Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Probably the best that can be said for this run is that it demonstrated that I'd given yesterday everything that I had. (Not getting home until 11.30 - or 1.30am NZ time - after a delayed flight probably didn't help, although at least one presumes that no WMOC people were on the mid-afternoon Jetstar flight which ended up being 10 hours late...).

The day had got off to such a positive start too - went to the newsagent just after opening time to get the paper and was behind someone who was there to collect his winnings from division 2 of Tattslotto, and was clearly very pleased about it. (I'm not sure what division 2 of Tatts is worth these days but I'm guessing several thousand - too much for them to pay out on the spot, at any rate).

I then spent the later part of the day watching Essendon (in person) and the Brumbies (on TV) performing in the afternoon much as I had in the morning.

WMOC long final, 17th. I'd have taken that result before the start of this week (and even more so before the start of last week) after a difficult summer; it wasn't a perfect run and I never felt especially sharp, but kept plugging away and the only major time loss was 90 seconds or so on the low-visibility 23 (a control which troubled others too, most notably Grant who thinks he lost 10 minutes there).

2 was a long leg largely on tracks which gave me a chance to plan and settle after a somewhat unconfident 1. In general I used tracks a lot, partly for safety, partly because, although the coastal macrocarpa was very open underneath, I expected that going up and down the dunes would be draining after a while. Eric went through me at 7 (a bit earlier than I'd expected, so he must have started well), then I started seeing a lot more people after 14 when we got into the area where people who started from start 2 went (tried not to get rattled by the proportion of them who were running faster than me). The train went through me at 18 but this one definitely wasn't stopping at my station (contained three coming from behind me, plus the fast-but-erratic Swede who started two minutes before me whom I must have gone through at some stage, and I seemed to be tiring a bit in the last 20 minutes.

Probably couldn't have got above 14th even with a good run. As noted above Grant had a bad run, and Jon must have too because he was about 5 minutes behind me after being that margin ahead of me in both qualifiers. Eric best Australian at 11th; Ivaylo Ivanov beat Carsten by 10 seconds with a time around 65.

It's a little unusual to have as much a feature race of the season as a WMOC final so early in the year. Will probably have a fairly quiet week before launching back into training, with some level of confidence that my body can now support a reasonable training load. Doing NSW Championships in two weeks (21s in the middle, 45s in the long) and QB3, but otherwise most of what I'm building to from here is in late winter or spring.

Bizarre stat of the day: #23, my most significant error of the day navigation-wise, was my best split placing of the day (12th). (The AP splits show me with a bigger time loss on #5 and #7, but #5 was mostly a route choice, #7 was getting caught in some green).

When virtually the entire field in a WMOC A final, which presumably contains some competent navigators, loses time on a control (Ivaylo Ivanov did in the 1.20s and no-one else broke 2), it does make you think something was a bit odd. (My feeling is that it was probably the mapping of the vegetation boundary, which I and probably most others used as an attack point, relative to the control feature). Doesn't take away from an excellent event.

Long - Final - Men 45 Final A - Splits

No formal training today, but some walking (not as much as the Tongariro Crossing day), going out to Rangitoto Island with Jenny, Bruce and John. Somewhat chaotic getting there (first they told us that the 10.30 ferry was full and we'd have to wait until 12.15, then a couple of minutes later they announced they were bringing in a backup vessel), but nice once there.

It's the youngest volcano of the Auckland region, coming into existence about 600 years ago (no doubt much to the surprise of the then recently-settled Maori) and has only really become vegetated in the last 150 years, although there are still scattered areas of bare lava fields. I've been here before, on the 2005 trip, but was a bit limited in what I could do on that occasion with only one functional arm.

I gather a certain amount of work has been done in the emergency-management field as to what to do if a new volcano appears somewhere in the Auckland region (an entirely plausible scenario on geological timescales, if somewhat less probable in our lifetimes). I presume somewhat less planning has been done on a re-run of the 2nd/3rd century Lake Taupo eruption, as the only strategy which has any reasonable chance of success in that scenario is not to be in New Zealand (or at best to be in the south end of the South Island).

