Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Spent some of this session in the middle of the contest between 8-degree water above and 27-degree water below, which was an incentive to stay as deep as possible. Pretty stiff in various muscles early on, coming off yesterday's run, but worked some of it out of my system during the course of the run (and by the end it had even stopped raining).

Refereeing the annual Bureau-CSIRO-Monash-Melbourne soccer tournament, sometimes not as well as I would have liked. CSIRO took the honours this year; the standard of attack was mostly well ahead of the standard of defence.

It was on from there to a quiz night, where our table did very nicely (in fact we got about a quarter of our points) from a question to name as many countries in the world as possible that started with S. This is a question where I'd expect to do better than most under any circumstances, but particularly so after spending bits of the last two days at work checking the status of developing-country sites in the Global Climate Observing System.

A rare afternoon long run today, thanks to a 2pm body corporate meeting (in turn that meant starting work early, although not quite as early as I'd planned on because of the combination of a defective bicycle and a defective train). Headed out just behind the second (and, as it turned out, last) heavy shower of a cold outbreak day, trying to minimise the number of potentially challenging road crossings, with a flat first half along the Yarra to Lower Eltham and then a hillier return. Steady but not stunning for the first half, but the Achilles, which have been a bit sore walking the last couple of days, started to cause trouble and some of the later climbs were a bit painful. Pace dropped away alarmingly in the last 20 minutes, and I don't think it was just because it was getting dark.

Learn from the experts department: as part of the Banyule Seniors Festival, the area's older residents can learn how to use a mobile phone from an Ivanhoe Girls Grammar student.

A fairly hilly run around North Balwyn and Bulleen, reasonably strong uphill although not flowing brilliantly in other areas. Warmest morning for a while.

The unsettling moment on this one came towards the end in the form of a girl of six or seven who was screaming very loudly; I was wondering what she was frightened of and then realised as I came closer that it was me. Either she absorbed the stranger danger lesson too well or I arrived shortly after something else had happened; I suspect the former as there's nothing pertinent on the Victoria Police website (if it is the latter having the Garmin as evidence of where I was when, and of not having stopped within cooee, may not be such a bad thing).

This was followed up by a tough ride into work, nursing a slowly deflating tyre.

My first attempt to do something fast since the injury and it worked out fine, in the sense that there wasn't anything that wasn't supposed to hurt that did hurt. (It didn't work quite so well in the actually-running-fast department, but we'll come to that a bit later on).

Came across the tale of this colourful Canberra identity today. Might be a good reason for a certain ACT-based New Zealander to steer clear of Limestone Avenue.

Easy morning run before a swim. Quads very stiff early on - obviously they're not used to 4km of steady downhill. Loosened up after the first few minutes and a decent run thereafter, although a bit more of a twinge (now localised to the left side of the right ankle) than was the case on the weekend, so can't consider myself officially cured yet. Very nice morning to be out.

One for the "you couldn't make this up" department: a new Queensland government advisory panel appointed to reduce red tape around gun ownership includes "Firearms Dealers Association of Queensland president Robert Nioa, Paul Feeney from the Queensland Shooters Association, Sporting Shooters Association of Australia president Geoff Jones, Shooters Union secretary Rob Harrold, International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting chairperson Dr Samara McPhedran and David Kelly of Halls Firearms.".

Next up in the pool, under the winter sunshine. Not always flowing that well but a steady session which seemed to go quicker than swims sometimes do.

At this time of year one thinks a bit about football senarios. If other results go as expected, Fremantle will go into their match on Saturday night needing a large win to be seventh, with any other result giving them eighth. Seventh, assuming other favourites win, means playing Geelong in Melbourne, with the winner away against either Sydney or Adelaide. Eighth would mean West Coast in Perth with the winner playing a struggling Collingwood. Something tells me this might be an incentive for Freo not to try too hard - if Messrs Pavlich and Sandilands are late withdrawals you heard it here first.

Decided to do something a bit different with a non-orienteering Sunday. Initially I'd had vague thoughts about the Metrogaine in my part of Melbourne, but this had already foundered for lack of a likely partner (the most obvious candidate being injured) even before getting injured myself. In the four months of my life that I've spent on the Hume Highway I've often seen the rock on the south side of the road between Seymour and Euroa and wondered what else might be up there, so decided to head up onto the plateau and see what I could find.

