is probably out of the picture because of injury).

There was a silence at the start. The losses of the last fortnight hit home last night as I was collating the results for the next newsletter and dealing with the three names who won't be back next season (two fire, one cancer).

No sign of any of the tightness from yesterday.

Like Bruce, I seem to be afflicted with wandering tightness at the moment (although not as badly as him) - today's hot spots were the groin and calf. Loosened up once I got going, though. Found some unexplored (for me) terrain at the south end of Richmond, plus a long stretch on the Gardiners Creek path - it's great to see so many people riding, but sometimes it doesn't make for the most comfortable of running environments. Managed to miss most of the traffic.

250 on/250 off at the Tan. Felt excellent in the warm-up but not so good when it came to converting that into actual speed, although a bit better later on. A reminder as to how much the Hoggster pushed me on last week (a reminder I'll probably get again when I attempt to repeat last week's session this Thursday).

Timetable a bit rearranged today and tomorrow due to some dental work.

Going to/from the Tan. Pity I didn't feel this good when it counted.

It's not exactly 46, but 30 degrees with light winds in the middle of the day is still reasonably warm.

At Hawthorn. A pleasant enough session without being especially sparkling or pushing too hard.

In a piece in yesterday's paper about the cost of food and drinks at the football (something which pops up annually at about this time of year), a spokesperson for the caterers blamed the increase on increases in fresh food prices due to the drought. If anybody has ever actually made a confirmed sighting of any fresh food at the football I'd be interested to know about it.

C • Excuses 8

Monday night from the new Allston abode in Surrey Hills in mostly new company (good to see an influx of new blood into MFR). Thought I'd feel better early on than I did - given that my long run was two days ago, not one like it normally is - but settled into a reasonable flow in the second half. Ended up running away from the bunch, which declined to take the opportunities I gave them to catch up, but still reasonably slow.

There's a semi-apocalyptic air about Melbourne at the moment. There isn't as much smoke as there was over the weekend, but the grass is scorched, a lot of the plants are scorched, the skies are again cloudless and the place has the feel of sliding into a desert. We must be acclimatising because tonight's 28 degrees felt reasonably cool.

C • Apocalypse 4

Originally planned a terrain run at Macedon before the VOA meeting, but neither of my companions, Bruce (who turned back early after a twinge) and Jim, brought gear for this, so we hit the tracks instead. A not-particularly-brilliant run, especially on the hills - not surprising after a hard day yesterday. Only minor traces on steep downhills of the hamstring soreness from yesterday.

Heard an ad on the radio advertising a business at Cranbourne as '30 minutes from the CBD'. Cranbourne is 48 kilometres from the CBD. They must drive faster than I do.

C • Yeah.. doesn't help that th... 1

Went long this morning because of the VOA meeting tomorrow. Doing a long run on Saturday is a bit like seeing your football team win on Friday night (which also happened) - you feel as if you've got something good under your belt before the weekend has really started.

This run was flowing well at times but patchy at others, and the last third wasn't that brilliant, although the hills went OK. Some hamstring tightness in the last half-hour but it doesn't seem to have persisted after cooling down, which suggests that nothing is badly wrong.

The smoke in Melbourne is the heaviest it's been so far since the fires, although not yet as bad (at least in my area) as it got at times in December 2006. We might as well get used to it because it's probably not going anywhere until late next week.

Took a slightly roundabout route to the pool this morning after being diverted by the remnants of our very own bushfire - a not-terribly-significant five-hectare grass fire on the Yarra Flats at Ivanhoe yesterday afternoon. (My place must have been directly downwind of it because it was full of smoke when I got home last night).

Swim had a very ordinary start; after the first couple of laps, still felt as if I was flailing around a bit (to a greater extent than usual) but settled into a reasonable pace.

Our conference finished today - it's always awkward having a conference on home ground because you feel as if you should be doing your normal job as well. Found myself in one session sitting next to Stacey Dravitzki - I didn't think there could be too many Dravitzkis in NZ so I wasn't too surprised to find out she's Karl's sister. This in turn meant I could use 'I've been zapped by one of your electric fences' as a line in introductory conversation (my altercation with said fence taking place during the 1995 Turkey Traverse, which was partly on their property).

