Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Something of a novelty for me this year - a long run which was at its best in the last quarter, on a classic route (or slight modification thereof) out through North Balwyn and Mont Albert. In part this was a comment on the first three quarters, struggling a bit in the dark, hilly and slow first hour, but it's good to see the endurance functioning OK at least. A bit of a detour at the end because the Burgundy Street traffic lights were out and I didn't fancy doing battle with traffic which is challenging even under normal circumstances.

Earliest start I've had for a while, and longest midweek run (at least in time) too. Not my most productive day at work afterwards...

This has been a pretty big month: cracked 40 hours for the month (with a bit of help from fortuitous placement of days in the week) and the most hours of running I've done in a month since December 2008.

And I noticed that one of the things that one of the things a man has been charged with, after making a violent nuisance of himself at a TV station office in Griffith because he was aggrieved over a local TV ad which mocked New Zealand accent, was "misuse of a telecommunications device". I wonder if this was done in the Russell Crowe style?

C • Placement of days 1

I was in a bit of an online discussion with Katelyn last night about the fact that she's doing Kainuu week in Finland as her first event in Europe. This took me back to 1998; Kainuu week that year was my first event in Finland, at the start of a rather frustrating trip - my last as a poor student (I started work at the Bureau the day I got home) - which featured lots of runs which ranged from average to awful (and lots of rain), and when I finally had a good run in the World Uni Champs relay, I got back to discover that both of the first two runners (who shall remain nameless) had mispunched.

I arrived in Kajaani, the event centre town, to discover that I'd got the dates wrong and the event was a day later than I thought it was (this was in the days when the web was in its infancy and often the IOF annual fixture list was the only source of info). In turn this meant the event centre accommodation wasn't open for another day. There was a Christian music festival in town so everything else within a 50k radius was booked out, and my tent had achieved the dubious privilege of becoming one of the last pieces of luggage to be lost at the old Hong Kong airport (it turned up a few days later). If I'd been thinking clearly I'd have got on the train back to Helsinki (which wouldn't have cost anything because I had a railpass) and tried again the next day, but I wasn't so just stretched my sleeping bag out in the forest, thus providing plenty of food for Finland's mosquito population (plus it started raining about 4am).

Once event registration actually opened, I was pretty surprised to see that day 1 was 17km - surely that meant it was fast terrain? No, it wasn't. (It turned out it was the Finnish long distance World Cup selection trial). Definitely a case of jumping in at the deep end, and it went sort of OK for the first 90 minutes, but that was about my outer limit. I finally finished in something like 2.31 to an audience of a handful of event officials (having been close to last starter), probably just about the toughest thing I have ever done - and it was all for nothing because I'd punched the wrong second-last control...

C • Cracker story Blair 3

Up through Watsonia and Gresswell. Felt better than the last two mornings but still pretty slow, especially in the first half.

3x1km session on the Tan at lunchtime after getting out of that rarity, a highly productive meeting. Not feeling especially lively but vaguely respectable for the first couple (mid-3.50s); got a nasty stitch right at the end of the second rep which didn't really go away for the last one, and battled through it without being able to lift my pace from the previous two. A bit of a worry that three years ago I was putting 21 of these together (and it wasn't a lot faster than the floats in Bruce's 500s set here a day or two back). Saw Bruce a couple of times as he was going in the opposite direction.

Going to/from the Tan. Part of a big day, which also included two 50-55 minute rides (not feeling as energetic for the ride home as I did last night).

Something isn't quite right with my body clock at the moment - I'm not really awake for these morning runs (but on the other hand I was as pumped as I can remember being for the ride home from work, and did it 6-7 minutes faster than normal - maybe I should have done this run at 7pm rather than 7am). Being not awake is not really the ideal state of affairs for a speed session and had the fairly predictable consequence that said session didn't feature much that anyone with pretensions of being an elite orienteer would recognise as speed.

Hopefully I don't have to wait until going to WA next week to remedy this situation.

