Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Felt like a fairly relaxing session after one of the bigger weeks I've put in in recent months. Hip better than it's been at any time this week, although woke up with a little bit of left calf tightness (which disappeared during the day).

To no-one's surprise, the latest deadline ("late June") for the completion of the changeroom renovations has been missed. It does actually look within striking distance of being finished (word on the street is a couple of weeks). Wasn't the best morning for the hot water in the temporary facilities to run out, either.

A southside run this morning because of plans for the evening. A pretty dire opening half-hour; I'd started out with thoughts of 1.40-1.45, but early on thought I'd do well to get to an hour. Gradually improved after that, although never flowing particularly freely, and started to progressively extend my thoughts, first to 1.15 and then to 1.30. Once it became apparent that my route would bring me back a bit after 1.30, I decided I felt good enough to go back out to my original plans.

This certainly wasn't the high of the equivalent session from last week, but definitely pleased to have been able to fight it out on a day when things weren't going smoothly.

All Nations intervals. Hip a little sorer than in recent days but wasn't a major impediment on the run. Feeling better running than I did yesterday, although still not particularly sparkling. (My watch told me it was going to take three days to recover from yesterday, although I'm not sure quite how they came to that conclusion).

Warm-up and down. Not as many traffic issues as there sometimes are.

Maybe the end of last week was a flash in the pan, because this one was also a struggle - albeit a bit hillier than most of my recent runs have been, out into Ivanhoe. Very slow on bits such as the climb out of Darebin Parklands. Thought a railway crossing stop at 25 minutes might have been a chance to hit the reset button on this run, but it didn't really start to feel reasonable until the last 10-15 minutes.

First time for a while I've attempted the Monday morning triathlon (a sign of growing confidence after the weekend). This one was much more in line with what I'd expect of a recovery run after a hardish day yesterday; slow and never really got going, although there were a few flashes. A little hip soreness but not enough to get in the way of anything.

Next step of the day (before riding to work), at Fitzroy, which seemed quieter than unusual, perhaps because I was a little later than usual - the weather wouldn't have been a deterrent for the usual hard-core mornings group here. (Wouldn't have been a good morning to go to the Northcote pool after a certain amount of overnight excitement pretty much outside the front door). Not the smoothest of swims, and enough threads of cramp in the later stages that I used the ramp to get out of the pool, remembering what it was like in Mildura.

State Series at Spring Gully. It's nice being able to enjoy running again after months of struggle. I can go smoothly across slopes! I can run up eight-contour hills! I can get to the finish line of a long race and feel as if I could go for another half-hour! Still wasn't going all that fast, but now that I know what I can do I'll be a bit more ambitious next time around.

Couldn't have asked for much more from the fine navigation perspective, either - a very slight overshoot on 9 and that was about it. The time losses I did have were through getting stuck in blackberries and having to find alternate routes around (the dark green has grown up more than is on the map, particularly in Spring Gully itself). I think that happened to more or less everyone and was essentially random.

Todd did 79 and Bruce 81; was 6th in a field of 15, and ahead of a few who have been ahead of me for most of this year.

The last three days have left me wondering what's happened - have I crossed a threshold of strength in recovery of the injured bits, or have I been carrying a long-lived virus or some other issue that's finally been shaken off? I'm certainly not complaining - just hope the feeling doesn't disappear as soon as it arrived, or worse, that I pick up a new injury. (I was a bit worried that I'd done exactly that when I felt a twinge in my lower leg coming out of 14, but it seems to have gone away within a leg or two).

First time I've done the Glenluce road for a couple of years (last year I missed a lot of Victorian State Series events). I wonder whether I'll live to see the sealing of the couple of kilometres of dirt that straddles the council boundary? (The 'triangle' intersection for the Vaughan road, however, is no more).

C • Glenluce Road 3

Something seems to have clicked in the last couple of days because this was another good one, particularly considering I was coming off something reasonably long yesterday - settled well after the first few minutes. It's a nice change for running to be a pleasure rather than a battle, as it's been for so much of this year. Once again going consistently under 5.30s once warmed up (except for uphills).

It was the first time for a few weeks I've used the Chandler crossing of the river - I tend to avoid it during the week and haven't been around much on weekends lately - so I was able to see that they've finally begun to dismantle the front of the old paper mill. Perhaps wisely, given that construction - as opposed to deconstruction - doesn't appear to have started yet and there is one working week left in the first half of the year, the fence no longer promises that apartments will be available in 'early 2017'.

