Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Went up to Yackandandah to check out the potential Oceania Middle area for next year with a few others. Readers of Neil's log will know he was pretty excited about it, and so am I - intense gold sluicing which reminds me of Naseby (NZ), or perhaps the northwest corner of Petticoat Gully. Unlike most mining areas there are no bland areas in between. It won't be fast - I'm thinking 4k for a Jules winning time in the low-mid 30s - but it will certainly be memorable.

It was also an excellent day to find out which parts of the area do, and don't, have decent wet-weather access.

A new activity at a familiar spot (although one I haven't been for a year or so since it was no longer near a regular massage location) - pool running at Richmond, as I had other things to do in the area afterwards. The deep end is almost as long as Fitzroy's, although it's indoors (usually a minus, potentially a plus today, although as it turned out this fitted into the window between two periods of rain).

The longest session of its type I've done and working reasonably hard, especially in the last 10 minutes, without some of the discomfort of Wednesday. Felt like I'd done a proper session afterwards, which is not always the way I feel after being in the water.

I'd forgotten that there was a Saturday morning market in the street outside the pool (cons: hard to get a park anywhere nearby; pros: potentially a good place for food shopping if I come back here in this timeslot). The other development is that they've finally fixed up the notoriously troublesome showers.

Got the OK to do swimming as well as pool running so decided to do some for a bit of a change - didn't seem to be going that fast but a reasonable session (and Ivanhoe wasn't as stifling as it sometimes can be).

Two stories took my attention today. One was that different polls found that the percentage of people who believe in witchcraft is the same as the percentage of people who intend to vote Labor in the next NSW state election. (At least this isn't as bad as the 1993 Canadian poll which found that more Canadians thought Elvis was still alive than approved of the performance of the then Prime Minister). The other is that the average American teenage girl sends or receives, on average, 130 text messages per day. This seems a remarkably large figure and I'd be interested in comment from any readers of the relevant demographic as to whether Australian figures are likely to be similar.

C • Its true 1

Moderately encouraging news on the knee; there doesn't appear to be anything wrong structurally, just some issues with the tendon. It won't be a rapid return but the doctor seems reasonably hopeful that it will start to settle down in a couple of weeks - not quite the start to the summer I'd hoped for, but if I'm back in reasonable training in December it won't be a disaster.

My brain was hurting too by the end of the day after spending numerous hours wrestling with a difficult data analysis and programming problem. The program's written now but I'll find out tomorrow if it works.

And the driving atrocity of the day: a 19-year-old unlicenced driver in an unregistered car who was picked up in Epping last night speeding and tailgating an unmarked police car, and turned out to have 13 outstanding arrest warrants. Also in the car were reported to be three children aged 2,3 and 10 (presumably the oldest wasn't his).

C • Good luck with the knee - h... 1

At Fitzroy. Started this working harder than I probably have previously in this session - now that it is serious training and not just a recovery session - but backed off a bit after the knee felt a little stiff halfway through. It seems to have coped with a bit of shuttling back and forth on the bike, though.

It looks like it might be a case of deja vu; the initial prognosis on my knee is a tendon injury similar to last year's, but this time in the knee rather than the Achilles. I'll be having scans tomorrow to confirm this (or otherwise). If this is the case, the outlook is probably pretty similar to this time last year - a few weeks away from running and then a gradual buildback - although maintaining fitness will be harder because serious riding will be off the agenda, at least initially. Might get to know the swimming pools of Melbourne (and Geneva) very well over the coming weeks....

Geography epic fail of the day: to Jan Kronberg, Liberal upper house member for the Eastern Metropolitan region, for sending me a letter about how good the Liberals' policies would be for Eltham. The only problem with this is that I don't live in the electorate of Eltham (or even particularly close to it). Assuming they sent the letter out to every voter in the area they've probably wasted at least $10,000 in campaign funds on this piece of misdirection.

At Ivanhoe. A reasonably mundane session; I quite enjoy doing this once a week, but when it's the only thing you can really do it's a bit frustrating (especially on mornings as nice as this morning was).