An early-morning run which felt like I still wanted to be in bed, even though I was coming off a shorter Sunday than is normally the case. Up from the Fitzroy Pool up the Merri to Thornbury and back, with a bit of a detour around the bit of boardwalk which was supposed to be finished in April but shows no signs of being so. (Given that the funding for bicycle infrastructure was reduced to zero in the recent state budget, it may stay unfinished for a while).

This is going to seem a reasonably clear week - not too many commitments in the evenings, and not too many meetings or other distractions in the work week either. Might be a good opportunity to get a decent number of things done. I'm also planning this as another pretty heavy training week (and once again involving a Thursday-Saturday long run combination), the last such week before starting to crank speed up and volume down in the lead-up to WMOC.

Swim at Fitzroy. Nothing special but nothing wrong either. Thought yesterday that jumping into the water might be a highly unpleasant experience (at least for the first few seconds) but the leg chafing has settled down enough to be able to handle water now.

It seems there's talk that the Victorian EPA is going to have to generate most of its own revenue. One of their major sources of revenue is littering fines, so now if you dob in a litterer you're helping to keep someone in a job as well as helping to keep the environment clean.

Melbourne Series at Plenty Gorge. Didn't feel as stiff as I expected (and the chafing on my left leg looked exceedingly ugly but didn't cause me any trouble), but still didn't have massive amounts of energy, particularly on the (numerous) hills. Also tentative, even by my standards, on steep slippery downhills (a result of yesterday's rain). Started to get going in the last 15 minutes. Dion was well ahead of me, which surprised me a bit; will be interested to see what Bruce does.

No issues with fine navigation, but had trouble picking good gully crossings in a couple of places, particularly on the way to 1.

Noticed this series came up as a sponsored ad on Facebook - will be interested to find out what response it generated (and how much it cost). Definitely seemed to be a reasonable number of people I didn't recognise.

Longest run since January and one I was fairly happy with. Achilles a bit sore on some of the hills (up and down) but otherwise flowed along pretty well for large parts of the run, one which went out along the Yarra to Templestowe (giving a couple of usual shortcuts a miss because of the implications of a 'minor flood warning for the Yarra at Heidelberg') before coming back through Ruffeys Creek. Climbing a bit of a struggle early but much better when the most significant hills came in the third quarter of the run; still pretty strong for the Lynnwood hill about 30 minutes from the end. Faded a bit from there, and hanging on for the last 10 minutes, but finished off better than on Thursday (and felt better afterwards too, except for leg chafing, which is troubling me a bit at the moment and was worse today).

The forecast promised atmospheric Armageddon and the radar was very colourful when I got up, but most of the action was to the west of Melbourne and didn't seem to be moving very much, so I thought I might get away without getting too wet (from above), and did, more or less. A reasonably solid session; not as tired as I thought I might have been from the way I was feeling yesterday afternoon and evening.

If things go as planned I will spend an entire weekend within the boundaries of metropolitan Melbourne (more or less). Hasn't happened since January.

C • St Helens 5

A longer-than-usual midweek long run in Canberra, on a pleasant morning for this sort of thing (sunny with a light frost). Started with a mission to perform some OA business (dropping past Grant's place to get some signatures on bank forms), then south to the lake and around the south and west sides of West Basin. Nice to retrace some old ground. Never felt brilliant, but a solid morning's work; had a good 10 minutes after seeing Jase (on bike) at Yarramundi Reach, but had to fight it out over the uphill last 15 minutes (and certainly knew for the rest of the day that I'd done a run; struggled to get to the end of my talk today without some extra water). First time for a while that I've been sub-5s on a non-speedwork run.

Next challenge will be to do it again on Saturday.

Flying out to Canberra a bit later in the morning so what worked best for the logistics and traffic-avoidance was to do a run in the northwest of Melbourne, around the old familiar turf of Essendon (including past my grandmother's now-vacant house). Largely downhill for the first half, up hill for the second. Continuing to feel a bit on the flat side. A bit shorter than planned because I was running a bit later than planned. Didn't go quite far enough west for the day's law-and-order excitement in Keilor East.

Must be school cross-country season: yesterday I saw the course being set up for a race in Yarra Bend Park, today there was a group from one of the local schools out training.

