Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Pool session at Ivanhoe. After yesterday I half-expected to wake up with a sore throat, a temperature or both, but it didn't happen and this was a reasonable session - a decent night's sleep works wonders.

Now on the way to Canberra - initially for a school reunion, then going on to work in Sydney on Monday and Tuesday and a talk in Moss Vale on Tuesday night. (Was thinking of Fitzroy Falls for a Wednesday morning run destination - I seem to recall that a few of you have been there before, any pointers?).

OH+S e-mail of the week goes to the one which went around at work yesterday to the effect that there had been a number of reports of snakes entering Bureau premises. Presumably the premises concerned are in places more remote than Docklands.

Last Thursday wasn't a great day for my regular running routes - two of them were the scenes of this and this. (If the second incident happened where I think it did, I passed through about 90 minutes before it took place).

C • Could be worse 3

Got the train in first thing and started from work, mainly because I had to be there by 8.30, which would have meant a pre-5 wake-up if done from home. I've been burning the candle at both ends in the last week or two and today was where it all blew up; I wasn't feeling very enthusiastic at the start, got started and was sort of OK for the first half-hour, but the wheels started falling off pretty rapidly after that and I decided there was little point pushing on, cutting what was planned to be a 1.45-1.50 effort short by cutting back from Beacon Cove. This had all the hallmarks of a run which indicates that I'm about to get sick; will have to look after myself as best I can and hope it doesn't happen.

It's the first time for a long time that I've been on the track, and it was ugly. Didn't speed up through the session (400s) either as I usually do - think I had mentally dropped my bundle by the second half. Hopefully it will be easier next time. It's a long time since I put 105 of these (plus a bonus 195 metres) back to back...

C • 98.2 for those wondering 3

Warm-up and down.

Did it pretty tough in the first half, across the high part of Sandy Bay with plenty of sharp climbs (and it feels a little frustrating when you lose all the altitude in one go). Was reasonably happy with my strength on the hills by the middle, though, after an uncertain start, and carried that through to the later part (although the very steep, short pinch into Battery Point was still hard work). Two runners (one male, one female) passed me at a very rapid rate of knots in the later stages - it made me feel a bit better when it became apparent within a couple of hundred metres that both were in the midst of interval/fartlek sessions.

Even though it was cold, the reward for getting out early on a clear morning in Hobart was seeing the first rays of the morning sun catching the rock columns on the top of Mount Wellington - magic.

Got done almost all of what I came to get done, reacquainting myself in the process of a few names I'd previously associated with Easter 1984 (the last one I didn't run for reasons other than being overseas) - the likes of Lanes Tier, Osterley and Waddamana. (The last two of these look likely prospects for the rainfall data set - one of my main objectives here was to find good central and western Tasmanian sites which could be patched together into 100+ year series, since no single site does the trick in those regions).

This morning's run was tangible evidence that I put in a pretty solid day's work yesterday - i.e. I was tired and the run wasn't very good. A bit tight (and very slow) on the initial climb through the Domain and not flowing that well on the downhills either. Very nice morning to be out, though.

Continued from a not-very-good run to a not-very-good swim (in one of Australia's more expensive pools), although hopefully it will do me good from the recovery point of view - will find out more on that subject tomorrow.

Archives highlight of the day, although it wasn't a particularly historical one (2010), was the issue with a structure being built next to the rain gauge in Swansea - the structure in question being a snake pit. I get the impression the inspector was pretty taken aback when he turned up. (I'd already pretty much crossed Swansea off my shortlist, because the site has moved seven times and there's better within 20km both north and south).

In Tasmania for work for the early part of this week so took the chance to take in one of the local events - wasn't entirely sure I'd make it in time for last start (I flew down this morning, mainly because I wanted to go to Essendon-Richmond last night), but everything went so smoothly that I was driving out of the Hobart airport car park three minutes after my scheduled flight arrival time.

The locals didn't seem to be massively enthusiastic about Lieemunetta, an areas which I believe has featured (under different names) in Tasmanian orienteering for the best part of four decades. For me, it was the first time, and it was a reasonable, if somewhat vertical, area (if I wasn't warmed up before the start, I certainly was by the time I'd done the 23 contours of climbing between 1 and 2). Quite a nice forest once on top, and mostly not as green as it looked on the map.