One surprising development of last week was seeing Andrew Bolt acting on behalf of the forces of good rather than evil - exposing a state Liberal candidate who was going around telling the people of Wallan that a new public housing development was going to be filled up with Somalis and that the Government was going to give all of them new cars. Those of us who've been around for a while know that this sort of thing is race-baiting 101, more commonly practised by One Nation and its fellow-travellers than by representatives of allegedly respectable political parties (although race-baiting of a different sort is not exactly unheard of in places like Lindsay and Greenway - and on the evidence of last week might get an audience in the Adelaide Hills too). Surprisingly no-one else in the media seems to have taken much notice, nor has there been any clamour for him to be disendorsed.

Up in Castlemaine to do commentary for the Australian MTBO Championships, having first warmed my mouth up with a session on Channel 9 this morning (not about orienteering). Oddly enough, the last time I was on 'Today' the big story of the day was also a sports drug scandal (on that occasion the Chinese swimming team being caught by Australian Customs with an impressive supply of illicit material). I was half-expecting to see illicit material of a different sort in the celebrity dressing rooms (the one I waited in was signed 'Jimmy Barnes') but didn't see any - not that I'd necessarily recognise it if I saw it. (Those with long memories may recall that an inability to determine what sorts of white powder are illicit is shared by the Goulburn police). I also stayed out of the labelled parking spots, not that I'd expect there's much chance of seeing S.Newman at 7.45 on a weekend morning.

The original plan was to combine this weekend with a couple of nice runs in the highlands, but that isn't happening for obvious reasons. My base also isn't quite as planned because if the youth hostel is booked out (which it is by the New Zealanders), there's not much in Daylesford for under $200 a night (and most places won't accept one-night bookings on a weekend anyway), so I'm in Castlemaine instead.

C • :D 1

Pool running at Fitzroy. The warmest morning we've had so far this spring, and the crowds were out (it also makes a difference that the squads were out in force, perhaps because I was here a bit earlier than normal). A reasonable session.

There's a sign outside a shop on Alexandra Parade 'Last Coffee Before Frankston'. This reminded me of the venue in Deer Park which used to have a sign 'Last Pokies Before Melton'. The sign disappeared not because it was bizarre, but because with the development of Caroline Springs it was no longer accurate.

Well, that didn't last long - took only a few steps to work out that this wasn't a goer. I'm booked in to get the knee properly looked at on Tuesday - can't see myself doing much before then except perhaps in the pool.

Stories from some of the more far-flung places I visited last year occasionally grab my attention (there was a piece on the weekend about the Vatican opening an impressively large collection of Aboriginal artefacts from Kalumburu - presumably collected by the mission, whose museum has an impressive collection of its own). Today's was a piece in the Financial Review about what sounded like an extremely ambitious development proposal in Kalbarri, involving 11 square kilometres of land (at a guess, probably five times the size the town is now), a six-star hotel and various resort properties. Unsurprisingly, the proposal ran onto the rocks - the council started to get suspicious when they didn't hear anything from the developer for two years - and the receivers are currently picking over the carcass and have thus far found the sum total of $2000. Equally unsurprisingly, the would-be developer was "unavailable for comment". (Whether ASIC, the AFP and/or the WA fraud squad will find him similarly unavailable for comment is unknown).

Not really much better this morning - will give it one more go tomorrow but suspect I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get it looked at properly.

9/11 conspiracy theories have been in the news a bit today (courtesy of an MUA official on the ABC who hasn't learned that it's better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you're a fool, than open it and remove all possible doubt). Through this I did find out that the entry for Osama bin Laden on the FBI Most Wanted webpage fails to contain any reference to September 11 - it mainly refers to 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa, then rather understatedly says that he is "suspected of involvement in other terrorist attacks". This could mean any of the following:

(a) the FBI think the 1998 attacks are more than enough to get him put away and that adding anything else would just complicate the paperwork
(b) the FBI doesn't think he did it
(c) the FBI are so hopeless at updating their websites that the page concerned hasn't been updated since 2001 or earlier

Knowing how long it can sometimes take for things to get done in a large bureaucracy, my money's on (c).