I've been doing a bit of work in idle times while here in gathering files for completing the OA results archive (and trying to track down results which have disappeared down dead weblinks - if any of the WA crowd know where the 2006 national carnival results are hiding, I'd be interested to know about it, although the sprint is on Winsplits and I already have the long and the schools, so the relays and the WA Champs are the only ones completely missing from my perspective). Some of the searches done during this process have taken me to the list of Australian orienteers who have Wikipedia pages. I get the impression a certain amount of piss-taking was involved in the creation of Grant's.

C • Archiving 4

WMOC second long qualifier. Did the necessary today with a generally conservative run - only needed to avoid major errors and did so, on an area which (in its first half) was steeper and more physical than yesterday. Only major time loss was perhaps 1.5 minutes on 13, on a combination of an unnecessarily wide route choice, drifting mid-leg and some hesitation in the circle. Was fairly cautious to make sure I knew what was up and what was down (not always easy on this map); will be interesting to see how I handle things with a more aggressive gear on Saturday. Steady physically but knew afterwards that I'd put in two pretty solid days.

Ended up qualifying 15th, at the head of a close bunch; will be happy if I can repeat that result on Saturday. To get to the top 10 will need an excellent run and probably some blowouts above me. Given that two weeks ago my goals were simply to make the two A finals, I'm reasonably happy with how the week has gone so far and feel as if I've got back to around where I was at nationals time last year, which is progress of a sort.

C • 15th 1

Long - Qualification 2 - Men 45 Heat 1 - Splits

WMOC first long qualifier at Woodhill. A couple of annoying mistakes late and lacking in pace, but 19th, 8 minutes inside the cut line (32nd), which should be more than enough barring disaster tomorrow. (Disaster in second WMOC long qualifiers has been known to happen).

2 was a long leg out to the coastal strip and I initially set off up the wrong track through the green (the real one being almost invisible) but picked it up fairly soon. Lacked confidence on the coastal strip - although we only had one control in the yellow, the scars of Wellington last year are still there - and was picked up by Rolf (1 minute) and Jon (2 minutes) by 3. Ran the next section pretty well and slipped back through those two when they missed 7 a little (Jon subsequently got through me on the long leg at 9, Rolf didn't). The last third was in the more standard pines - missed what should have been the easy 10 a little high (20 seconds or so), then had annoying 1-minuters at 14 and 16, not seeing the latter in the pampas grass despite going very close to it. Found something for the chute to get under 70. Carsten won in 54 (and I don't think Sticks, who had a good run, has claimed my scalp too many times before).

I wasn't amongst those called up for a drug test. One wonders if the way this works is that if you're old enough (say, over 70) and you don't test positive to anything, you're under suspicion for fibbing about your age.

Long - Qualification 1 - Men 45 Heat 1 - Splits

WMOC model event - a chance to explore the flatter bits of Woodhill and get a feel for some of the key aspects. Most of my NZ sanddune experience has been in Wellington, so the macrocarpa strip along the coast was different to what I expected - high trees with excellent visibility (definitely unlike Wellington). Another thing which is a bit different is that in Wellington the flat areas are very flat and their boundaries are often useful features, but at Woodhill the detail is more evenly spread - potentially unforgiving if you come unstuck.

Felt sluggish running, but that's often the way for a model event. Stopped off at Muriwai Beach on the way; a substantial proportion of Auckland's population was also there, it being a sunny public holiday.

WMOC sprint final. More of a running race than yesterday - particularly the park bits in the first few controls, but even the campus bits weren't as challenging as yesterday - certainly nothing remotely resembling a 'you can't there from here' leg today, and legs which I expected to have traps (e.g. the northwest approach to 11) didn't.

That didn't suit me as much as the second half of yesterday did, and I don't think I was running quite as well as yesterday either. Not quite precise on the early legs, and a couple of non-optimal routes (8 and 18) which perhaps cost me 5-10 seconds apiece, but fundamentally I wasn't competitive on speed. That was apparent early on, with Francois Leonard catching me at 9; we were around each other at various times through the rest of the course as he started making mistakes.

Ended up 25th, only beating three people apart from the mispunches, which is about the level this run was at.

I might not have had the greatest of days but many of my compatriots did (starting with Grant, who won our class). There were no fewer than 12 Australian gold medals out of a possible 23; no other country won more than two.