Got a bit more exercise than I'd planned on arriving in Canberra - I was led a bum steer by the ACTION journey planner, missed the bus by 30 seconds and ended up walking from the National Library to Grammar (where I was going for the first stage of next year's event advising job; unsurprisingly, there are a lot more buildings there than there were in 1988). Nice day for a walk in the sun though.

With GrantM and Sanders at Lake Ginninderra (minus the floating teepee now), mostly on the bike path around the lake but with a few deviations into slightly rougher stuff - was glad that the other two had brought lights. Finished up going up into UC for a bit. Good company but didn't feel brilliant as a run.

Went into work early with a view to doing fartlek around the Tan. Wasn't feeling that well this morning, although I think some of that might be in the mind; I'm feeling somewhat unsettled at the moment as the amount of less-than-flattering comment continues to grow slowly, with the possibility of an explosion at some point in the not-too-distant future. At least so far they're only accusing me publicly of laziness, and not (yet) fraud. The thought has crossed my mind a bit in recent days that there are 7 million observations in the data set, and they only have to find one mistake to do serious damage....

I have something of a recent tradition of lousy runs in this location and format (partly through attempting to do them in situation like having just got off an overnight bus). This one was just as bad on the first sprint, but did get somewhat better in the second half. Still not a lot of power though.

And they've fixed up the spelling on the sign with the all-time Tan top 10.

C • sign 1

To/from the Tan. A fair bit of traffic, not too surprising for peak hour.

Definitely into 'it's nice once your in' territory this morning, and it was nice once I was in. One of the better swims I've had for a while.

The Monday night numbers are dwindling as it gets darker, and the distance is getting a bit shorter too. Just Dion and Clare (whom I haven't seen for a while) tonight. In times gone by I would have done an extra loop but couldn't be bothered tonight; took a while to get going and generally a bit below what I'd hoped for after the morning.

Had a bit of trouble getting back in the house myself when I got home (after the problems Jenny had a couple of weeks ago), but nothing a bit of WD40 couldn't fix.

Tasmanian Series event at Sandstone Valleys, in (I think) a different part of the map to my only previous outing there at the 2005 Schools; long cliff lines provided the odd control feature and added rather more to the route choice options by making various straight lines non-viable.

Didn't warm up as well as I should have and was punished with a very slow climb up the hill out of the start triangle, the beginning of a first leg which wasn't much under 2k (4 was also very long, but with a good wide track option). Plodding through the early stages so it wasn't a massive surprise when Brodie caught me 4 minutes coming out of 3. Perhaps more surprisingly, we were in quite a good scrap through the middle half of the course from there; I still wasn't running very fast (although better once the terrain flattened out - the south end was very enjoyable running) but he was making more mistakes. We were still together at 8, but then he stopped making mistakes and I started making them (45 seconds at 9, 30 seconds at 10) and he got away. Still not running too well physically, but had some fun on the way. (Not sure if the indifferent running today was related to sleeping abysmally last night, which in turn was probably related to going to bed too soon after the football, although I was also dwelling on the OA audit becoming a lot more complicated than it should be).

Hadn't realised so many Tasmanian orienteering people were at CSIRO - quite a few of them mentioned that they'd been to my talk on Thursday. In general the post-event was a day when it was hard to move 20 metres without finding someone to talk to, although quite a bit of the conversation involved various Tasmanian juniors who support either Essendon or Richmond, and dissecting last night's game. (If I ever become self-important enough in my OA role to no longer be interested in talking to M16s about either their performance on the course or the performance of their football team, it will be about time for someone to encourage me to resign).

C • Dreamtime 1

C • Well put, Blair. 1

Test-running at St. Helens. I could tell you more but I'd have to kill you.

Rest day from formal training: spent the day checking controls at St. Helens for the Australian Long Championships (I'm the IOF Event Adviser for this). Should be good fun, and the green strips along the creeks are (mostly) penetrable (although you will get your feet wet, and possibly more than your feet). More legible than I'd feared for a 1:15000 digital print in the mining detail (and the 1:15000 championship maps will be offset-printed which should be better still).