The course 1 numbers were a bit depleted because it was a Tasmanian schools team trial which meant a few likely prospects were running shorter courses, but there was enough overlap between courses that I saw a bit of various juniors, notably Oisin Stronach who was around me (running faster but a bit less smoothly) from 2 to 5. At 7 I went through Dion McKenzie and another local I don't know; both got back onto me over the next couple of controls and we were together at controls for much of the section to 15 (despite divergent route choices on 10 and 15 which came out even), including overshooting 14, an awkward cliff, together (probably about 90 seconds worth). This battle was settled by the route choice 15-16. I thought the high, left route choice was a no-brainer - shorter, no more climb, no green and some track running - but my companions evidently felt differently and I pulled two minutes out of them as a result. Finished off OK, although a better downhill runner would have gained a bit of time on the 140 metres of descent over the last three controls.

Apart from the miss on 14 I was reasonably happy with this run; not really flowing but was able to run almost all the hills, by no means a universal occurrence this year, and only on the sharp climb into 18 did my back cause any issues. I was in front when I left (Jemery 80, Dion 81) and will most likely stay there, but Ashley and Jarrah's times on course 3 suggest they probably would have got me had we been running against each other (if Brodie were here I'd have expected him to be mid-60s).

As those of you who have been following the Giro d'Italia will know, there has been a notable late-season cold outbreak in the Alps this weekend (snow down to 700 metres in Switzerland, which looks to be a one in 20-30 year event this late in May). This certainly isn't going to help preparations for WMOC - they were running pretty close to the edge anyway and potentially losing a couple of weeks to snow at this stage won't make things any easier.

Felt not very awake this morning and not as enthusiastic as I should be about getting out, but fine once I got started, and stretched the envelope a bit on a Saturday distance. Didn't feel as smooth as last Saturday did at times, but still a reasonably solid morning's work, just fading away a little bit right at the end.

Today's targets were Achilles Street, West Heidelberg (one of the poorest streets in one of Melbourne's poorest suburbs), and Acland Court, Bundoora (a small cul-de-sac and definitely not as abundant with cakes as its St. Kilda namesake). Neither sound inspiring but there was some nice stuff in between the two. The former name reminded me that it's quite a while since I've had any issues with that particular body part, although I'll give it a bit more time before being confident enough to remove it from my injuries list after the best part of four years.

Heading down to Tasmania tomorrow morning - mainly for work in Hobart Monday/Tuesday, but plan to get to tomorrow's event assuming no flight dramas.

Thought I might be doing this in the fog but it broke up a couple of kilometres short of Fitzroy, so it was just the mist from the (relatively) warm water of the pool that was shrouding things once in. A fairly conventional session; seem to have come up reasonably well from yesterday, despite the increased length and a lot of late nights this week.

Tonight was the annual Ivanhoe ALP quiz night (with the usual additional features like the paper plane competition, where contestants seek to fly a particularly odious Coalition media release - Eric Abetz is usually a fertile source of material for these - into a rubbish bin). Features this year included the match-the-TV-evangelist-with-the-scandal question in the 1980s section, the map of Victorian local government areas (without names), and the 'true or false' section where there was the chance to wheel out some bizarre (true) facts, like the 1943 US Army research program to investigate the possibility of attaching incendiary devices to bats and flying them into Japanese buildings (this failed at the first test - the bats had been put into hibernation to attach the devices, but they hadn't come properly out of hibernation and most fell directly to earth when released from the plane), and the 1992 guidelines of the British Board of Film Censorship under which one of the grounds for a film to be considered pornographic was that it depicted an appendage which made a greater angle with the rest of the body than the Kintyre peninsula makes with the west coast of Scotland. (You'll never think of the Wings song in quite the same way again). A certain NT News headline from last August previously mentioned in these pages also got a mention. The Centenary of Canberra round fell a bit flat, though - obviously no-one was paying enough attention on their Grade 6 trips.

It was a late night, which is why this hasn't been posted until the following morning - hope no-one was too worried. (I occasionally have visions of featuring in news stories along the lines of "the body was discovered after police were notified by friends, who became concerned after his blog wasn't updated for six days").