Sprint Final - Men 45 Final A - Splits

A couple of times in the last week I've been thinking that in my current form I was probably 1-2 minutes away from the qualifying cutoff in the World Masters sprint. That much was true, but what I wasn't expecting was that that was going to be 1-2 minutes (1.44 to be precise) on the right side of the cutoff - as it turned out, the first time I've qualified comfortably since 2011 (after scraping through with 10-15 seconds to spare in 2012, 2014 and 2015).

This was certainly a better run than either of my previous sprints on this trip. I feel as if my running has started to turn a bit of a corner in the last few days, and found the right pace for my current fitness level early on. The other aspect was to make sure I minimised my time loss, on a course which became very technical in the second half with many route-choice traps, and that mission was accomplished, with the only time losses being a few seconds where I wasn't absolutely sure a gap was legal and took the conservative option. Lots of runners around, and tried not to be too distracted by people on other courses, especially flying Kiwis (Alistair Cory-Wright in M50 went past me a few times); never saw anyone in my own class.

As an early starter, the next step was to see whether the run would be enough; it always looked like it would probably fall on the right side, but it took until the last quarter of the start list to be sure. Watching a marginal qualification situation involves looking at the number of remaining starters, knowing how many of them you need to beat and ticking off likely candidates; I wouldn't have put Carsten in that list, but he picked up the wrong map at the start and lost 3 minutes going back for the right one, finishing 10 seconds or so behind me. He'll set an early benchmark tomorrow.

The technical second half of the course definitely suited me more than the running race in Rotorua; I was 37th at control 13 (32nd is the cutoff), but 9th over the remainder of the course. Now to see what tomorrow brings. Having not expected to qualify I didn't bring any real expectations, but now that I have qualified, beating my qualifying result (20th) is the target.

Lots of good Australian results today, particularly but not only from the younger classes, and I think we can reasonably expect at least three or four gold medals tomorrow.

Sprint Qualification - Men 45 Heat 1 - Splits

Event: World Masters Orienteering Championships 2017
 

Stayed at Mount Maunganui last night, a place I had previously associated principally with 1 January news stories which begin "(insert large number here) people were arrested...". There was rather less debauchery (or evidence of recent debauchery) on display on an early morning in April, just a long beach to the Mount - the driftwood always makes NZ beaches, even in developed resorts like this - seem wilder than ours.

Headed up with Jenny to the base of the Mount; the track around the base is still closed due to landslides and neither of us fancied taking on the summit (the summit track was busy with walkers in any case), so we came back on the port side. Felt quite lively at times this morning - certainly more so than yesterday - which is a positive sign for tomorrow.

Headed up to Auckland during the rest of the day, as we did a passenger swap - I was rejoining my family, whilst Bruce was seeing the rest of his off at the airport. This transaction involved my getting the train up from the outer southern suburbs to where my parents are staying; the Auckland suburban rail system has certainly had a fair bit of work done on it (especially its stations) since I was last in these parts in 2005. Knowing the demographics of that part of town, it certainly didn't surprise me that there was only one other pakeha on the platform. (Apparently one of the challenges for Auckland public transport has been to convince whites that the trains aren't just for Maori and Pacific Islanders, a legacy of the fact that most of the main lines serve the heavily Maori/Islander southern suburbs).

Back into the redwoods with Jenny and Zara. The plan was to try to get to the top of the hill but we didn't quite work out the trail network (at this point we were off the orienteering map) and ended up coming from 3/4 of the way up the hill back down to the bottom, at which point we decided a second attempt was unwarranted. Certainly a very nice forest to run in and we weren't the only people doing it by any means. Strangely, I was struggling on the gentle climbs but handling the steeper ones (including stairs) much better.

I'd begun to suspect that my Garmin's distance measurement was beginning to behave somewhat erratically, and the fact that my distance was 500 metres shorter than Zara's tends to confirm that (the redwoods probably aren't hugely conducive to satellite detection either).

Spent the rest of the day making our way slowly to Mount Maunganui via various Rotorua attractions (although only once, at the gondola/luge place, did we partake in the numerous local opportunities to spend copious quantities of money).

C • Garmin 4

Roughly two years ago, I ran a WRE sprint in Switzerland, won in almost exactly the same time as today's, in a field with Fabian Hertner and Martin Hubmann at the front end. Nick Hann is good, but I don't think he's better than the aforementioned pair, which means that it's probably a fairly good indicator as to how much further I am off the pace this year that I was three minutes further back today than I was then. After last Friday I felt that I needed to find another 1-2 minutes if I want to have a realistic chance of qualifying on Sunday, and today did nothing to disabuse me of that notion.