The run itself was an out-and-back west from Ruffy, a tiny settlement with a decent cafe (although as the timing was not quite right and a posse of motorbike riders had just arrived, I contented myself with buying a jar of their chutney and did my proper cafe stop in Yea). Mostly downhill after the first 10 minutes, with the obvious implications for what happened after the turnaround (although the shift from headwind to tailwind made it a slightly less acute contrast). Didn't really feel as if I was really flowing at any stage, but a bit quicker than I've usually done runs of this type in recent months. A couple of slight lower leg twinges on the bigger climbs, probably not anything to worry about.

Results of the terrain survey? Lots of rock on the hills (and in general the steeper stuff is the only area which hasn't been cleared), and a few areas of very photogenic boulders, although a certain amount of blandness on the plateau in between (and it looks like it's all private land, an obstacle although perhaps not an insurmountable one). As a terrain mix I think you'd be able to find a number of Tanunda Creek-type areas, but there's no big area of bush with forest (at least not one I found, and the 1:25000 map doesn't suggest there is either). The country itself on the high plateau (mostly about 500 metres) reminds me a bit of the Monaro.

A few rural Sundays of this type might be a good antidote to getting into a bit of a rut during the summer, although the sign on the noticeboard calling on people to report unfamiliar vehicles under the heading 'Prevent Bushfire Arson' is an indicator that outsiders probably wouldn't be as welcome in these parts in February as they are in August.

First venture back into running, purely as a test to see if things still worked, around the flatter parts of my neighbourhood. The run served its intended function well - there was a little bit of mild discomfort on rougher ground or uphill, but at a level which I probably would barely have noticed had it occurred on a normal day rather than coming off an injury one's conscious of. Also don't seem to have become sore or stiff afterwards (in fact it feels better this afternoon that it did before I ran). Won't pronounce myself totally cured yet but the signs are encouraging.

A 20-minute fitness-test run was hardly going to satisfy the day's exercise quota (especially on a weekend) so headed out on a bike around a fairly normal circuit for me on such occasions, the Koonung Creek-Doncaster circuit (the first half, with its 10 traffic-free kilometres, is better riding than the second). A steady ride and managed to throw a fair bit at the final climb. The lowlight was the first magpie of the season (at traffic lights, so a quick getaway wasn't available either), but as I don't expect to be back there during the magpie season it shouldn't cause further problems.

With the persistence (if not extreme quantities) of the cool, wet conditions, there are a lot of muddy suburban football grounds around. Last weekend the local league, usually a high-scoring one (suburban leagues often are, because the players are skilled enough to be able to score heavily but not athletic enough to be able to flood the defence), the average score was 55 and only two out of 24 teams topped 100. I'm guessing the weather can also be blamed for sky-high prices for a lot of vegetables at the moment.

Probably could have got away with running today - just felt slightly awkward (but no dramas running for the pedestrian lights coming out of the pool) and thought it best to wait another day. Headed for the waters of Fitzroy instead, for a reasonably solid session.

C • Awkward 1

Switched today to the extended bike ride into work, via Kew Boulevard (once I'd waited forever for the lights to cross Chandler Highway; at least I had Rob Crawford to talk to) and the Yarra Trail. Was reminded in the process that my back doesn't enjoy being in the crouch position with a backpack for extended periods (on a normal commute it gets periodic breaks at traffic lights). A decent ride otherwise.

The leg is continuing to improve and is no longer painful to walk on, just a bit uncomfortable, and didn't freak out when I ran a few steps on it today. Perhaps a couple of days away (maybe even tomorrow depending on how it feels when I get up).

Part of my evening activity was my intermittent practice of trawling historical newspapers at the State Library for a series of articles I write on notable weather events - tonight's was a notable severe windstorm and associated flooding (both river and storm surge) which affected first South Australia, then Victoria and Tasmania, from 6-10 August 1955.