Saw an ad this afternoon: "Biddy lost 18 kilos and 43 centimetres in four months". I'm assuming it's a different one.

C • Woo hoo im thin! 4

A few people asked me at yesterday's meeting whether I was going to run up Mount Wellington. I have done this (when here for a conference in 1996), but it was a 3.20 epic then and would be longer now. Instead I retraced some other 1996 steps (I must have been a glutton for punishment in 1996) and went up Mount Nelson instead. I've done this twice; the first time was one of the great training runs of my career, and the second one was pretty good too. It's not a particularly steep climb, but is a long one (a pretty continuous 6k at a pretty consistent 5-6% - I bet plenty of cyclists are seen here on weekends).

Today didn't quite live up to the levels of 1996 but was still better than anything else this week. feeling stronger on the climbs than on much shorter ones previously. The long descent was demanding on the muscles, and the final loop through the upper part of Sandy Bay and on into Battery Point, including some short but very sharp climbs, was hard work at times. Great view from the ridgeline of Mount Wellington catching the first of the rising sun.

Towards the end my path took me past the Errol Flynn Park. I gather its naming was a matter of some controversy, thanks to Errol's somewhat scandalous private life (from which the expression "in like Flynn" was derived).

Off to St. Helens tonight.

C • You'll be amused that 'in l... 1

In Hobart, from the central city. Decided this morning was the morning to go east, not sure if this was a great idea because getting across the bridge is a bit of a pain - the paths are narrow and whatever the signs say, the bike riders expect you to get out of their way (a more sensible idea would be for one side to be bikes only and the other side to be pedestrians only). Ended up having just enough distance for a circuit of the Rosny peninsula at the far end. Still feeling rather weak and clogged up, though improved a bit in the last 20 minutes. A nice morning to be out.

I presume the sign 'Do not cross if a large ship is approaching the bridge' is a legacy of 1975. One would hope that no future captain would be so incompetent, but I guess you can't be sure.

On the way back a few people were holding up big yellow placards next to the main road. I'm always interested in what a demo might be about so went to have a look, but they turned out to be advertising an employment agency. ('Sign with Max Employment and you too can get to stand in the cold holding a silly sign!').

C • Try Knocklofty 4

Second session at the end of the day in Hobart, heading north this time as far as Lenah Valley. It's always a bit of a question mark in a place like Hobart as to whether a straight line on the map is going to be vertical on the ground. This one wasn't too ferocious, although I was a bit surprised to discover how far I'd climbed when I got to the top of the last major hill. Surprised how slow this was, although I think part of that might have been the Garmin struggling in the inner city (unless I suddenly dropped to 7 min/km downhill in decent light), and another part was probably being in the dark, street lighting in suburban Hobart back streets being fairly minimal.

There was a bit of traffic at the start but it dwindled quickly by the end. A lot of Hobart looks like it could still be in the 1960s, which is part of its charm, but that extends to a central city which is stone dead after 7pm.

Spotted while stretching at the start was a car with a parking ticket. Not that many years ago, Hobart parking fines were $9 which made it cheaper to park illegally than legally (these days they're a still-underwhelming $25). Also spotted was a Danish consular vehicle. Hobart would normally seem an out-of-the-way place to have a Danish consul but I'm guessing their principal function is to keep the press pack under control whenever Princess Mary's in town.

It wasn't happening for me today - must still be recovering from the weekend's efforts, never getting into it and feeling weak and sluggish. Would be more concerned if this wasn't coming off such a hard weekend. Got deluged by a heavy passing shower in the last few minutes (but not enough to make my shoes overly wet, a good thing prior to travelling).

Heading to Tasmania tonight - initially in Hobart for a couple of days for work, then Event Adviser work up at St. Helens.

Swim at Richmond. The water is hotter in the showers and less hot in the pool than it was the last time I was there, both of which I view as positive developments. (Easier to park than the last couple of times at Richmond, too; must have been the builders' RDO). Felt vaguely promising at times but gradually drifted out of it; not as stiff as I'd feared, though.