(While on the subject of real estate marketing which is a somewhat ambitious interpretation of the truth, I also saw a sign describing a property as "Yarra's edge". The house in question is 600 metres from the river - and that via an access which I suspect will be a casualty of the new Chandler Highway bridge - and on the other side of Heidelberg Road).

Hip was a little sore before and after the run, but fine during it.

C • Marketing 1

This time all parts of the body felt more or less OK and I set out for the run I'd planned to do yesterday. On a clear morning heading northeast into the first hint of light, there was a real sense of running towards the sun, and although the first 3km (dark and largely uphill) were slow, it had the sense that it was going to turn into something better. Onto some old territory in the form of the Hawdon rollercoaster before turning south again, and once on the Yarra Flats it turned into one of my best runs of the year - flowing along nicely and with plenty of confidence, even on the often-troublesome short sharp climb out of Wilsons Reserve. By then, I was sufficiently in the mood that the Alphington railway crossing, instead of being an excuse for a rest, was an opportunity to do a couple of laps of a side street while waiting for two trains. A very positive session by the standards of this year.

A slight sour note to see a large pile of (presumably) illegally dumped rubbish at the entrance to Wilsons Reserve, duly reported to the council later in the day (hopefully complaining to the council about something isn't the first sign of old age). A more unusual litter issue was a trail of jellybeans a couple of hundred metres long on the footpath (and adjacent road) where Heidelberg Road crosses Darebin Creek. Also spotted in this section was a girl in school uniform who was presumably late because she was running down the footpath, although her priorities weren't entirely rearranged because she was still doing something with her phone whilst in motion.

The route also took me past the railway construction site. Some more detailed plans came out during the week, and it seems that, contrary to my expectations, they're not going to need to acquire any properties in my old block (the new track is being built as a second tunnel on the far side of the cutting). Just means those still there will have to deal with regular overnight construction noise for the next couple of years. Glad it's not me.

C • Phone in motion 2

All set for a long(ish) run this morning, slept well, got up early, felt reasonably awake (not always a given at 5.45am in recent years), and then realised that after being more or less OK for a week, my hip was quite significantly sore. Quickly decided it wasn't going to warm up and switched to plan B, which was a session at Fitzroy, fairly unspectacular but no real soreness in the water. The air/water temperature differential probably wasn't too different to that at Davis yesterday but the absolute values of both were about 30 degrees higher...

The hip had settled down by the evening, and my thinking is that I'll have another go tomorrow.

14x45 seconds. A little apprehensive about this given (a) yesterday's shocker, (b) that this was my first attempt to run fast since the hip played up and (c) I'd managed to hurt something in my side yesterday during some vigorous coughing (that one was a non-issue when running), but it worked out more or less OK. A few minor niggles at times but otherwise a decent session once I got going.

Going to/from All Nations. It was the shortest day of the year and the dark, drizzly morning definitely felt like it.

A pretty dismal session - back felt tight throughout, without ever quite throwing the wobbly that would have prompted me to come home (staying on flat ground might have had something to do with that), and feeling rather weak too. Was originally thinking of an hour but this wasn't really a day when my body wanted to cooperate.

I thought I might have missed some local excitement (and an excellent Darwin Awards nomination) on seeing a story from a website called the Cairns Times, which reported that a man had disappeared from a beach in the area after attempting to have sex with a crocodile whilst high on ice. However, the failure of any other media outlet to report the alleged incident (and in particular the failure of the Northern Territory News to report the alleged incident) makes me think that this was probably fake news.

(One ice-crocodile connection which does appear to be genuine came in the form of reports of the Innisfail court appearance of the young man who made the news a few months back when he was attacked by a croc after jumping into a river to impress a girl; it appears he spent most of his exclusive-interview money on the aforementioned substance and allegedly committed assorted crimes whilst under its influence).

C • Fake news... 2

Headed for the warm bath at Northcote for evening logistical reasons. It was even warmer than usual this morning (32.3), and not the most enjoyable of swims - partly because of having to move lanes mid-session, and partly because that put me in a lane with someone who didn't seem to appreciate my presence, although I do have an unfortunate tendency to assume the worst of what people think of me. (It probably has something to do with absorbing 20 years' worth of large slices of the media telling us that "real Australians" hate people like us, even though it probably isn't true).