This was something of a running race, without much in the way of complex route choice, although a few controls where you needed to look for the right place to come off the track into the vegetation. Lost a little time on 17 through mistaking a contour in dark green for a track and not being able to get through somewhere where I expected to, but otherwise I was generally just slow - perhaps I should have got that message when I was only just hanging on to Anna Fitzgerald through our apparently common first few controls.

We'd been warned in advance about the higher lake levels and large amounts of surface water (Rotorua has had 445mm of rain in the last 30 days), but it wasn't too bad with nothing more than ankle-deep. Sprints are prone to last-minute changes, but one problem we definitely don't have in Australia - at least not in my considerable experience of sprint controlling - is that of having to delete a control because of new geothermal activity around the control site.

There was a night market in one of the streets of Rotorua this evening. You'll be shocked to hear that a street with lots of food stalls in a place where lots of orienteers are currently based was a good place to see them. Also there was the leader of the NZ Labour Party (doing a "politics in the pub" night), but I left the politics for the locals this time round.

Sprint - Course 1 - Splits

I entered M21E for the midweek events months ago (before I knew I was going to spend most of the summer injured), and was wondering why I had this morning (especially when my back was sore after an hour standing up with the mike before I ran). Thought I'd go out to enjoy myself, and cut it short if either I stopped enjoying myself or it was hurting too much.

I did enjoy myself. It was a scrappy run technically, but then the flatter parts of the terrain were difficult to be precise in. My worst section of the course was the first part of the redwoods - dropped about 4 minutes to those around me between 12 and 16, including probably 2.5 minutes on 14 (an over-ambitious straight option and pulled up short in a featureless area) and a very silly small overshoot of the road crossing control. Wasn't particularly looking forward to the final sector in the green but in fact this was my best part of the course - it was slow but you could keep moving (or alternatively often bail out to a walking/MTB track). My running also came good (relatively speaking) in this bit and I felt better in the last 10 minutes than I have since I've arrived - maybe I should walk across a mountain range the day before races more often. Was only a few from the bottom, but 13 minutes down on Bruce (compared with 20+ in the Oceania Middle and Long) probably puts some perspective on this run relative to the others.

Rotorua isn't quite as smelly as I remember it, but still definitely has plenty of steam appearing at random intervals (if you see a traffic cone randomly placed in a paved area it's probably covering up a vent).

Middle/Long - Course 1 - Splits

This is entered as a "rest day" on the basis that it didn't involve any "training", but it was a pretty solid day's work - doing the Tongariro Crossing walk, which is about 20km and predictably spectacular, climbing from 1100m to 1880m before dropping back to 750m. This is not exactly a solitary wilderness experience - heard somewhere that 4000 people per day walk it in peak season - but the crowds somehow didn't really spoil it (apart from occasionally getting in the way of photos). Found the first part of the descent on a steep volcanic sand surface a bit testing, but nothing to really bring into play my unease of sorts with heights.

Oceania Middle. A steep limestone area, mostly on farmland, and I simply couldn't handle running on the steep slippery ground - never felt as if I was running with any sort of confidence, despite feeling a little stronger than I have earlier in the week. The result was predictably abysmal. Possibly the lowlight was going in thigh-deep into a muddy marsh (although I did manage to extract myself, with some difficulty, without losing either shoe or SI stick). Didn't always feel confident navigating around the limestone, with a minute or so lost at 10 and smaller losses at 9 and 13 (12 I found OK, but negotiating the sheet-mud gully to get up to it was not a thing of beauty). I'd like to come back here when it's dry.

The conditions, both during this weekend and in the build-up to it, have created more than their share of challenges for the organisers (especially when it comes to parking) - perhaps the best pre-start entertainment today was seeing the jack-knifed food van, and Marquita on the tractor helping to extract it (perhaps we'll need to suggest adding tractor-driving to future IOF Event Adviser courses).

As for the Challenge, so near and yet so far; we lost 37 to 35, with two classes today (W21 and M55) being lost by less than a minute. This makes me somewhat more frustrated at letting the opportunity slip on Saturday.

Oceania Relays. We never really expected to win M40, but hoped to at least be in some sort of touch.