C • smooth 4

As an experiment, for the next few weeks in the sharpening period I intend to replace my midweek long run with a long speed session. This was the first of its type and was a bit of an experiment to see what I could handle, based on the Tan.

I had Hoggster for company which was good - wouldn't have been able to push so hard on my own. Original plan was for 8-9 1km reps at about 4.00 pace with 250 recovery in between, but it ended up being a good deal faster than that - averaging about 3.46 which is close to my 10k race pace. Was certainly starting to tire in the later reps, but not losing any pace which is encouraging. Definitely my best session in a couple of weeks and will give me a bit of confidence which has been sorely lacking of late.

Going to/from the Tan, via a more roundabout route than usual to meet Hoggster. Felt very tired coming home - the last surge may not have felt too bad but it was quickly apparent that I'd left everything on the course, which was part of the objective of the exercise.

Sights of an early Thursday morning in the big city: two well-proportioned (and probably well-lubricated) women, wearing high-visibility vests and not a great deal else, gradually disrobing on a Flinders Street tram stop in front of an appreciative audience of construction workers on the building site opposite.

C • I didn't need the mental image! 5

From Clifton Hill up the Yarra and back through Northcote. Rather tight and slow through the first half, loosened up after that. Quite good in the last 20 minutes, although the picking up of pace might have had something to do with the realisation that I was running a bit late for a conference session I was hoping to get to. (One of the drawbacks of a conference on home ground - especially one that's only 10 minutes' walk from the office - is that you find yourself still doing at least some of yuor normal job).

Passed a car late in the piece which sported a sticker advertising a probably non-existent business in a non-existent town.

Street-O at Kew East. 15 degrees cooler than last week (and 25 cooler than two weeks ago). I thought the field would be stronger than usual given the location, and it was, a bit.

Everyone went the same way at the start and we settled into a nice pace before most of us bungled our route to 11. The field gradually split up on route choices after that and I eventually found myself on my own around halfway. With four controls to go I saw Adam and Bryan - too far away to catch but the possibility existed that I was a control ahead of them. I wasn't. I then proceeded to lose another place by overrunning the last control and then being confused by the description 'power pole #3' when I was standing outside number 14 (it turned out that number 14 got its number from the side street).

This was a disappointing result (which is the flipside of somehow getting 199 points from two shockers). Still not as fast as I'd like but a much better run physically than the last couple.

It is still taking time for the scale of what has happened to sink in, slowly. There is a sign at the bottom of my street, 'Yarra Glen 37'. It is impossible at the moment to see that and not think about what has unfolded within those thirty-seven kilometres. (There are still few visible signs of the events in inner Melbourne - some hints of smoke on the horizon - but that will change when the winds go around to the northeast at the end of the week).

The run wasn't very good, again rather slow and sluggish (fastest loop 9.40). Leg muscles feeling a bit stiff.

Lunchtime run in the middle of a conference. Pretty tired today after working until 11 last night putting together a report on all the records broken during the weekend (although nowhere near as tired as those people will be who've spent twice as long at firefronts). A pretty sluggish run throughout.

The conference I'm at is an international conference on Southern Hemisphere meteorology and oceanography (Hoggster's here as well). I had the bright idea yesterday of organising a special session on meteorological aspects of Saturday's events. The conference organisers were very enthusiastic about it and you might think that it was an initiative that might be greeted positively by our superiors, but you'd be wrong - instead it's become another chapter in my intermittently considerable talent for upsetting senior management (or at least the don't-say-anything-to-anyone-about-anything-until-the-coroner-reports-in-10-years-time faction of it). Seem to have found a way around it by getting non-Bureau speakers for the fire weather parts.

C • Are they the same ones 3

At Fitzroy. Forgot to add this the first time.

Not quite what I'd hoped for at this point in the season, but after the last 10 days I'll settle for it.

Down (briefly) at Blairgowrie, sandwiched between sessions at work in the afternoons today and yesterday. Didn't get a lot of sleep last night for reasons vaguely related to the bushfires (at the start of the night through thinking about it, at the end thanks to a 5.45 a.m. media call), but it didn't seem to affect the run greatly. Nice conditions for running with light rain for much of the time.