Having a few days' break was good, but a lot has piled up in my absence.

Out early this morning, mainly because I'd read on the online reviews that the breakfast was the highlight of the place I was staying at (they weren't wrong). Out to the beach and then along it, with some fairly soft sand at the end. Felt a bit flat this morning, and hip perhaps a little worse than it has been the last couple of days, especially in the softer stuff. Mission Beach is nice on the coast itself but quite suburban behind it, although its newness stood it in good stead when Yasi came visiting (most of the buildings here are built to the post-Tracy codes; a direct hit on, say, Cardwell would have caused far worse damage).

Today was the last day of the trip; flew back to Melbourne mid-afternoon, after stops at Bingil Bay, Josephine Falls and Babinda Boulders (with a saltwater swim at the first and a freshwater swim at the third). The locals were all talking about how cold the water at the Boulders was but it seemed pretty reasonable to me (probably about 22-23 degrees).

The flight out went further out to sea than I had expected, meaning good views of the coast down to about Cardwell (and also showed up that the really wet places, like Babinda, are opposite gaps in the coastal range so they're less protected from the E/SE than Cairns is). It wasn't the most pleasant of flights because I had a nasty headache until something went pop about two hours in and whatever pressures needed to be equalised were equalised. (Presumably this is something to do with the illness I've had, although today was the first day in a couple of weeks that I haven't really had a cough).

As news starts to come in of the bushfires in Portugal (which is looking like one of the worst bushfire disasters of modern European history), it feels close to home - the road that's showing in all the news pictures is the one I used to get back to Porto after Portugal O-Meeting.

Headed towards the Mount Baldy area near Atherton (thanks to Rachel for the tip). Original thoughts were to head up the dirt road towards the top of the rain, but instead I peeled off where it started to get steep (would have been no views anyway - low cloud) and headed into the extensive mountain bike park. This part of the run was pretty nice - lots of twisty single track and felt like it was going pretty smoothly. Last kilometre back to the car wasn't quite as enjoyable (started to feel a bit tight by then); on another day I might have tried to push the distance out a bit further, but then I'm on holiday...

The start of this was on Rifle Range Road and the rifle range was being well-used, which didn't surprise me - this is Katter and One Nation country. It has a sign saying it's a Defence facility, perhaps dating back to World War 2 where the locals were trained in guerilla warfare to obstruct a potential Japanese invasion (I hadn't realised until dropping into a local museum how massive the WW2 military presence was here; it was the main training area before deployment to New Guinea).

Up on the Tablelands it was a day which resembled a typical Melbourne June day (low cloud, intermittent drizzle) in all respects other than that it was about 6 degrees warmer. Somewhat to my surprise it was sunnier on the coast, to where I headed in the afternoon (via assorted waterfalls, forests and places of eating and drinking indulgence) - ended up at Mission Beach, with a wide beach and a lot of driftwood at its rear which I assume is the Yasi high-water mark.

There's always the dilemma when you're staying somewhere where breakfast is part of the deal - do you run early and get out of bed earlier than you would have otherwise preferred, or eat early and feel that you have to hold yourself back on the breakfast? I chose the former, and that was probably a good thing given that it was the most humid morning of the trip (23/19).

I'd picked out what seemed like a good back road on the map but for once Google let me down; the road didn't exist (or more likely was gazetted but never built), so instead I took to the parallel route, the road out to the airport and Lakefield National Park. This had a bit of traffic in what passes for peak hour in Cooktown, but a good verge (only the occasional nuisance from a wandering dog). After a nondescript first 3km I settled down pretty well in gently rolling terrain with a string of sub-5.30 kilometres (not bad by my low standards this year) and thought this was going to turn into my best run for a while, but the humidity caught up with me after about 50 minutes and the last part of the run was a struggle - especially the final climb up to where I was staying, a four-contour effort which seemed like Walsh's Pyramid. Almost felt like I was going to spew at the top of that.

Spotted a sign for Quaid Real Estate. This was a name I'd associated with the Cape York spaceport, but in fact I'd misremembered which parts of the Bjelke-Petersen hall of shame George was associated with (it was actually trying to flog off the Daintree and some dodgy deals over pastoral leases).