Went out 8 minutes down after the first leg. Running was a bit of a struggle from the start (steep sand dune climbs a particular challenge), with a pretty poor split on the long 5th despite only missing the control slightly. Still, had got through most of the controls in the pine section OK and had only one, which looked straightforward, to get - at least the control site was straightforward, but that's not a lot of help when you exit the control in 90 degrees the wrong direction around the top of the wrong depression, continue to execute a massive parallel error, and finally work out what's going on when you're 500 metres away from the control on a 400-metre leg. Blew about 5 minutes on that one, and that was effectively that; one gully too far across on 17 (first one across the lake), and generally a struggle. Bruce salvaged something from the wreckage and pulled us up to 3rd (2nd Oceania), but way behind the NZ team.

Oceania Long. A run which looked promising for much of it but was ultimately disappointing, on a pretty physical dunes area with lots of low-visibility country (pampas grass under pine).

Took the safe track option on 1. Hit that and 2 OK, but lost 30 seconds on 3. Took a fairly straight option on the first long leg, 5, and wasn't entirely sure I'd got it right (with the plan to bounce back off the track if I missed it), but got it reasonably well. Decent technically through the middle of the course, although not especially strong. Michael Adams went through me at 8, but it turned out he'd missed 7 and I'd caught him rather than the reverse.

There was a significant forest change about 70% of the way in, into native manuka - mostly fairly clear underfoot but with sharper contours (going along ridges was not a good option here, whereas it had been in the pine). Came unstuck on 15, the second control in this section, not making sense of features which seemed bigger on the ground than they were on the map, and dropped maybe 2.5 minutes. (Bruce caught me here). At this point my body decided it was tired, and after sort of hanging onto Bruce on 16, I got caught in some bracken on the way to 17, then lost confidence on the way to 18 and probably spent a couple of minutes trying to work out where I was along the way, despite not going that far off the line as it turned out. Finished off OK but the damage was done - lost probably 6 minutes in the 15-18 section, which would have lifted me from 7th to (a still distant) 4th and, more significantly, given Australia the points given Bruce's big win. That was frustrating.

Long - Course Course 4 - Splits

Event: Oceania Championships 2017
 

Oceania Sprint at Unitec Carrington. This is an area which I don't have good memories of - it was here that my 2005 Oceania campaign came to a spectacular end on day 1 as an elbow-versus-pavement contest ended up in an emphatic win to the pavement (although I did finish the course). I suspected that this experience would probably make me pretty tentative here, although I tried to convince myself that cyclists and racing drivers must have to go back all the time to places where they've had bad crashes and they seem to cope.

At least I knew before I started that we wouldn't be going back to the exact scene (it's now underneath a building site), but it was unhelpful to have a heavy shower about 30 minutes before the start, and probably also to have a string of ambulances heading down past the start to what I presume was a road accident. (Also slightly distracting pre-start was the Finn with bells on his shoes - I was wondering if someone had forgotten to tell him that there are no bears in New Zealand, but in fact he was aiming to avert head-on collisions with other competitors after a bad experience at WMOC in Tallinn last year).

Felt reasonable warming up and on the first couple of controls, but tight on the first climb and from there I knew it was going to be a struggle - never really able to speed up. Was reasonably happy with my navigation through the first section, then lost 15 seconds or so on the first control into the gardens through not seeing the first path in. Had a good section through the complex bit in the later part of the course, but blown away for speed at the end. Well off the pace and will, I think, need to find at least a minute, perhaps two, to make the WMOC sprint final, but I guess not finishing the day in hospital makes it a step up from last time.

The presentations (running late) were an "interesting" experience. I was delegated to do the honours because the Orienteering NZ President was otherwise engaged, but what I hadn't realised was that this was going to mean 30 minutes squelching through the mudbath in front of the podium - spent some of this trying, and failing, to imagine various Olympic honchos doing something similar. A further downpour unloaded when we'd got up to the 70s and in the end we left the elites for tomorrow.

Before the start of proceedings, I caught up with an NZ forecaster friend for coffee. She's had what could politely be described as a busy fortnight (most of it outposted with Civil Defence, the NZ equivalent of the SES) and was, I think, grateful for the opportunity to unload - could barely get a word in edgeways :-). Having a Civil Defence sticker which in effect means "park where you like" is definitely an asset when it comes to getting to inner-city coffee locations...