It wasn't always the smoothest of runs and at times it was hard work in patches of soft sand (especially on the Portsea back beach because it was high tide). Endurance held out OK for the first two hours but faded away after that. My original thoughts were to definitely aim for 2.30, and then if I felt good take it out towards 3.00, but in the end I settled for the lower end rather than the higher.

Obviously the fires have been at the top of everyone's mind here today, although in central Melbourne, if you weren't following the news, you could imagine that not much had happened - the smoke has not come here. Information is still pretty patchy but I don't think there's much left of the forests north-east of Melbourne as far north as the Goulburn River and Lake Eildon (or of the towns contained therein, notably Kinglake and Marysville).

As far as the orienteering community is concerned, Hania Lada lives at Kinglake (or did the last time I was in touch with her), which pretty much no longer exists. I don't know of any others in that area (I think the fire has stayed north of the Whitfords at Steels Creek). I also don't know of any in the area that has been burnt out in Bendigo (Maiden Gully was affected but in the area east of the Barr/Flynn residence).

As far as I know none of the major Victorian foot-O maps have been affected, although some MTBO ones have.

In the temperature records department, there has been an all-time record in Victoria (48.8 at Hopetoun), a February record for SA (48.2), and a stack of records for individual locations. Of the 31 sites in Victoria that have 30 years or more of data and reported yesterday, 21 set all-time records, 5 February record, and only 5 (in the far northeast and southwest, plus Gabo Island) missed altogether. Relatively few all-time records in other states this time, although Wagga got one.

C • New Saint Mungo Map 22

A pretty strong incentive to get out early this morning - I thought the forecast of 44 (which is bad enough) was conservative, and it has proved to be so (46.0 as I write, highest on record for Melbourne). "Only" about 27 while I was running but the northerly had just started to kick in as I finished.

The run was pretty ordinary - not surprising coming off the long run yesterday, something I don't normally do. Not especially concerned by this.

Hope everybody manages to stay safe over the coming hours. This is a day unlike anything we have ever experienced (in recorded history) in this part of the world. As I write, 6 of the 14 long-term Victorian sites have set all-time records, and between 3 and 5 more will probably do so before the day is over.

C • bushfires 6

That's more like it. A long run which went fairly smoothly throughout, with no drama and feeling as good as (or better than) I did in the first 10 minutes in the last 10. Slower than it felt, but doing the first half-hour in the dark may partially explain that.

Had to wade at times through mountains of fallen leaves. It looks like April in many of the suburbs at the moment. By the middle of next week it will feel like April too, but we've got tomorrow to get through first...

C • Where 3

As noted in yesterday's log, decided to swap this with the usual Thursday session (which will happen tomorrow). Felt strange getting up as late as 5.50 on a Thursday. Felt OK on the swim (certainly less exhausted than when I fell into bed last night having battled to stay awake until 10).

Saturday's forecast looks even uglier than it did this time yesterday. A fire danger index of 50 or above constitutes an extreme fire danger rating. The Ballarat forecast for Saturday is 296....(and I think 43 is at the lower end of the plausible range of possibilities for Melbourne's temperature). At least by Monday the Great Heatwave of 2009 will be an unpleasant memory.

A more encouraging run than some of late. Not always smooth but decent strength on the hills on a run that was hillier than most I've done recently. Looks slow but there were quite a few letterbox stops mixed in with that.

Something I'm seeing more of on the way into work is organisations with their own bike tops. In recent weeks I've seen tops promoting such august organisations as the SES and the Magistrates Court of Victoria. Today's haul was the Riga Port Authority (in Latvian colours) and a skin cancer clinic (perhaps surprisingly the latter wasn't long sleeved). Perhaps we should have a Bureau of Meteorology one, with something on the back saying 'Don't blame us for the headwind/rain/extreme heat/extreme cold/thunderstorm/cyclone (delete where inapplicable)'.

Two steps forward the last couple of days, but definitely a step back tonight.

This was a Summer Series event at Yarran Dherran, which I don't think I've run on in about a decade. It's always been hilly, and now it has a freeway spaghetti junction in the middle of it. This made for some extremely convoluted legs (the two controls 100 metres apart in a straight line, but on opposite sides of a 10-metre high noise wall, were particularly tricky - I dropped one of them and gained the benefits). It was 10 degrees cooler than last week, but 32 (with fairly high humidity for Melbourne) is definitely still on the warm side.