One of the occupational hazards of this activity is being sidetracked by other things which appeared in the papers, and the story which particularly got my attention was the one which was competing with the storm for the front pages of the 8th - a shooting in which a man (described by the Adelaide Advertiser as a "crazed migrant") stormed into his ex-girlfriend's house at 46 Otterington Grove, Ivanhoe, and killed her father and wounded four others before turning the gun on himself (and you thought this sort of thing was a recent development?). The reason this got my attention was that at the time, my mother (who was five) was living at number 48. Family folklore has it that my grandfather and another neighbour were crouching in the bushes, ready to shoot the perpetrator themselves if the police didn't turn up PDQ (guns being a lot more widespread in 1955 households than they are now). I knew this had happened sometime around 1955 or 1956 but hadn't previously known the date.

And that wasn't all; other highlights included:

- a big splash in the Herald-Sun about the unpaved streets of Macleod turning to mud in the wet winter and the Heidelberg City Council's disinclination to do anything about it
- proof that political journalists were ready to let their imaginations run ahead of reality in 1955, too, in the form of a Sydney Morning Herald story which reported as fact that on Monday the NSW Labor Party was going to follow the lead of their Victorian comrades and split (they didn't)
- a piece about snow and ice potentially affecting the first stage of the Tour of Tasmania (and if you ask me, Hobart to St. Mary's sounds like a pretty decent haul for a first stage).
- and, still in Tasmania, an editorial in the Mercury lamenting how young people these days weren't interested in sticking with a job and instead were fickle souls who moved on whenever they found something more lucrative or more interesting - except for the absence of the term "generation Y", just about every word of this could have appeared in a newspaper in 2012.

Tweet of the day: "Prince Harry's antics blamed on broken home, family living off taxpayers, growing up on estates & time spent in institutions".

A false start because I got to the pool and realised I'd left my swimmers behind (fortunately it was Ivanhoe, so not too long a trip to go back and get them) - this also meant a slightly shorter session because of train-departure deadline after wasting 15 minutes. A pretty nice session once in. Leg continuing to improve slowly, but still feels a bit away from being ready to run on.

Leg had improved a bit today but was still some way short of being runnable (I'm cautiously optimistic about sometime late this week), so took to the pool instead, this time to swim - at MSAC because it was on the way to an evening engagement in Albert Park. A fairly mundane session which was just a case of getting the job done; leg not quite as comfortable swimming as it was pool running (or riding), which may influence my choice of substitute activities (hopefully not something that has to go on for too long).

They definitely operate to a different clock in Spain: I noticed today that two football matches in the Spanish league last weekend were scheduled to start at 11pm. (That said, with Seville having had a number of days in the last fortnight in the low to mid-40s, if you're going to play football at this time of year it's probably not such a bad thing for it to be happening in the middle of the night - unless of course you are trying to prepare for Qatar 2022).

From a news story about a proposal in Scotland to introduce a minimum sales price of 50 pence per unit of alcohol:

"The move would target people like Kirsty Forsyth, a young Glasgow woman who drinks about three litres of cider a day.

She does not believe a price rise is the solution.

"I don't think it's right, because people with drink problems, how are they going to afford to drink if they're going to put the alcohol prices up?," she said."

I thought that making it so they couldn't afford to drink was the idea?

(And I was also amused that the body launching a legal challenge against the proposal is the Scotch Whisky Association, whose members would, I would have thought, be unaffected by the move - if anyone knows where to find Scotch whisky which costs only 50p per unit of alcohol I suspect a lot of people would be interested).

C • Drink problems 1

My vague optimism yesterday about the post-run soreness wasn't really justified - was just as bad today, and difficult to walk on, especially without shoes (OK for riding, though) - soreness on the left side of the lower right leg. Decided as an initial step to reshuffle the Friday rest day to Monday, but I think this one's going to take more than a day to sort itself out. How much more isn't clear at the moment.

The good news was that the stitches finally came out of my elbow today, which made going into the pool an option (and one taken up in the evening once the Monday night run from my place dissolved for lack of interest). Not a particularly inspired session, and was threatening to cramp at times but never quite did, but at least the leg didn't hurt during the session (at least not very much).

Vic Relays at Wildflower Drive just east of Bendigo - not the most technical area I've ever been on but enough on it to create a challenge. I thought we'd struggle to be competitive in a team in which I was the youngest member by some margin, but Bendigo (who won easily) was the only club able to put out three M21s (or close approximations thereof) so there was a race on for 2nd and 3rd.