Something I neglected to mention from the weekend was Murray's discovery, more or less by accident, of the best way to get rid of grass seeds from socks which have been in Queensland bush; hang them in a bird cage.

C • good investment! 8

Obviously no-one else felt like coming up after the weekend's races - not entirely surprising - so it was just Amy and myself for a session from her new place in Richmond. Out along the river, back past the MCG, and through the crowd making their way to Rod Laver Arena (I guessed from the audience demographic that it wasn't One Direction; it turned out to be Prince). Not as sore as I'd feared but not an awful lot of energy. A bit of tightness in my left knee.

WOC long trials have a well-deserved reputation for epics and this was no exception, something well-anticipated once we saw a course length that started with an 18. I haven't run a course of that length since the 2001 Victorian Championships at Whroo (now that the long-O is almost extinct in Australia; my longest course of all was a 27k long-O (250m climb) in the New Forest when I was living in Winchester in 1989, my longest non-rogaine time a 2.57 when I thought that having just turned 15 was good enough reason to step up to the longest course at the ACT long-O).

The omens were not promising before the start. I'd woken at 4.45 and been unable to get back to sleep, and the about-to-get-a-cold feeling of yesterday morning had translated into a have-got-a-cold feeling this morning. Once running, though, it wasn't too bad, at least at cruising speed which was about as much as I could manage - big hills would have been a big problem but there were only a couple of major climbs today.

I felt as if I was doing all right when Simon went through me 4 minutes at 6 at the end of a 25-minute leg (as it turned out he'd lost a couple of minutes on 1, not a possibility one normally considers when assessing the place he's likely to catch you). Didn't find the green western end of the map pleasant but neither did anyone else, and continued to feel reasonable through a section with Sebba from 12 to 16, although this included a couple of errors, drifting wide into 13 (I thought this was a 1-minuter but the splits suggest it was double that) and a wrong track out of 15 (picked up quickly). Dropped Sebba on the climb into 16 and had a reasonable stretch after that, and still felt as if I had a bit left at the run-through with about 3k to go. It went a bit pear-shaped from there; first a sharp (but fortunately not persistent) cramp on the way out of 25, then missed the tucked-away-in-green 26, twice going within 20 metres of it and dropping 3 minutes (as did Robbie, who'd caught me there). Finished off OK and in fact had my best split of the day on 27.

I was surviving rather than racing today, but it was still an improvement on Queensland despite the unpromising circumstances. It's been an annoyance not to have been 100% well on so many race weekends this year - I suspect not sleeping enough probably has a bit to do with that - but getting through this will be a help for future long-distance races. (Not that there will be too many more of those this year, given that I'm event adviser for the Australian Long Championships).

Certainly knew I'd been in a race this afternoon (and will do so more tomorrow), and the flight back was not one of the more pleasant 90 minutes I've spent in my life as I tried unsuccessfully to find a sitting position that my hamstrings were happy with.

Long NOL 1 - Splits

Event: NOL Round 3 / WOC Selection Trial - 'Coalfields Classic'
 

NOL sprint at Newcastle University. Last Sunday may have been encouraging but this was awful - never managed to get a higher gear at all and felt very sluggish. Had the feel of an about-to-get-sick run. Struggled a bit to maintain concentration, although nothing catastrophically wrong in the technical department.

Out to my first experience of non-Stockton Newcastle bush, what was described as 'very public Crown land' near Kurri Kurri. It was actually a very good simulation of flattish continental terrain - not much definition in the contours, heaps of tracks and vegetation changes and lots of small point features which were often less visible than the control flags next to them.

Started behind Grant but I was never likely to get anywhere near him unless he'd been called on to take time out from his course to arrest a marijuana grower. Reasonable start once I got into the map - I'd felt pretty ordinary between races but OK once I started warming up - and it ended up being a good run for 27 out of 28 controls. Unfortunately, the odd one out was a big one - three minutes on 11, a vague leg that trapped plenty of others too - and that reduced what would have been a decent result into a mediocre one.