Morning session from my place along the Yarra Flats and back up through Eaglemont. A nice morning for a run and enjoyed it on the whole. Knee was OK on the run itself with none of the stiffening of the last bit yesterday, but didn't feel great later in the day.

Life's little mystery #359: why is a quarterly rise of 0.9% in Melbourne house prices (which, last time I looked, was still higher than the rate of inflation) regarded as a "slump"?

C • Being a lesser rate than that required in order to double prices within 7 years? 2

Decided on a pool running session rather than a swim as the elbow is bruised and swollen up a bit. Generally a pretty good session and no issues with the knee - also not unpleasant conditions (certainly compared to what Friday would have been like).

The person who had a Labor sign on their balcony overlooking the pool during the federal campaign is at it again for the state one. Much as I'd like to be able to support Richard Wynne (unlike one or two others under threat from the Greens who won't be missed), he's not in my electorate.

Politics in a more distant land also came to my attention today, in the form of one Art Robinson, running as a Republican for a Congressional seat in Oregon. He's (in)famous in the climate world for being behind the Oregon Petition, an internet statement "signed" by 31,000 "scientists" (whose ranks include numerous cats and dogs, and Ginger Spice) denying the existence of man-made global warming. That wasn't what got our attention, though; rather it was a statement accusing his opponent of sending money to a tax haven, New Zealand. I'm sure that the idea that New Zealand is a tax haven will come as news to the New Zealanders.

Monday night runs from my place are often sparsely populated, but this was the most sparsely populated of all - no-one else turned up. I was thinking of not going out, too, as the knee was a bit sore (riding seems to irritate it a bit more than running does, which may alter my commuting plans for a bit). It was fine for most of what was a reasonably pleasant run - but then stiffened up significantly in the last 5 minutes. Will need watching.

A group run from one-half of the Ewels/Preston property empire (two houses 100 metres apart in Trafalgar), having been there for Kathryn's 30th last night. Started out on the road to the tip - and in the plain-speaking country they still call it a tip, not a "transfer station" or a "resource recovery centre" - before heading up onto some steepish bush tracks in a patch of forest on the escarpment behind Trafalgar. This is rainforest in places and very thick elsewhere, but has a decent track network. It was, however, very slippery with the recent rain and present drizzle, something I demonstrated on two different occasions (the first time taking enough skin off an elbow to be able to show a bit of solidarity with the MTBOers next weekend). Didn't want to take it beyond an hour - and in any case had a train to catch. The others all went out for a second loop.

The main positive from today was that the knee was significantly improved, with only mild discomfort and much more stability than either yesterday or last weekend. Hopefully this means I can start building back into things, starting with having the sort of 50-60% week this week that I was planning to have last week.

The trip down to Trafalgar had its moments. I decided to put the regional train network to the test (well-used by country people coming to Melbourne, but hardly at all in the reverse direction because of the lack of transport at the other end unless your destination was within walking distance of a station, which mine was yesterday). I had forgotten that it was Caulfield Cup day and we would therefore have our share of drunken racegoers, which degenerated into worse after one of them made what I took to be a sexually suggestive remark to someone who was under age. This prompted someone else, who may or may not have been the father of the girl concerned (noting that "father" is a somewhat more blurred concept in some of the places the train was going than we're used to), to take vigorous issue with them, and this ended up in a rolling all-in brawl in the aisle (albeit of the pushing-and-shoving-and-lots-of-foul-language variety - I didn't see any actual punches thrown). Most of the offenders either were evicted or evicted themselves to continue hostilities at Tynong station; one might hope that a few of them might tread the well-trodden path to Moe Magistrates', but I'm not holding my breath.

Much more sedate on the way home this morning - just some high-spirited teenagers whose singing wasn't totally atrocious.

C • Makes the bendigo line seem gentrified 4

First attempt at running. Certainly not 100% but not as bad as I thought it might have been, and warmed up reasonably well with no real pain; still feeling a bit unsure down and up hills. Also pulled up OK afterwards.