Unless you have a 4WD there's only one way out of Cooktown, so I retraced my steps today, although more slowly as I'd noted all the spots where I wanted to stop to take pictures, including the most extraordinary place in Australia you've never heard of, a 200-metre-high pile of boulders known as Black Mountain about 25km out of town. Having seen it relentlessly advertised on posters coming in, I thought I'd also try out the Lakeland Coffee House (at the junction of the Cooktown and Cape roads; south of there it's not too hard to tell which southbound vehicles have come from where). I normally give coffee at outback roadhouses a wide berth on the grounds that it is often not readily distinguishable from the liquid that comes out of the pumps (and is designed for the major purpose of keeping truck drivers awake), but this was stellar. It turns out there's a coffee plantation just down the road (whose products were being served); I knew that coffee was grown around Mareeba, but didn't know it was also grown on the Cape.

Spent what was left of the day looking around parts of the Atherton Tableland. Staying in Atherton tonight.

The place I was staying, a few kilometres short of Cape Tribulation itself, didn't have any good running options in its own right (there's only one road, which is narrow and gets quite a bit of traffic), so instead I decided to head up to the Cape with thoughts of running up the beach north from there. That didn't quite work out - as I discovered, when the walk notes said that parts of the beach were difficult at high tide, they meant 'anything except low tide' (I was about halfway), plus the creeks flowing across the beach were up after the overnight rain - and mangrovey shorelines were something I was a bit nervous about in croc country. It would have been fitting had I been turned around by Blockade Creek (named for the 1983 protest against the building of the track north, handled with all the sensitivity you'd expect of Joh's police), but I think it was actually the one before it. Then tried heading south but ran into a creek there too, so plan C was to head up the track, turning around shortly after the gravel started, a spot with a disappointing lack of an if-you-drive-the-wrong-vehicle-past-here-you-will-die sign. (There might be one soon, because someone did indeed die on the track a few days ago after slipping off it in what was described in the local paper as an 'improvised campervan').

Again this was a pretty nondescript run as far as performance goes - similar to yesterday although there were more hills today, and a few steps.

After a morning looking around the Daintree, with no sign of beach weather I decided to do something a bit different and head up to Cooktown (the bitumen way). The country turns to dry savanna pretty quickly once you get up the range, but there are some interesting ranges off to the side of the road, including plenty of granite (always something to excite the Australian orienteer), and one range of hills largely made up of black rocks/scree around 30km out of Cooktown, which I plan to look at a bit more closely on the way back tomorrow.

Port Douglas has a very running-friendly beach (wide, flat, hard-packed sand) and I made good use of it - as were plenty of others, some of them probably on rather painful recovery runs (the Cairns Ironman took place on the weekend and plenty of event T-shirts were in evidence around town). Not a great run though; I'm still trying to shrug off the cold from a week and a half ago and felt sluggish throughout. Hip at nuisance level - probably felt worse walking down stairs on walking tracks later in the day than it did running.

It wasn't beach weather today - cloudy and windy with a few spots of rain (which became heavy rain in the evening - it's called the Wet Tropics for a reason) - so instead I did other things on the way to the Cape Tribulation area, mostly a couple of national park short walks and a croc-sighting cruise on the Daintree River (during which numerous crocs were indeed sighted).

In case you think I haven't been travelling enough, I'm now off on an actual, non-orienteering, non-work holiday (my boss pretty much ordered me to take a week off using some of the vast number of excess hours I'd piled up during the recent project, and this was the best week for it), with North Queensland as the destination.

The logistics of the morning made for a new destination for a session. Jenny was on a flight at 6.40 and I was on one at 9.10, so I thought what would work best would be to drop her at the airport and then go to the nearest pool. (In the process, we successfully avoided hitting a broken-down car in a very awkward spot on the freeway on-ramp - definitely safety-car territory had it been a racetrack; thanks to the wonders of social media, I've since discovered that the car in question belonged to an old school friend (and now Rex pilot) on the way to the airport).

The nearest pool was Broadmeadows. Broadmeadows as a suburb doesn't have the best of reputations, but the only sign of local stereotypes at this time of day was that my two companions in the non-lap-swimming lane both had substantial tattoos. (It did surprise me somewhat that a council pool in one of the more socially-disadvantaged parts of town charges the highest entry fee I've seen in suburban Melbourne). Session was fine; felt a little sore but not exceptionally so.

Landed in Cairns in the early afternoon and then made my way up to Port Douglas. I've been to Cairns before for work but only had a day to look around, so missed a lot. Plans for the rest of the week are still somewhat open at this stage although I'm heading in the direction of the Daintree and Cape Tribulation tomorrow.