A long run which was respectable but not more than that. The starts are well before dawn now, and with no moon the Rosanna Parklands are a particularly dark place - it's not normally necessary to run with a light in urban Melbourne but it would have come in useful there (if only to stay out of the way of a number of off-leash dogs). The target was Acacia Court, at the east end of Greensborough (and only a couple of hundred metres from the council boundary). This was a bit longer than last week but that's no bad thing. Steady coming home after a pitstop at the Montmorency shops - I'll be back this way a few times in coming months because amongst the names which featured in that section were Airlie, Alban, Alma and Astley. A decent run on flatter sections; slow on the hills, of which there were many in the middle third, without feeling especially weak on them.

This was again done in temperatures just above freezing - not bad for a long run. It would have been a different story a little further west - at 6.30 it was 0.9 at Viewbank and 10.8 at Laverton. It's not unheard of for Viewbank (and Laverton) to be several degrees colder than central Melbourne in the early mornings, but it is unusual for two suburban sites to differ so dramatically (it seems that the wind got up earlier at Laverton, bringing in milder and more humid air and breaking down the overnight low-level inversion).

C • Are you planning to run all... 2

Never got going this morning - probably not the ideal morning for doing anything fast (a bit frosty on the flats) and it showed. No soreness though after the warm-up. Must be cross-country season as there were some markers out in Banyule Flats, after seeing the same (plus the Athletics Victoria van) in Yarra Park yesterday.

You may recall mention on previous occasions that I thought Palmerville, in the southern interior of Cape York Peninsula, was going to be the toughest nut to crack of the 21 long-term temperature sites I still haven't been to (a number I hope to reduce by three or four by the end of next month). You may also recall my last mention of it, last year when a gold prospector had disappeared on the property and the landowner "had declined to be interviewed by police". Latest update on this comes from a news report a few weeks ago which I came across today, to the effect that said landowner and his wife were due to appear in a Cairns court on charges of murder and interfering with a corpse (presumably the latter relates to the alleged disposal of the body, which has not yet been found). I couldn't find any more recent information on the case (which may well still be in progress) - if our Cairns correspondent has any such information I'd be interested to know about it.

C • Your window of opportunity... 2

Once again from North Melbourne because of evening engagements in the area (a quiz night this time) - this time without any rapidly descending truck drivers. Went north as far as Moonee Valley racecourse before returning through Ascot Vale. Wasn't feeling that confident before the start and hard going for the first kilometre, but quite reasonable after that.

Quite a bit of distraction at work today following the events in Oklahoma - the tornado itself wasn't extraordinary (there would be several of that intensity somewhere in the US in a normal year) but the fact that it made a direct hit on a large town was. The University of Oklahoma has, perhaps not surprisingly, one of the leading meteorology programs in the US, so most of us know people who are there now (all fine as far as I know) and many more who have lived there at some point in the past.

C • A linguist friend of mine l... 1

Lunchtime session around the Tan - albeit a somewhat late lunchtime because I waited until the heaviest of the rainband had passed through. Not many people out - not sure if this was because people were scared off by the conditions or because not many workplaces have the flexibility to define lunch as being from 1.15 to 2.15. A fairly ho-hum run but no injury problems.

Evening swim at Fitzroy before the MFR AGM - felt a bit strange to be swimming outdoors in the dark. Started out quite well but drifted out of it a bit later on. All the showers were working for the first time in a while.

Event: State Series #4
 

It's been my best (or least-worst) week of training this year and I was hoping for a spinoff into the race, but it didn't happen - this was a fairly significant disappointment, partly because the back was giving a bit of trouble again after having been quiet for more than a week - although Sailors Creek was perhaps the most severe test possible for it (steep, and a lot of scrambling in and out of erosion gullies). Wasn't as bad as it was in Canberra, though, and the next few events I do should be kinder to it than this one has been.