There weren't many hills on this one except early and late, with one of the main purposes of this run (apart from testing an injury) being to investigate any local flooding after the heavy rain of the last 24 hours. The answer was that there wasn't much - the Yarra is running strongly but has not yet burst its banks. Suspect it might be a bit different in Wagga or the southwestern half of Canberra.

C • Murrumbidgee... 1

Still not feeling brilliant walking (especially on stairs) but decided I'd still give pool running a go, and turned out to respond pretty well - a solid session with no awkwardness in the knee (and it probably felt a bit better afterwards too). Chickened out on Fitzroy given the wildness of the weather and went indoors at Ivanhoe, before getting to see that people still haven't learned that umbrellas are useless in high winds (especially on the Collins Street bridge which is one of the windiest places in Melbourne, and whose rubbish bins are periodically filled with shredded umbrellas).

Will have a go at an (easy) run tomorrow before heading down to Trafalgar for Kathryn and Rob's gathering.

Geography epic fail of the day: to the report in that esteemed high-quality publication, MX, which reported an alleged terrorist plot in which the terrorists were going to arrive in Delhi by sea.

C • MX 3

Don't seem to be making an awful lot of progress at the moment. Will give it another couple of days (in a week which I had been half-thinking of taking off anyway) and try some pool running on Friday; if it's not up to proper running by the weekend then the time will have come to get it looked at properly.

A lesson in spin spotting 101: any newspaper letter-writer, or talkback radio caller, who claims to be a long-term voter for party X but is so disgusted with their position on issue Y that this time they are going to switch to party Z, is very probably a long-term member of party Z.

Both sides do this (although I've never put my name to such a missive myself - my only contribution to such discourse was in my days as Orienteering ACT secretary, in response to a tobacco industry claim that banning tobacco sponsorship would devastate smaller sports). One such correspondent's cover was blown, though, when he received an award at the Liberal state conference for outstanding service to the party by virtue of writing so many letters to newspapers.

A reasonably relaxed session physically; not especially stiff after the weekend. Knee not entirely comfortable with this, though, and will have to be careful over the next few days. Also taking a bit of a break from running until it settles down; the timing helps there.

Victorian Long Championships on the fast gully-spur of Joyces Creek, on a very long course (expected given the terrain). Had trouble focusing on the race beforehand, probably through the demands of yesterday, but was fine once I picked up a map - at which point the problem was not being fast enough.

Nevertheless, the run was going fairly smoothly through the first third, although Bryan was through me by 4. At 9 the knee issues from last Sunday returned, but this time with 70 minutes remaining rather than 15. I think it's probably a pinched nerve or something like it - there's numbness and a lack of stability, but no pain, and even a brief stop (or walk) loosens it up.

In the second half the priority was to nurse the knee home. There were two points, at 16 and 20, where I might well have pulled the pin had I been anywhere near the finish. Rob had caught me at 16 and I was in sight for a bit, but dropped away in the next bad patch. The very long 22nd was a struggle but after that the finish was in sight (metaphorically speaking) and the knee was improving a little. My concentration was becoming increasingly ragged though, and it was no real surprise that this eventually resulted in a mistake, a 30-seconder at 26 which cost me a spot. I think I was 5th although there wasn't a recent update of results on the board - certainly couldn't have matched the 93-94 that the three leaders did, but on a better day might have managed a 98 or 99.

So ends the season, one which never reached any great heights. A new injury is a bit of a worry although my feeling is that it's not especially serious, and the usual quiet couple of post-championship weeks will hopefully sort it out. Then again, I felt the same way about my Achilles this time last year. (That injury, by the way, has been basically fine in the last couple of weeks).

A less relaxing morning than I had anticipated because of having the last 15 controls to put out (see yesterday's entry). It turned out that I'd taped one of them in the wrong spot and the controller hadn't noticed - goes to show that you can never have too many checks. (I think this was a drawing mistake rather than a navigation one, as the knoll the tape was on was (a) not plausibly confusable with the one it was supposed to be on and (b) was a much nicer feature).

Once this was done, there was time to do what I'd thought might be my main activity for the morning - running around the controls I'd put out yesterday to check that they were still there and turn the SI units on. Felt reasonably smooth, and stronger than other days this week.