Probably wouldn't have been up to anything more than a sprint distance today - this time it was more the back that was troublesome than the hip - and never got any speed up. At least I got a decent view of the business end of the race as they progressively came through me, starting with David Lingfors who caught me a minute at the first control, never a good start to a sprint race (I'd unwisely tried to contour across the bushy slope on the rocky hill we started on). Blew 40 seconds or so on 9, the last one on the hill - came up faster than I expected (hard to get used to 1:4000 in bush terrain), then misread a couple of spots on the tricky 12 and went a lot further around than I needed to. Generally a disappointing run, but very pleased with how the event went as an event.

Day 3 1 - Splits

The long day of the 3-Day. In the middle of last week I didn't think that I'd be running at all this weekend, so to get through yesterday was a positive in that sense, but it felt iffy warming up this morning, not something you want to have happen before a long race. Sometimes things warm up so I was happy enough to start and see how it went, but it wasn't good right from the beginning. Managed to get through the technical first five on the mountain more or less OK, then 6 was a long, mostly downhill, leg - I thought if I was going to get going then that was where it was going to happen. It didn't, at which point I decided to do the small set of technical controls from 6-11 (Simon and Shep went through me here) and then call it a day unless things felt better. They didn't, and that was that.

Assuming that I can run tomorrow, 2 1/4 days is still better than I thought I'd do a few days ago, but it's disappointing not to take this opportunity. The most technical parts of the course were mostly behind me by then, although there were some physically tough areas ahead.

That wasn't the end of the day's work - the OA meetings were still to come, although we got most of what we wanted (necessary to plug the remaining holes in the OA finances) through despite some initially discouraging feedback.

Spotted so far in Wagga: the Geoff Lawson and Michael Slater Ovals, and the Steve Mortimer Field. I assume Mark Taylor's got something somewhere but haven't seen it yet. As far as I know no civic facilities have (yet) been named in honour of Georgina Macken or Allison or Shannon Jones.

C • Shannon 3

Day 2 Course 1 - Splits

Event: 2017 Australian 3 Days
 

1st day of the 3-day, at Connorton south of Wagga - a nice area with patches of intense granite and (mostly) open forest between them. The first time I was here I ran 5.2 minutes/km, and also have a bit of a history of claiming scalps here (Jules the first time, Shep the second), but didn't expect any similar miracles this time and was hoping, after the last week, just to get round without things hurting too much.

The running part went OK - slow but steady for the most part, and only minor niggles. Lost about a minute in the heavy rock at 4, where I couldn't work out which big rock was which or how they related to the contours; also a bit wide on 13 (which should have been a gimmy) and 19, but maybe only 20 seconds apiece on those. Had to concentrate all the way to the end; even the last control wasn't a giveaway.

Not competitive on pace though; second from the bottom (which was enough to give me a National League point), and more than 50% behind Craney and Simon who both did 38-39. I'm definitely staggering towards the 300 events mark. Tomorrow will be a challenge, although today gives me more confidence that I might be up to it (at least in the endurance sense).

Day1 Course 1 - Splits

Out earlyish in the morning before heading back to Melbourne, mainly in the name of seeing if things still worked. Hip was mostly at niggle stage and didn't get much better during the run, but didn't get any worse either, so should be up for at least the shorter events tomorrow (especially as it seems to have pulled up OK this afternoon). Went down to and along the river as far as the island at Lock 11 (providing a small taste of the Murray River forests, which I've never orienteered in), taking in on the way an impressively-sculpted flood marker and the Mildura Lawn Tennis Club, which is one of relatively few which is still lawn. (It occasionally hosts Davis Cup fixtures when we decide that we're better on grass than our opponents will be).

One feature I haven't seen at an airport before was the Mildura airport book swap, a nice idea, although the cynic in me thinks that it was only possible because (a) Mildura airport is owned by the council and not private enterprise and (b) no-one is trying to sell reading matter at Mildura airport (whose only business is a coffee shop).

Being in the office for only half the day meant that I only spent half the day interpreting the latest numbers coming out of the UK.