I'd rather have run first in this team but Russell Bulman had to leave early so led off for us. Three years ago he ran an excellent leg for us, and today wasn't too bad either, 10 minutes down on the lead and just behind Jasmine for MFR. That meant that I went out with Reuben to chase 50 metres ahead. This gap widened a bit when I had a long split early on, and we were never right together, but I'd got just about back in contact by 8 when the courses split widely and didn't see him again. By this time it was apparent that this was a pretty good run - the only control I was even vaguely uncertain on was 2, and Reuben showed me in - and it stayed that way. Particularly pleasing to be nailing the flat controls (unlike last week), and had some decent strength for the late hills. Probably ranks with the SA Middle as my best run so far this year.

Reuben was a couple of minutes back. As expected, this wasn't enough to give Ted a realistic chance of holding off Max, but Ted did manage to run down Warwick Williams (Bendigo 2nd team, which led after two legs) and get us into the placings by 30 seconds or so. Leg times: Bryan well clear at 37, Toph, myself and Matt Schepisi 42, Eddie, Max and James Robertson 43.

Lower right leg was a little sore beforehand (but warmed up), and more so afterwards. Will need to be watched but don't think it's too serious.

There was a heavy police presence on the way up (especially in the 80 zone past Taylors Lakes which is even longer now than it used to be). The police are getting better at disguising their unmarked cars because I saw one which was a ute bearing stickers from various country pubs (although to be truly authentic as a bush ute, it would also have required stickers from assorted country B + S balls, the Deniliquin Ute Muster, the mountain cattlemen and something along the lines of 'Fertilize the Bush: Doze In A greenie'). Perhaps it would have come in useful as a chase vehicle for yesterday's Great Milk Robbery. (Someone did suggest that the police might have acquired it by confiscating it).

And I was shocked to see other orienteering people in the Bendigo branch of the Beechworth Bakery afterwards.

C • Rumour has it 1

Again a rather touchy Achilles but otherwise this was a much improved run on recent days, particularly on hills which actually felt reasonably comfortable. Probably didn't hurt having had a proper night's sleep for once. Thought I'd timed it to be clear of the rain but had some heavy showers a couple of times in the middle. The ground is very wet at the moment, more because of the frequency of the rain (and lack of warm days) than its quantity, and there might have been a substantial flood in the Yarra had the overnight rain been at the upper end of expectations, but as it turned out the heavy stuff was in the Maribyrnong catchment instead.

Hawdon Street was largely closed (and presumably powerless) today for electricity line works, which probably won't have pleased the owners of the house on it which was up for auction today. Still, they would have felt no more miserable than those of us who support Essendon were around 4.30 this afternoon.

Plan today was to get the elbow stitches out at lunchtime and then take advantage of my bandage-free status to take to the pool after work, but the cut wasn't sufficiently healed to take all the stitches out so I'm going to have to put up with them for another few days. Getting a bit over having showers with one arm in a plastic bag.

Had my first taste of football hooliganism on the way home as I rode past the stadium - someone took it upon themselves to fill a half-full can of something at me. Didn't get a good enough look to see if it was a Geelong or St. Kilda supporter.

(Speaking of half-full cans, the police have finally managed to find something to get the Alphington chapter of the Hells Angels for - running their clubhouse bar without a liquor licence).

C • You havnt washed your wound... 2

I'm not having a great week of running and today was no exception (although at least most of the sore bits have stopped hurting). Never really felt in touch today, although managed to keep plodding away on a reasonably hilly course through North Balwyn and Doncaster, and felt no worse at the end than at the beginning. The dark starts will start to become a thing of the past soon.

Historical discovery of the day: a report in New Scientist which discussed a review someone had done of the literature on children's sleep patterns, going back to 1897. Two things had remained more or less constant over 115 years: (a) children averaged about 40 minutes' less sleep than medical professionals of the time thought they should get and (b) this deficit was blamed on whatever the latest technology was of the time.

A pretty ordinary run from Kirsten's place (the venue due to logistics of an evening meeting to discuss plans for the Christmas 5-Days), mostly around the Yarra before cutting back through Richmond. As with the last couple of days, started out stiff (although the sore bits are gradually getting a bit less sore), and even when the stiffness went still felt pretty sluggish. Achilles not great either.