The event seemed to go pretty well; it's a good area, although the green is not particularly stable (in general, the gorse has thinned, the blackberry has spread), and new tracks seem to pop up every time we go out there. A good M21 race too with five within 90 seconds of the lead.

Didn't have time to get to the pool this morning, with a lunchtime departure from work to go up and put controls out for tomorrow. There was a minor mishap with this which meant the job didn't get finished today - we'd organised for a drop of control stands in the middle of the map but when we got to what we thought was the appointed spot it became apparent that the person doing the drop had another appointed spot in mind. By the time we sorted out what had happened the light was going to run out; thankful for the 11.30 start tomorrow.

Knee a little sore walking in the rough ground.

Today was a definite improvement on the last two days, not that that would be hard. Still feeling a bit weak uphill but improved a bit over the final third. Still rather slow, partly through this being a newsletter delivery run, but seem to be through the worst of the slump.

Question of the day: apart from being (male) orienteers, what do Alex Massey, David Colls, Jason McCrae, Morten Neve, Oliver Crosato, Karl Bicevskis and Kasimir Gregory have in common?

C • in common 2

Perhaps it wasn't the lack of sleep: I got a decent night of it last night and felt every bit as bad running as I did yesterday (in fact it was probably a bit worse), weak and light-headed with no real energy. (Felt fine when not running, though). Suspect I may be just in one of my periodic flat spots - normally I work through these in three or four days and hopefully the same timing will apply this time round.

C • Bright for cup weekend 1

I'm not sure how new parents cope with several months of very limited sleep; I was battling to manage two nights of it. (This time it was due to a teleconference for the international data sets project I'm involved with; now that daylight saving has started it was from 11-12.30. Once daylight saving ends in North America it will be midnight-1.30).

I didn't expect much of this run, based on the Yarra, so I wasn't particularly disappointed with probably my worst run of the year, sluggish throughout. Also a bit of knee numbness again towards the end. Not sure what useful training purpose this served (other than of the HTFU variety).

Had a few moments afterwards too - first having a pedal come off in the middle of an intersection, then initially putting my bike lock around a post and neglecting to note that I hadn't put it around any part of the bike. With that sort of start I was expecting a horror day at work, but strangely ended up feeling OK after mid-morning. (My section is full of new parents so I wasn't expecting a lot of sympathy for sleep deprivation).

Epic fail of the day: the 'Australian', who had obviously pre-prepared two stories about today's interest rate decision, posted the wrong one and thus reported on an interest rate rise which didn't exist. (A dishonourable mention to Terry McCrann of the Herald-Sun for writing a column attacking the Government for their policies which led to the non-existent interest rate rise).

C • HS 1

No MFR Monday night run this week so I did the morning run/swim combination instead from Ivanhoe, with limited sleep having made it home at 11.45 last night. (At least a 9am meeting with the OA auditors gave me an excuse to start a little later). Very stiff in the first couple of minutes but otherwise not too bad for a recovery run; wouldn't have wanted to be working much harder, though.

Spring has definitely arrived in my absence; there was some residual cool air in the valleys but a warm morning everywhere else.

This was about rolling the arms over and very little else. Ivanhoe as much of a sauna as it always is.

Australian Relays, 2nd leg in the 2nd Victorian team. The warm-up didn't give me great expectations, being comprehensively overrun by Susanne between the tag area and the graveyard lowered those expectations further, and the uphill first leg was a struggle, but once that was done it was as good a run as I could reasonably have expected. Ecmo was onto me by 3 (and seemed to keep having the short splits early on), but we stayed more or less in touch and I more or less coped with the climbing.

By 8 we were onto Ben (who always looks strong uphill even when he isn't moving all that fast) and had gone through Liggo. I got a bit of a break coming into the spectator control with the help of a split, but had a bit of a nuisance problem at that point - right knee numbness which surfaced briefly in 2008 but was otherwise something I thought I'd left behind as a teenager. From experience I expected it to settle and it did, but limited my terrain confidence a little. The pace was still OK, though, and it took minor hesitation coming into 14 for Ecmo to get back onto me (before doing me in the sprint). The time was respectable, if not in the league of the big guns. Dave Brownridge ran a good last leg to bring us home in 5th.