NOL 1 - Splits

Middle NOL 1 - Splits

Pool running session at Ivanhoe. This isn't a favoured venue for me for this because the deep end is small, but the company is good - topics of conversation today included Brent Stanton's junior football career and people famous and infamous who live locally. (I already knew about Mick Gatto, and presume the Energy Watch guy is also a local because his court appearances have been in Heidelberg Magistrates').

I was a bit concerned about the trip to Newcastle, because the Jetstar website gave a rather cryptic error message when I tried to check in online, which I thought could mean one of four things: (a) there was a problem with the website, (b) the flight was going to be cancelled, (c) I was going to get bumped from the flight or (d) I'd been allocated to an exit row. Bruce had the same problem, rang up and found out that the answer was (d). I'm at the airport waiting for the flight now - so far listed as 10 minutes late but as the incoming flight is 40 minutes late I'm guessing that that might be optimistic.

And an e-mail came in today from 12 co-signatories (including one Senator Bernardi) asking for a copy of all data, documentation and computer code relating to the new temperature data set. The fun begins...

C • Is there any evidence 1

A run of two halves, although not the way it usually happens for me - normally this takes the form of a slow first half and a good second half, but today it was the reverse, accentuated by the fact that the run was done in two loops. The first loop was done with Jenny (who stayed with me last night) and was pretty good, heading out through Viewbank while it was still dark and then hitting the singletracks of Banyule Flats (still pretty muddy) at first light. I then went on on my own on a western loop and promptly felt flat and uninspired; thought the long descent to Darebin Creek might get me going again but it didn't. Never as much of a struggle as the last 30 minutes last week, though.

Got home and Jenny was still waiting outside the front door; the spare key I'd given her didn't work. Oops....

Again cramped on the bike coming home, which is a bit of a worry (at least from the viewpoint of 18+ kilometres on Sunday).

A run which had its good patches but mostly nothing to get excited about - route mainly confirmed the non-existence of some long-standing gaps between buildings in the surrounds of La Trobe University. A very warm morning for this time of year (certainly in marked contrast with what's coming up this weekend - as well that we're in Newcastle and not Orange).

Cramped on the bike on the way in, for no obvious reason.

I noted that Canberra Raiders coach David Furner was fined $10,000 by the NRL for criticising referees this week. They do things differently in Spanish football, as this account of last weekend's Granada-Real Madrid match indicates.

Made one of my occasional forays into Wednesday night street-O in winter (as much as anything, to carry out a test of my light, which seems to work pretty well). Going at cruise speed but still thought when we started, given that we weren't going south of the freeway (as is normally the case at Tunstall Junction), that we would get the lot easily - but it was a pretty convoluted course with numerous long in-and-outs, and it wasn't until the last three or four controls that I was sure of making it. Did a rather different route to most people (getting 7 and 8 after 17 and then coming back in for a loop 2-1-18) - will be interested to see how it worked out. Felt smooth, although a bit tired on some of the later hills.

Came across this in the course of today:

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2012/05/08/the-fastest-mi...

It's an account of a court case from 1973 in which a Grenfell man was appealing against a one-month jail sentence for assault, arising out of an incident in which he found his wife in bed with the local milkman. The appeal judge took the view that the milkman deserved everything he got and reduced the penalty to a fine of 20 cents, a trifling sum even by 1973 standards.

The reason this particularly took my attention was that one of the protagonists shares a surname with one of my friends from kinder and Grade 1, whose father (quotation marks possibly required) was the local Aranda milkman, a creature which still existed in 1976-77. Possibly he had a more interesting family history than I'd suspected as an innocent six-year-old.

I wasn't terribly awake this morning. I'm not sure exactly what the right session is for such circumstances, but I'm fairly sure that a set of 400s isn't it. Nevertheless, I persisted in the hope that I might wake up eventually, which I sort of did in the last couple of reps. Not a session I'll be especially proud of though - finally ended up doing 82s.

Warm up/down for the intervals session.

Started the day's proceedings with a swim at Fitzroy - reasonably routine, ahead of a plunge-straight-back-into-it day at work (four meetings scheduled, although two were cancelled).