Also from Kirsten's, a little later than planned on (and hence a little shorter, as I didn't want to keep her waiting too long) - a look at the radar around 4.45 revealed a line of heavy showers that looked like it was going to unload around my planned departure time from work of 6 (and did), so I stayed around for another half-hour in the hope of missing most of it on the ride to Abbotsford. This was more or less achieved, setting the scene for the run, this time heading north through Clifton Hill. The first 15 minutes were as dismal as this morning was, but it improved considerably after that and was even in danger of becoming good in the last couple of kilometres.

Sign of the day: 'Power Street Closed 20 Aug to 17 Sept Due To Power Works'.

A repeat of last Wednesday's lunchtime speed session minus the laceration, the rain (for the most part) and, as it turned out, the speed. As with yesterday, took a long time to loosen up (plus Achilles were a bit touchy today, bringing the tally of body parts which hurt close to double figures), and never really got going, although second half was a bit better than the first.

Going to/from the Tan, including an inspection of the incident site from last Wednesday, which confirmed what I'd suspected as the cause of the injury - there was a light cable running up the tree and a metal clip holding it on at swinging-arm height with an end which was definitely sharp enough to do damage if hit at any speed. If I felt so inclined, no doubt various members of the legal fraternity would be willing to assist (in exchange for a small fee) in attempting to extract/extort some money from Crown, but I'm not so inclined.

Darwin to Melbourne is a long haul, and it's a longer haul when done via Sydney. When done (partially) in daylight, though, there's some good scenery to be had, notably the rugged sandstone gorge country inland from the NT Gulf of Carpentaria coast - very interesting-looking, and no doubt utterly inaccessible except by helicopter. (I got a small taste on the 2009 trip).

Certainly knew today I'd been in a race and had a few other misadventures. The scoreboard of bits that were hurting read: one left elbow (cause: last Wednesday's altercation outside Crown Casino, although normally altercations outside Crown involve bouncers and not trees); bruised/grazed areas on the left thigh (same area as in Switzerland), right shin and right hand (cause: all from a fall coming into 13 yesterday), and a stiff neck and two sore shoulders (cause: your guess is as good as mine).

Normally I'd have loosened all this up in the water but that isn't an option until I get the stitches out of my elbow later this week (not that two sore shoulders would have been ideal for swimming), so the Monday night run from Ilka's was the place where it happened. A slow-paced run in which I was the token bloke. Started to loosen up a bit as the run went on, which means it did its job.

Ilka seemed a bit surprised when told that a picture of a past Australian orienteering champion was hanging on her wall. (The thing hanging on the wall was the Bureau calendar, which this month includes a picture of three of the Bureau's tsunami researchers, one of whom is 1981 W14 winner Diana Greenslade; my intermittent suggestions of a comeback have fallen on deaf ears).

C • Depending on exactly where ... 1

C • Shoulders 3

NOL long at Lok Cabay. Felt optimistic at the start - it's the first time for a while I've gone into a long race without wondering deep down whether I was going to fall apart (a feeling not really backed by tangible evidence). That optimism was dashed pretty quickly, though - on the long vague first, I thought I'd undershot when I'd actually overshot and dropped a couple of minutes, not the start you want to get off to. Robbie caught me there and didn't get away quite as quickly as I thought he might, but was still out of sight by the end of the first butterfly. Settled down well with just a couple of minor drifts in the flatter areas, and ran quite well to halfway. The next miss came at 16 - Craney caught me there and I concentrated too much on what he was doing and not enough on the map (we lost 30 seconds there, which lost him the race), and another minute was lost at 21 - a flat leg where missing low had the potential for disaster, and I was so focused on avoiding that that I missed high instead. Thought I might get back on Oliver, who dropped me there, but never did. By then my quads were starting to fatigue quite badly - something which happens to me in longer road races but rarely in orienteering - and I was drifting back a bit. Couldn't put up much of a fight when Josh went through me at 26 (but did get ahead of Toph at the same stage). Didn't make too big a mess of the kilometre-of-nothing 29, and plodded home. Don't know my final placing (since the USB stick I downloaded results onto is, I hope, in the pocket of the shorts I packed as cheked luggage) but think it was 10th - my highest of the year at this level but in a field which was a bit lacking in depth, and I can't be happy about doing 88 when Simon and Craney did 67.