So ends another championships week. I've drifted back this year from sometimes challenging for the top quarter of the field to being in its middle, plus or minus a little. A year of restricted training probably has a bit to do with that but at least some is probably an irreversible long-term trend, and I'm at least starting to contemplate the day when it's no longer a given that I'll be running elites (that day may well come at next year's Oceania Championships, given the potential attraction of an Australian M40 team). One positive was that the Achilles gave me no trouble all week which means I should be able to handle a solid summer (several weeks of which won't actually be summer) reasonably well.

The final engagement of the competition year is next weekend's Victorian Championships, although I'm setting the middle so I'll only be racing Sunday.

Australian Long Championships, 15th. Matched expectations without exceeding them on all fronts; again my strength in a long tough physical race was found somewhat wanting, probably in part a consequence of a year with reduced training and particularly reduced hill training, and partly a consequence of getting old.

Started off reasonably well, although the new lake en route to 1 was a bit disconcerting. Missed 45 seconds through being a bit low at 6 (the first of three major climbs in succession), but then settled reasonably well, although felt as if I was fairly slow (especially after seeing Josh Blatchford flying across my path on the way into 10). Got my first sighting of Dave Brownridge (6 minutes ahead) on the way across to 14 and was on him by 19. We went through the spectator control together and the sight of the second loop was a bit of a shock - I remarked to Dave that the climb out of 24 was going to sort out the men from the boys. I then missed 21 a bit, looking on a spur too early and losing 45 seconds or so, and Dave got a break. I was almost onto him again by 24 and expected to catch him on the climb but it didn't happen (the splits suggest that this says more about his run than mine - his last loop was impressive). Finished off at a bit of a plod and didn't quite get onto the back of the Nuggets train.

The day started with another interview (ABC Sydney at 6.50). I heard the person before me, who was talking about how much the change to daylight saving was going to upset people's body clocks. Having been through three 8-9 hour time changes in the last six weeks, my sympathy was limited. (While on the subject of media appearances, I was speculating today as to which would be greater - the number of people who would say that they'd seen me on TV, or the number of minutes separating me from Julian in today's race. Julian won, 22 to 16 - which is, at least, five minutes closer than I was last week).

Well, the Saints Rd sign in Elizabeth is safe for another year (Magpie Cres, Mannum, may be a different story, although it was still there as of 2.30 on Sunday afternoon), and Central Districts did get to hold their Grand Final celebration, although not with a lot to spare.

Australian Sprint Championships. Not exactly the conventional preparation for this race; at 10am I was fronting a press conference in Adelaide (to talk about recent rains and what they mean, or mostly don't mean, for the long-term state of the drought). A couple of follow-up TV interviews later (as per usual, 10 minutes of footage for 10 seconds of grab) and at 11.30 it was up the road to Gawler in the hope of making it in reasonable time for a 12.59 start (taking the previously unexplored opportunity of being a passenger of the recently-licenced Ecmo, as I still had one interview to do over the phone in the car).

We made it with 35 minutes to spare, just enough time for a decent warm-up. Somewhat to my surprise I was able to focus reasonably well on the orienteering, on what I thought was a reasonably straightforward course with none of the devilish route choices that sprints sometimes have - the only wobble was not quite working out the fences at 2, but that probably only cost me a few seconds. My problem was my usual sprint problem of being too slow. Ben caught me by 9; I sort of hung in there for a few controls but then dropped away again. About a par result for me, although at least it was a few places better than the Easter prologue.

Spotted on the way up was a signpost 'Saints Rd' which has an excellent chance of being stolen in the event of a certain result on Saturday. Also spotted was a sign 'Central Districts Grand Final Party Sunday 6pm-1am' - presumably there wasn't room on the sign to say '6pm-1am if we win, 6pm-6.10pm if we lose'. (By the way, why are an outer suburban team called 'Central Districts'? - did they relocate?).