Also got to digest the Tio-Mila results properly. Good to see Cassie reminding us that when she isn't injured she's a good orienteer (even if the status of her not being injured occurs about as often as 20-degree March days in Oslo).

Monday night from Jasmine's place in Brunswick. Had planned that this would be the place where I would give the first test to the Norway-acquired headlamp, but I forgot one minor detail - the charger has a European plug - so this will need to wait for some other time. Didn't feel great on this run, not having much pace on the occasions when pace was called for.

Some discussion post-run of the state of various European economies, and more on various bands of modern history and whose generation had crushes on which ones - the age spread of this run meant that this extended from Sherbet (Nicola) to Hanson (Ilka and Jas).

C • Nostalgia for teens 1

Victorian Sprint Championships, 6th. At Haileybury College in Keysborough, a reasonably conventional campus-style area with some complex buildings in three sections interspersed with flat open sections across ovals. Thought the area might be a bit small but it was just big enough to contain the course - you really need a school with both a junior and senior campus (as Haileybury has) to get enough area on school grounds.

Put in a decent effort suggesting that things are continuing to improve a bit - haven't been as close as 1.30 to the front of a sprint for a while (although I don't think Bryan had a brilliant run). Only one very slight wobble, on 6, and that was only worth a few seconds. Clearly I was running at the same speed as Eddie - at no point after #5 were we separated by more than 3 seconds (his eventual margin over me). Jim was also very close to us before a late time loss - indeed as of #13 there was a four-way dead-heat featuring the three of us and Matt Schepisi.

After the run (with a brief detour via a well-known Swedish business to get some lunch) it was on to a review session of the Victorian ALP environment policy committee (much of which consisted of replacing statements in policy documents which said that in its fourth term the Brumby Government will do X). I got there just in time to deal with the section on human interactions with stock and domestic animals (not the sort of interactions that certain ACT-based football teams have been known to get involved in).

Course 1 - Splits

My non-night owl tendencies meant that I missed a bit of excitement in Noumea; a few of my colleagues who stayed around longer than I did after dinner had the dubious pleasures of seeing someone apparently deliberately run down (they're still alive as far as we know). We'll have to wait for Monday's local paper for the full story but I'm led to believe that the full story may well give us a chance to find out what the French is for "the victim was well known to police".

Not a great one to finish off in Noumea. Felt as if there was still some hangover from Thursday, particularly early on when quads were still a bit sore. That eased up in the first 10 minutes but the rest of the run was pretty sluggish, too. Seemed to be more humid than on previous days (and the wind direction was northeast rather than east), but that may have been just my imagination.

At the airport now; back in Australia tonight (all being well, although we're going to be late leaving because Noumea doesn't have the world's most efficient airport: 90 minutes of queueing for check-in, immigration and security).

A morning swim in the hotel pool, although this pool is rather more expansive than the last time I tried this (about 20 metres long in the deep part) and it was therefore a much less dizzying experience, although the lack of a black line was still slightly disconcerting. (At the hotel nearby where our actual workshop is, the pool sprawls over a vast area and would be close to 100 metres long, although irregularly shaped). Quite a pleasant session.

Finished proceedings at lunchtime today, which gave some of us a chance to get into the countryside for a bit, finishing up at a local waterfall - rained a fair bit which took something off the experience, but still worth doing. The pothole density increases in proportion to the distance from Noumea.

C • Waterfall 2

The long run of the week, heading roughly along the shore to the central city and then out onto a peninsula extending west from the city towards Nouville. Settled down reasonably quickly. I was wondering whether my chosen route was a good one in the course of a stretch through the port and then along a road with some traffic and not much of a verge, but towards the far end got off the main road and into the back blocks, something different to what I've seen so far. This is shack country - New Caledonia's per-capita GDP is similar to New Zealand's but a lot of it is locked up in the mining industry and doesn't find its way to the broader population - and no white faces were to be seen (other than my own), but the people were friendly and the numerous dogs didn't give chase (or even, with one exception, bark).