Sprint - Course - 3 - Splits

Headed out in the late afternoon in central Auckland, once it had become apparent that the cyclone was tracking a little further east than expected and was going to largely miss the city.

First challenge was finding somewhere to go - staying in the central city the first instinct is to head for the parks (not least to minimise road crossings), but it turns out we're staying 50 metres outside the embargoed area for the WMOC sprint final (with views over perhaps half the area) so I had to steer clear of that, meaning a fairly interrupted early part with a few major road crossings.

There was a wake-up call in the first kilometre. I'd forgotten how much of a struggle uphill starts can be for me these days, now that I so rarely do them (there are no climbs within 2km of my place). Improved considerably once up on top and got better through the Domain, though still not good enough to make me want to do another lap of the block to get the time up to the originally planned 40.

Same session as last week. Didn't feel too crash-hot on the way there or through the first couple of reps, but settled into a reasonable session after that. Again mild discomfort in the hamstring but nothing overly concerning.

Today's dog on leash compliance rate: 1 from 3. (I understand that these days Evan Barr works for the council, so perhaps I should be making my complaints to him).

Heading over to New Zealand this evening, assuming it hasn't been washed or blown away first. Still looks reasonable for the Easter weekend and the days after, but a fair bit of carnage will be inflicted between now and then (probably more so south and east of Auckland than on Auckland itself).

The first few minutes of this made me wonder if I should have stayed in bed, but it did get better. Eventually.

That's more like it - left the struggles of last week behind for a run which became quite pleasant in its second half. The route was chosen to investigate what difference it made on the ground between Fairfield (rainfall last night: 4.8mm) and Northcote (rainfall last night: 15mm), but it wasn't immediately obvious, and Merri Creek wasn't as high as I thought it might have been. A nice confidence-booster ahead of the weekend, although all things are relative.

It was reported today that "The girlfriend of the 16-year-old boy accused of stabbing a Queanbeyan service station attendant to death pulled a knife on her family after being told not to eat ice cream, a court has heard". It's probably fortunate for Australia's gene pool that this particular couple is unlikely to get the opportunity to reproduce.

It was a pretty wild night in Melbourne (if not quite as wild, wind-wise, as some of the forecasts had suggested - peak winds were around 80-90 km/h and not 100+), and I was awake early. Thought it might be a pretty unpleasant morning in the pool but took the plunge anyway. By then the rain had more or less stopped and it felt pleasantly warm in the water (which says a bit about how cold it's been outside over the preceding 18 hours or so), and it was a nice session in an unsurprisingly sparsely populated facility.

The ride into work had to contend with a pretty solid headwind for most of it (I suspect some southern suburbs commuters set PBs this morning), although not as fierce as the Hay Plains last October, probably because there's a bit more to get in the way than there is on the Hay Plains.

One positive of the last few days is that, for the first time since the end of last year, I don't seem to be getting hamstring soreness after sitting down at work.

Local event at Macedon, sidestepping most of the rain (the really significant stuff was never expected until afternoon/evening anyway), but back wasn't playing ball today. Might have tried to push through it had I not had a championship race a few days away.

The forest was still wet. I'd forgotten how much fallen timber there is in parts of this area - potentially lethal in the wet - and some of the tracks were also almost unrunnably slippery.

Definitely in a flat spot at the moment. The best that can be said for this run is that it wasn't as bad as Thursday's, but hills (and there were a few on the Kew side) were a struggle, and again inordinately slow, even on the flat bits. Probably the last warm-weather run I'll do for a while (it was 24 at 9am), although Auckland can be humid.

One positive from this week: I no longer seem to be getting significant hamstring soreness from sitting down at work. (Hopefully that wasn't just the adrenalin from having the finish line in sight).

The Yarra Valley AGM was this afternoon. There was some discussion about the club history which Peter Black's working on, which in turn got me thinking about how it's probably about time we got working on a national one in time for the "50th anniversary" (with apologies to earlier events in SA) in August 2019. It's also realistically the last opportunity to do it whilst most of the key players from the early days are still alive.

Definitely feeling a bit more like it this morning than I was yesterday. Fairly nice morning in the pool, although I'd like to have more running in me to put it mildly before hitting New Zealand.

The big moments of the day were later, finishing the new version of our long-term data set late this evening - something I've been working on, on and off, for the last couple of years. I should feel more relaxed this weekend than has been the case for a while (just a pity there was no-one around to share the moment with, but once I realised late afternoon that I could finish tonight, I wasn't going to leave the last bit for Monday).