Headed up to Mildura today to deliver a series of talks to the Council and the community. In doing the preparation, it was clear that in this part of the world, as in much of southeastern Australia, 1997 is a major breakpoint (after then, maximum temperatures take off and rainfall drops away in the cooler months). I've long thought there was a certain symbolism in my first trip on the Melbourne-Mildura route, on 27 March 1997, on the way to Easter at Broken Hill - with the company of a massive duststorm for most of the last 300km into Mildura, which I sometimes think of as the symbolic start of the long drought (much as I think of the floods of 1996 Tasmanian Championships weekend as the symbolic end of the previous wet epoch). I'm sure many other Victorians who did the trip will remember the dust, too. I had a picture of it as my opening slide.

(In another nod to personal history in this part of the world, the shirt I wore for the talks today was the one I bought in the local menswear shop in St. Arnaud on the way to Warren and Tash's wedding, after realising on the way out of Melbourne that I'd forgotten to pack one).

The flight up was early enough in the day that trying to squeeze in something beforehand would definitely have tested my early-morning capabilities, and I knew I had some time to spare before my first engagement at 12.30, so my plans were to do something once I arrived. That part did go more or less to plan despite the shortcomings of airport transport - there is no public transport to Mildura Airport, and apparently the town only has 14 taxis which isn't really enough to cope when three flights arrive near-simultaneously (I eventually shared a ride in and hope that Australia's taxpayers appreciate the $25 I've saved them) - and I also remembered my swimming gear this time, unlike the last time I was here.

The mid-morning pool crowd is a bit different to the early-morning one - in between swimming lessons and aqua aerobics, I suspect I was the only person in the water (other than instructors) between the ages of 8 and 60. Started slowly but gradually built into it. Noticed three-quarters of the way through that my towel had been moved, and thought I'd better get out to check that the locker key wrapped in it was still there before resuming - in the process of which I got a massive cramp in my right thigh, something I've never had happen to me before while swimming (foot cramps are quite regular, but not there), and bad enough to make me grateful that it happened at the shallow end and not in the middle of a large body of water. Quickly decided not to go back in once I got out (which I eventually did via the ramp); the affected area didn't feel right even several hours later. Presumably this all has something to do with my lingering something-like-a-cold; it certainly isn't because of excessive exercise or excessive heat this week (and I don't think there's been anything particularly unusual about my diet lately either).

On the positive side, the talks went well (and the Council itself was a less challenging audience than I'd expected, given what I'd heard of the mayor's climate scepticism), my throat more or less held out through three one-hour presentations, my hip seems to have improved enough today that I'm willing to try it out on a bit of a run tomorrow, and I indulged in a sporting feast this evening, taking in the soccer, the AFL and the NRL on side-by-side screens at the Mildura Working Man's Club (yes, it's still called that). This establishment used to be in the Guinness Book of Records for possessing the world's longest bar, but sadly said bar, like (probably) some of its patrons, fell victim to the pokies.

C • Council 3

Back to the pool, still not feeling that brilliant (either in terms of soreness or health, with a cold still lingering in its later stages). Nice enough in the water and felt as if I was at least achieving something.

Don't feel as if I've made a lot of progress in the last 48 hours. At least this meant that I could sleep a bit more than I normally would on a weekday morning....

Melbourne seemed notably unrattled by yesterday's events, and I think it would be fair to say that IS's claim of "responsibility" was greeted with considerable scorn.

Early morning session at CISAC; have decided to give my hip a rest until it improves or next weekend comes, whichever happens first. Not a lot of space to work in because it was divided into two 25-metre sections and the deep half was for squad training, but found enough to manage OK. Not too upset on a morning like this that it's an indoor pool.

Left the Aranda house behind for (presumably) the last time this morning, which had a certain set of emotions associated with it. I left with a carload of goods being moved, many of them plants (fortunately this was more successful than last time I did it in the early 2000s, when I was pulled up by the police somewhere out the back of Cabramurra on suspicion of illegally harvesting flora from the national park), as well as a couple of boxes of climate records that CSIRO didn't want but we were potentially interested in.

Took a slightly different route choice home, through Uriarra, Wee Jasper and Adjungbilly, coming out on the highway just north of Gundagai (this is about the same distance as the freeway, but has about 30km of dirt and took 45 minutes longer). Haven't been this way since a couple of 1980s school camps (and hadn't been past Wee Jasper at all). Big sheep station country before you get to Wee Jasper (the biggest is, I believe, owned by Rupert Murdoch); a few once-grand homesteads near the road which have seen better days (as indicated by a couple of overgrown tennis courts), and placenames once familiar from the front of the Canberra phone book like The Mullion. (Some of the small rural settlements around Canberra didn't get automatic telephone exchanges until the mid-late 1980s, so before then the front of the book had copious instructions about which places/phone numbers required you to contact an operator, and how to do it). After the initial climb out of Wee Jasper, there's a lot of pine forest and recently-flattened pine forest between there and Adjungbilly (and a few eucalypt patches), but as with the Brindabella route, a lot of it's blackberry-infested and I didn't see anything of sufficiently high orienteering potential to be worth mapping in such a remote spot.