This was a great set of events - the build-up was certainly stressful for the key players (I got to see a bit of the stress at close quarters on Thursday or Friday), but if anything went wrong on the day I didn't notice it. A great job by Top End in general and Lachlan and Susanne in particular.

NOL night event at Lok Cabay. Was a bit apprehensive going into this given my lack of night racing experience (something shared with most of the field) and my less than stellar performance the last time I tried, but this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable runs I've done for a while - three short loops in amongst the big rocks, mass start, and people all over the place.

Predictably a bit slow out of the start for the drag race to the first control and lacked a bit of confidence coming into it, but hit it well and reasonably clean for the most part after that - always in and out of people but not always easy to see where the packs are forming at night, and the splitting meant there was a bit of reshuffling from time to time until the final loop. By the final loop there was no splitting and I was around Gareth, Bryan (who kept running away and kept making mistakes) and Piotr. We all drifted a bit wide on 20 but picked ourselves up, and missed 30 seconds on 21; hit the scary 22, and then Gareth and Bryan kicked away. Found a good sprint for the finish chute but it turned out I was running away from a shadow (the nearest opposition was 3 minutes away).

Event: Northern Territory Championships and National League Races
 

NOL Sprint at Charles Darwin University (with assembly area looking over the sun setting off the Dripstone cliffs - very scenic). A decent sprint race, not terribly fast but pretty clean, only a very slight wobble on 3 where I didn't quite make the olive green on the map match the garden beds on the ground. Expected to be caught by Robbie and was, around 8, but held on better than I expected (helped by his missing 11 a bit). Felt as if I was slowing down a bit in the dunes section at the end but the splits suggest otherwise (indeed my finish chute split was more competitive than usual). No issues with the elbow while running, which wasn't a surprise. In the points comfortably this time, though that owed a bit to a smaller field than at some NOL sprints. A good start to the weekend.

The doctor who stitched me up was mildly concerned (although not absolutely horrified) that I was intending to race on Friday night; given that (and that it was stinging a bit when I went to bed on Wednesday - or to be more precise in the early hours of Thursday morning after arriving at midnight), I thought a rest day was in order - even though that means I don't get the chance to do any proper heat acclimatisation. (As it turns out, the forecast for Sunday is such that it won't be needed).

Had a productive morning archive-trawling, including unearthing a whole set of Darwin records from the 1860s through to the 1880s that we didn't previously know existed. Next move will be to properly label and organise the 300-odd pictures of documents I took there.

Not surprisingly, there were a few other orienteers on hand at the Mindil Beach markets (Craig/Rachel and family, Tracy and parents, Robert Spry). More surprisingly, given it's the middle of the NT election season, the only political campaigning I saw there was on behalf of the Australian Sex Party. (It was a different story on TV, where there was a Labor ad - not that they mentioned Labor except in the speakers-J.Blow-and-J.Bloggs-authorised-by-F.Nerk-ALP-Darwin blurb at the end - in almost every ad break during the Olympic coverage; obviously the NT branch of the ALP is not struggling for funds).

C • If you ever happen to find ... 3

Cut on left elbow from collision with tree (or object protruding from it). Four stitches required.

C • Match review panel 3

250s on the Tan. Had some misgivings about doing this the day after something long(ish); wasn't feeling especially sharp but not too bad on the whole. The rain (which had more or less stopped by the time I started) and the wind was obviously a deterrent - you don't often see the Tan virtually deserted at a (latish) lunchtime. Harden up, Melbourne!

I'd already had a bit of drama in the preceding 24 hours, with a too-close for comfort encounter with a vehicle door while riding home last night. The police have promised a crackdown on such things so one might have thought it was fortuitous that two police were on hand to witness the incident - except that one of them was the opener of the offending door.

Southbank may not be an especially perilous place but a few minutes from home heading back, I ran too close to a tree in the crowds, clipped it, and immediately realised from the blood that this was more than clipping a tree. (There was a cable running up the tree, and I'm guessing from the cleanness of the cut that I hit something holding the cable to the tree). It wasn't going to stop quickly so I spent the rest of the run holding my right hand over the area of my left elbow where the cut was, which must have looked an interesting sight. By then it had stopped bleeding but it started again when I bent the elbow, so I thought further intervention was warranted - fortunately, there is a medical centre on the bottom floor of our building (and walking into a medical centre holding a blood-soaked paper towel over your arm is a good way to get seen quickly). Four stitches later, I'm ready to head to Darwin - swimming will be no go but running should be OK (and I wasn't about to ask questions that I might not like the answer to).