I started out moderately; didn't have a lot of energy in the first third, and then a little before halfway started to feel the beginnings of a cramp in the same place as last Thursday. This immediately sounded the alarm Danger! Danger! Danger!, and I backed right off. It didn't recur but the second half of the course was definitely a struggle. I must have got something right with the route, though, because I might have won (I certainly beat Adam and Bryan, but on such a slow night it's quite possible that someone not normally on the radar got the lot of us).

Saturday looks really nasty - on current forecasts just about the worst fire weather day in recorded Victorian history. Hopefully arsonists sleep in very late on weekends. At least that's it - the first half of next week looks quite cool.

I obviously haven't progressed as far as I thought. I'm going to defer tomorrow's planned long run until Friday, and my plans for the weekend must be in some doubt too.

C • Maybe 1

Normally I'd regard a run as slow as this (9.45) as a disappointment, but did have a feeling that I'd turned the corner - actually had a bit of energy on occasions today, for the first time since last Thursday. Not exactly happy days are here again, but a sign of some progress at least.

We're starting to hear a bit more about some of the underlying reasons for the various heatwave-related problems which happened last week. One which I had thought a bit strange was that Basslink (the power connection between Tasmania and Victoria) had shut down after exceeding its design specifications. The Adelaide 'Advertiser' tracked down what those specifications are - it closes down when it exceeds 33 degrees at George Town. (The 'Advertiser', who apparently thought that power destined for Adelaide was being siphoned off to power George Town's air conditioners, bizarrely portrayed it as 'a small Tasmanian town holding Adelaide to ransom'). This raises the question of why the design limit is 33 degrees - a strange decision when heatwaves are when fortunes are made - and lost - in the electricity industry. (Electricity is the most volatile commodity in human history, 17th century Dutch tulips included).

I suspect what's happened is that whoever was planning the system used data for the closest site to George Town. This happens to be Low Head, a few kilometres away on the open coast, which has never been above 29.5. However, on hot days the local temperature gradients on Tasmania's north coast are steep (something I'm well aware of from preparing replies to complaints from Devonport-based politicians about their town's low summer temperatures), and it would be by no means unusual for George Town to be anything from 5-10 degrees hotter than Low Head. It's interesting to think that if someone had bothered to talk to me (or one of my colleagues) at the planning stage, (a) most of the blackouts during the day on Thursday and Friday wouldn't have happened (Friday night's were for other reasons) and (b) Hydro Tasmania would have cleaned up - from my back-of-the-envelope calculations, to the tune of several million dollars - from selling power into the top of the market.

C • Design temperatures 11

Still flat and listless - if it's a weather issue then Sunday can't come fast enough. Went out in the morning as there was no Monday night run this week (this was as well as I was still working at 7.15 - crunching numbers on the heatwave report we'll be putting out on Wednesday). Still very humid.

Signs of last week are everywhere, especially crunchy yellow grass - even inner-city parks feel like you could just about set them on fire with a spike mark in the wrong place. I can only imagine what it's like in the bush. At least I didn't see any dead wildlife, unlike yesterday when we encountered a disturbingly large collection of ex-bats along the Yarra.

Leg two of the occasional Monday morning triathlon. A slow session with my left arm even more useless than usual. Fitzroy Pool felt warmer than usual, which is not altogether surprising when the average daily temperature (day and night) for the last five days has been 31 (what are Adelaide pools like?).

Just in case I had any lingering ideas of doing 3 hours today, was feeling a little out of sorts when I got up.

This was a Fairfield-based run, started out with 30 minutes on my own then with a group which eventually dwindled to Bruce and Hanny. Ordinary start, at its best through the middle third, then a bit of a battle later on - definitely glad I was doing two hours rather than three (and still really weak up hills, even the modest ones on offer on this run). A slightly faster pace than usual on the small tracks, which were even dustier than two weeks ago. Cooler than it has been, but very humid - after a week of impersonating Marble Bar Melbourne is now impersonating Brisbane.