Another later (slight) diversion to places familiar as signs off the Hume took me through Baddaginnie; Warrenbayne and Winton will have to wait for another day. Also spotted was the Yellow Brick Road. If you've always wondered what's at the end of the Yellow Brick Road, the answer is Benalla Electric Motor Rewinding, which I don't recall making an appearance in the Wizard of Oz.

Jim Sawkins Classic at Ratall Creek. I came here not really expecting a lot, but also remembered that I was sick for this event four years ago too and got through it OK. Got dropped by the pack immediately, as expected, and was hoping to settle down into a solo run, but the hip didn't warm up as I'd hoped and I was struggling a fair bit on the rougher ground; decided that next week is the main game and slogging around for two hours wasn't going to do that cause any favours. Lost concentration after I'd decided to call it a day, and dropped a minute or so on 7 (an area where the vegetation had grown up a fair bit), and then ran to a wrong number on 18 on my way home - was almost not going to bother looking for the right one, but decided I'd better just in case a wrong number had been put out and I could tell someone to fix it.

Ended up dead-heating with Martin Dent and Craney - they had a sprint for the finish (won by Martin) but had both punched the wrong 18...

On the way out to the event I saw the light-rail construction site on Northbourne Avenue, with signs pointing out that this was part of the original 1912 Walter Burley Griffin plan. Presumably the next step in implementing the 1912 Griffin plan will be to replace the War Memorial with a casino.

Hip was pretty bad last night (quite uncomfortable to walk on in Albury, although a few hours in the car probably had something to do with that), but much better when I woke up - though a head cold was added to the mix of issues. Both of these were manageable while running without giving me a lot of confidence about getting through 13k tomorrow, especially if the cold takes a turn for the worse as it was looking like doing this afternoon.

The run itself was one of my classic (short) Canberra ones - one I won't be doing again in its current form (or at least from its current start point) - round the base of the Aranda bushland and into the northern part of Black Mountain reserve. Even the more modest hills were a struggle today. Spotted somebody putting out controls for today's Black Mountain event, which I didn't run because of a clash with my social calendar (namely catching up with an old school friend I hadn't seen for about 18 years and had totally lost touch with until he popped up on social media a few weeks ago; now that I know the variety of things he's been up to the interim, which include three years cycling through Central and South America, managing a guesthouse in Guatemala and an aid program in PNG, it's not surprising he's been hard to find).

One feature of this run which you don't normally see in these parts was a burnt-out car next to Bindubi Street. A few weeks ago, four cars were set on fire in an Aranda street, possibly the most exciting thing that's ever happened in the suburb (in a criminal sense).

Original plan for this morning was to head into work first thing and then do a run from there. I thought that a spanner might have been thrown in the works when the 6.58am ABC radio cross to the Bureau didn't happen because of a fire alarm, but by the time I got there whatever had been happening was no longer happening - and then my hip was no good anyway...

Hit the road to Canberra tonight - doing the Friday night road trip for the last time with the family home as a destination (my parents are moving to Victoria next month). On a frosty night, part of me was occupied in the later stages tracking how the temperature varied with the topography, especially in the hillier areas. It's probably as well for family sanity that late-1970s cars didn't have thermometers.

Improved enough in the last 24 hours to give it a go and knew from the experience of the sprint the weekend before last that speed doesn't seem to bother it, so went for the intervals session that I'd originally planned for yesterday (14x45). Didn't feel like I had a lot of pace but only minor niggles (and my hamstring no longer seems to give trouble pushing off).

No dogs sighted today, on or off-leash. The cold weather must be scaring them (or their owners) away.

To All Nations and back. It's hard rubbish season in the City of Darebin (or at least our corner of it) at the moment, and dodging piles on the pavement is part of the game this week. (Indicative of the fact that our street has a lot of kids of mid- to upper primary school age, a disproportionate amount of the hard rubbish here seems to be outgrown car seats, alongside the usual couches and mattresses).