A Friday sprint meant some reshuffling of this week's program was called for. I was tossing up whether to do something long on Tuesday or Wednesday, and made my decision on the basis that I wanted to see the women's 100 hurdles tomorrow more than I wanted to see the men's 400 today. Still took the radio out with me, and with an 8am massage it was a pre-6 start from the Clifton Hill area, on a fairly flat route through the inner northern suburbs. (The broadcast ended after the 400, meaning that I didn't get the chance to find out via the ABC, who were next door to ESPN Latin America at the Australia-Argentina hockey match, whether the word "gol" has 24 Os in it in hockey Spanish as well as soccer Spanish - although as it turned out there were no goals anyway).

Unlike last week, it was a fairly slow (if not unpleasant) start. The middle third was good, flowing well, but as with last week it started to hurt a bit from about the 80-minute mark onwards. Managed to finish off OK. A very nice morning for it, if perhaps suboptimal for NT acclimatisation.

Overtaken by events department: the Commonwealth Bank ad on a bus shelter 'Bring back gold, James'.

Going to the Northern Territory does mean getting to see some of the more colourful parts of their media, and the NT News was in fine form recently with this front page. We'll also be heading into the middle of an election campaign, which has had an early highlight in the form of a bit of spice being added to the launch of the Opposition law and order policy, when a drunk biffed the deputy leader in front of the TV cameras while he was launching it.

And the NT Championships is the first event for which I've seen a notice in the event information saying that no pornography is to be brought to the event (it's illegal to bring porn onto Aboriginal land, which the event area is, in the NT).

Not pushing quite as hard as last week but still a step up from my usual efforts, building as it went on.

No run today - normally Friday is my non-running day but with a sprint on Friday I've reshuffled the week. There's more reshuffling to come, starting with tomorrow morning.

ACT badge event at Ballinafad Creek, southeast of Captains Flat. In an earlier incarnation as Ed's Hollow the Australian Relays were here in 1987 - I thought I'd gone under 5 minutes/km for the first time but it turned out the map was actually at 1:12000. (My father, who was running with me - it was an M21B team - was wondering how on earth I'd done the time that I had while on his course, but it turned out he'd actually picked up a 35A map and we were disqualified). Today we went further in than usual and spent most of the time on the slower and steeper upper slopes. There is another map still further in on the dodgy track, Wild Cattle Creek - best remembered for the 1988 Canberra Classic where a massive thunderstorm broke in mid-event (a site in Gippsland had 300 millimetres in a couple of hours that day), and most of us had to be towed across a couple of sections to get out. I'd only just got my licence, and for good measure was in the Fiat, hardly the ideal vehicle for such conditions.

This was not one of my better days, with two significant mistakes. After a slightly wobbly start, Paul de Jongh caught me two minutes at 6, not something I was expecting. We both went too high on 7 (he went much too high and I didn't see him again), then I lost time in the circle too and ended up dropping two minutes on the leg. Rob Walter (6 minutes) caught me shortly thereafter. My worst mistake, though, was at 10 - a somewhat ill-defined clearing in a big gully, where I didn't see the flag and overshot to the tune of 3 minutes (not helped by misreading a tree stump with dirt around it for a termite mound, and thus convincing myself I was almost in the right place). Decent last third but it was all over by then. Also struggled a bit for running flow in the terrain, on an area where it wasn't always easy to find good lines. Craney did 55 and Rob 58; I should have been around 67-68, which would have been at least sort of respectable.

I did have one PB to show for the weekend, breaking 7 hours for Canberra-Melbourne for the first time (wanting to see as much of the marathon as I could was an incentive). There's a couple of new bits of freeway and I only took 15 minutes over dinner. (I'd rather put my road trip food money into local small businesses than fast-food multinationals, but said small businesses don't make it easy - almost everything except the pub was closed in Holbrook by 7pm on Friday, and a promising-looking outlet at the Euroa service centre was closed by 7.15 tonight).