Turning around meant going into the wind, which felt cooler if slightly more demanding. To this point the run had been going well, occasionally bordering on very well, but by 80 minutes I was feeling like I was starting to tire, and ten minutes later the tank was more or less empty - whether of water or food I'm not quite sure (I suspect the former, although it is the first time for a while I've tried to do a long run before breakfast on nothing more substantial than a few sweets). At least by then I was past the last hill, but the last quarter of the run, and especially the last couple of kilometres, was a case of barely hanging on. Didn't have a lot of energy through the rest of the day.

Someone at morning tea (in a discussion about songs that get stuck in one's head) mentioned the Scatman, something which I will permanently associate with the WOC 1995 opening ceremony (it was the backing music to the performance of the local police gymnastic team, which featured a couple of German cops using a police car as a vaulting horse). The ceremony itself was a bit of a debacle - it was on the evening after the long distance qualification and the day before the final in a town 40 kilometres away from where everyone was staying, and was therefore attended almost exclusively by people who'd missed out on the final (in those days the maximum team size was five and four could run the long, so there weren't the extras doing other events that there would be now). The timing also meant my WOC career was, as it turned out, over before the opening ceremony.

A fairly standard interval session while I'm travelling, 10x1 minute (approx) on a 2-minute cycle. Often I let myself drift in these but today I was putting a pretty solid effort in, picking up pace nicely after the first couple of reps, continuing the encouraging signs from yesterday. Along the Baie des Citrons foreshore but the showers meant not many people were out.

Warm up/down from the intervals session. Slept poorly last night - clearly my system doesn't cope with evening Coca-Cola any better than evening coffee. It didn't affect the run but I hit the wall this afternoon - certainly wouldn't have wanted to be trying to run after work today.

For the first half this was the same old, same old, a steady but not especially inspired exploration of some residential suburbs of Noumea (via a fairly convoluted route because not many of the back streets link together). That part of the route was designed in the name of being reasonably warmed up before hitting the day's (and week so far's) major climb, a couple of solid kilometres up the Ouro Toro hill at the back of where we're staying. Much to my surprise, I suddenly learned how to run up hills again about a quarter of the way up this climb, and held that strength together to the top before embarking on a fun descent down some sometimes rough and ready bush tracks through dry but thick vegetation (no potential maps here). Ended up as my best run for several weeks, at least.

One semi-derelict house I passed had a banner on it 'Not For Sale' and the name of a clan - not sure if this was to do with indigenous land rights or not. Things have settled down a fair bit in this part of the world since the conflict of the mid- and late 1980s (although four people were killed - I'm not sure how - during a protest last year on one of the outer islands against, of all things, increases in airfares to Noumea; not sure whether or not this is an advance on the incident a few years back in which Afghanistan's transport minister was beaten to death by a mob at Kabul airport after a flight was delayed). There's a referendum due in 2014 in which the options will be the status quo, greater autonomy or full independence; the talk is that the second option is the one most likely to get up.

And part of dinner discussion last night was that one of those present had recently performed duties well above and beyond an aunt's call of duty - taking her nieces to a One Direction concert (or more precisely, to scream outside a One Direction concert they didn't have tickets for). I'm still trying to work out exactly what responsibilities I will have as an uncle but I think we can assume they won't involve whatever the 2025 equivalent of One Direction is (even if Cassie has a daughter at some point in the future). Really, if the stories my mother (who was 13 in 1963) are anything to go by, the reaction of the relevant demographic now doesn't differ significantly from what their grandmothers were doing when the Beatles and Rolling Stones turned up.

C • 1963 4

C • Ouen Toro 2

Managed to hold myself back in the conference-food-consumption department during the day and was rewarded with a run which, after the first few minutes, picked up where this morning left off - it's always a bit slower in the dark, but felt smooth and the hill towards the end passed almost effortlessly. This morning was clearly worth a lot for confidence; hopefully it's an indication that a corner has been turned.

Pretty windy tonight, especially on the exposed eastern side of the peninsula. One positive aspect of this is that the drip which was landing on the pipe outside my window last night will become someone else's problem tonight.