C • Good work! 1

Started with the intention of going long (and starting appropriately early to do so), but it wasn't happening at all today - felt weak (particularly on any sort of hill) and decided after 20 minutes or so that this wasn't the day to push boundaries. Also hints of hamstring soreness although that disappeared later. Some very slow stretches along the rougher Yarra trails, but even the flatter sections weren't much under 6s today. A disappointing run which makes me wonder if things are going to unravel a bit over the next few days - the rest of the day was also a bit of a struggle (of the almost-ready-to-hit-the-wall-by-9 variety, which was a bit of a problem because I was still working then).

20x30 secs in All Nations Park - still a little bit of soreness pushing off and thought it best not to extend to a longer set, but better than the equivalent session two weeks ago and actually felt as if I was pushing reasonably hard at times in the second half. I'll count it as a sign of (slow) progress.

This week's on-leash compliance rate: 1 from 5.

Going to/from All Nations, not very fast (especially to).

I noted yesterday the current rain affecting New Zealand but I hadn't realised until reading their monthly report how wet March had been. Auckland had its wettest March on record, and depending on how things unfold early next week, we'll probably hit Easter with close to 500mm having fallen since March 1. I'd be prepared for some extended walks from parking.

C • oceania forecast 5

Taking advantage of the temporary increase in early morning light to take to the Yarra Bend trails. Promising start to this run but then felt a bit flat - struggling on the smaller hills to an extent I wasn't on Sunday. Should do me good to get more consistently into rolling country but it didn't really show today.

Just as well World Masters isn't this week - the North Island is being pummelled by the remnants of Debbie. Last I saw, 100-150mm of rain is forecast for the Auckland region in the next 24 hours or so.

A reasonably solid morning's work, despite intermittent goggles trouble. Certainly felt like autumn this morning - apart from the end of daylight saving, it was the first night under 10 - but nice in the water.

It's the first day of school holidays supposedly, but I didn't see any evidence of a decrease in traffic (if anything it was worse than usual), and the bike area at work was fuller than normal, probably a product of the nice forecast.

Finally managed to complete what I intended on a lunchtime (or evening) run, which I'll take as progress. It was hardly the most inspired of runs - definitely felt like the day after a solid weekend - but after the first 10 minutes or so, such back issues as there were went away. Will consider this as a positive.

State Series 1 at Bunjil/Little Forest, an open gully-spur area which gets steep around the edges. Thought this was going to spend a lot of time around the edges with the advertised climb of 400m, and when I picked up the map the initial instinct was that they'd got the distance wrong - it seemed a very long course for 8.3km, but in fact it was an old-school course with one big loop and not too many deviations so it looked longer than it was. (It was advertised as a "middle distance" style event but that it was definitely not; instead it was probably a good proxy for an M45 long distance, which is not such a bad thing given I'll be running a few of those in the near future).

The good news is that I felt considerably better running than I have in the terrain at any other time this year; was able to manage longish hills of moderate steepness with some degree of confidence, whereas there have been other times in recent months when even two contours have been a battle. Lost it a bit technically at the end though, drifting a bit on 11 and more seriously on 13, dropping perhaps 2 minutes across those two controls. Ended up in a "sprint" finish with Jenny Bourne which I won (not by much).

The disappointment was that my result was a good deal poorer than I would have expected (more so in terms of position in the field than time behind Kerrin, who was the leader). Not quite sure what to make of this, although some of my route choices were conservative, especially 7 and 9 (and I know from comparing with Bruce that his low route was probably 30-60 seconds faster on 7 than my high one, once the difference in our running speeds was factored in). Nevertheless, this gives me something to build on, and perhaps the confidence to go out harder next time.

A new cafe has appeared at Gordon (hitherto a sleepy village). Wasn't overly enthused about what I tried but maybe I just chose badly.

Update now that the splits are out: lost probably a minute on the route choice at #7, but otherwise was just slow. Didn't place above 14th on any leg. It's perhaps significant that I placed badly on the legs with very steep downhill bits (#3, #6, #10).

More or less what I'd expect of a run the day after something long(ish), which meant it was nothing to get too excited about. Still reasonably pleased to be able to (sort of) back up.