Speaking of Holbrook, which is the last non-bypassed place left on the Hume (at least until next year), it looks like the request I put in with Briohny a couple of years back for a bypass off-ramp into the bakery is going to be more or less fulfilled - although it's actually the bakery setting up new premises next to where the off-ramp is going to be.

And I had about 20% of the luggage going home that I had coming up (the rest being split about evenly between John Harding and Bruce Bowen).

C • Its going to be a lot quieter next year 1

ACT Sprint Championships at CSIRO. A race (or perhaps no race) which will be remembered for illustration of yet another of the things that can go wrong at a sprint - electricity works (which CSIRO didn't seem to know about either) which commandeered two of the control sites, both of which were moved without warning by the workers.

I suffered more than it seems most did, losing about a minute at 14 (the first of them), but my race was well and truly shot by then anyway, thanks to a 90-degree error out of the start triangle (even after 34 years in the sport, there's always scope to find a new way to stuff up), and misreading crossable fences as uncrossable at 10 and taking an unnecessarily wide route choice, which cost 30-40 seconds apiece, plus other minor wobbles at 8, 11 and 19. Finished off by stopping too early at the last control. Not running as well as I have on other days this week (and struggled for concentration for a few controls after 14), but I think some of that may have been knowing I was in technical trouble. Had trouble at times distinguishing between crossable and uncrossable fences and walls, and took a few detours I didn't need to - perhaps the line weights on the map could use some work before the WOC trials next year.

Hoping for something better tomorrow.

At Fitzroy. Plenty of sore spots earlier on but worked them out quite nicely in what turned out to be a decent session.

This afternoon was the first time for a while I've done the Friday afternoon/evening road trip to Canberra (with a boot full of OA financial paperwork).

Took to the streets and paths of inner eastern Melbourne after watching a minor missile misfire on TV, on another chilly morning, heading south initially, then along the Yarra and Gardiners Creek before cutting north back to the Yarra at Kew. (I chose the south bank path for the Yarra - the north bank gets heavy bike traffic and can be slippery, and some of its users think they're in the Olympic time trial even on normal days, so they'd be even more likely to do so the morning after the actual Olynmpic time trial).

The first 40 minutes were excellent despite a couple of shoelace stops. Didn't quite live up to that start and tired a little in the second half, but still managed to keep things going for my longest run in a couple of months. The flow was helped by a very good run with the traffic - had expected a few interruptions traversing Hawthorn and Kew at peak hour but had an absolutely clear run.

Slightly later than usual as I had to pick the OA books up from the auditors (a mere four months after I'd expected to do so). A decent run on a coldish, foggy morning, heading out along the Banyule flats then up to the Viewbank weather station and back through Rosanna. Still various sore spots. Had a bit of a detour at one point as the bike path is closed temporarily, allegedly for 10 days, but we have enough experience of such closures turning out to be for 10 weeks or 10 months (hopefully not 10 years) for me not to be terribly confident that it will be open again next week as scheduled. (There are two recent examples in Melbourne - one still ongoing - of bike path closures which were supposed to last for a couple of months running more than a year overdue).

A lunchtime session on a day when I was struggling a bit to get into things at work (this sometimes happens the day after finishing something big), but got going reasonably well on the run, on the standard Tan lunchtime route. Again a few sore spots in both hamstrings - sitting down for long periods doesn't agree greatly with me at the moment - but these didn't restrict me on the run. (This may not make for the easiest of trips to Canberra this weekend - I'm driving because I have a mountain of OA paperwork to transport, far too much to take on a plane - but at least in a car I can stop and run up and down the roadside for a bit if I need to).

The Galileo Movement is a climate change sceptic organisation which gets a bit of press from time to time (and boasts Alan Jones as a patron). It was in the news again yesterday after its director was quoted as saying that climate science was controlled by a cabal of "international banking families". Anyone familiar with the rantings of the lunar right will know exactly what "international banking families" is code for. Anyone brave enough to ring up Alan Jones's program and ask him why he's continuing to associate himself with a group whose director is peddling Jewish conspiracy theories? (Meanwhile, if there are buckets of Rothschild money out there, I certainly haven't seen any of it yet).