I can't blame injuries for my navigation, though - two significant mistakes, about 90 seconds apiece on 9 (too low, and somehow crossed a significant track without noticing) and 13 (too high and couldn't make sense of the erosion from above), is not good enough for a course of this type. The other issue was being far too tentative, physically, on gully crossings and very steep downhills - I've never been great on these but today was particularly poor. At various points today I was shown up on this comprehensively by Patrick (who was impressive today; we tend to forget he's still only a first-year 16), and to a lesser extent by Lanita. From the course vital statistics, I'm guessing that Lanita will get plenty of chances to experience very steep slopes in the JWOC long distance....

My scalp deserved to be, and was, claimed by quite a few people who wouldn't normally expect to claim it (with a few other near-misses).

It's the first time for a couple of years that I've approached Daylesford from the south, which means it's the first time I've seen the wind turbines that I own a few hundredths of a percent of.

This is the start of a sequence of four Sunday events in four different states (I suspect this has happened occasionally before in championship season, but not outside it). Next Sunday's Tasmania, the week after the ACT, and then South Australia.

Quite a nice run on a cool and sometimes showery morning, once again heading north through alphabetical circumstance. This was my first opportunity to get multiple streets in one go - Aberdeen Road, Macleod, followed by Acacia Avenue, Watsonia (which barely exists other than as a dashed line on the Melway) and Acacia Court, Bundoora. (There's a third Acacia, in Greensborough, which will be Thursday's target).

Felt quite smooth in the first half but a little slow; picked up the pace a bit in the second half and pretty good in the last 15 minutes. Once again indicative of a return to normality (or last year's version of same). A bit longer than planned (was aiming for 65-70 minutes) because a couple of gaps I was expecting to use were fenced off, but I wasn't too upset about that.

And then it was off to get frustrated at the football.

May be as well that I didn't do yesterday's run today - otherwise I might have been underneath when it started raining truck drivers.

C • Depends 1

A fairly standard pool running session at Fitzroy. Talk of the morning was (a) the aforementioned truck misadventure (although we didn't yet know that the hanging cab was sans driver) and (b) the lack of functional showers (supposedly to be remedied by tomorrow). Not the most vibrant session I've ever had but did what it was supposed to do.

Online discovery of the day was the redneck index, whereby cities in the US were ranked according to the following criteria:

Percent of population that didn’t complete high school
Number of gun and ammo stores per capita
Number of taxidermists per capita
Number of cowboy boot stores per capita
Number of country radio stations per capita
Number of NASCAR race tracks close by
Number of Walmarts per capita
Number of riding lawn mower/tractor repair shops per capita

Top of the list was Atlanta. Deleting those criteria not applicable to Australia (6 and 7) and modifying where necessary (4), I wonder where in Australia would come out on top? My money's on Gympie.

And Shane Rattenbury's run-in with a kangaroo whilst running in Ainslie (http://the-riotact.com/nature-not-as-keen-on-shane...) has made it far as the Washington Post, surely the first time that the exploits of a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly have rated a mention there.

C • index substitute 2

From North Melbourne because of post-day logistics. It's been a long couple of days with work - normal things don't stop just because you've got all-day meetings or courses on two successive days - and I was going until close to midnight last night. Even though the Thursday wake-up wasn't as early as it sometimes is, I wasn't surprised not to be especially awake for the start of this one, and the first couple of kilometres were hard work. Never really touched great heights, but grinding out as I did yesterday, a little more slowly but still a step up on where I was on similar days a month or two months back.

This run was fairly flat on the whole, centred on the valley of Moonee Ponds Creek, but there was one very non-flat bit at the far end - the O'Hea Street climb in Pascoe Vale (parallel to Bell Street and a few hundred metres north of it). It's reputed to be the steepest street in Melbourne (peak gradient is either 30 or 31% depending on which website you look at - as you can imagine, it holds a bit of interest for the cycling crowd). I wasn't moving very fast up it, but the back held out, more or less, which is a good sign. The run ended up longer than planned, partly because having set my target I didn't feel like turning around a few hundred metres short of it, but mostly because I got caught in a dead end in a big bend of the creek coming back. Faded a little at the end.

You can never accuse American weather of being boring. As some will know, it was an unusually cold March/April in central parts of the country, but it's warmed up very suddenly. There were parts of Minnesota yesterday where it was reaching the high 30s (C) in places where there were still frozen lakes. Omaha had their earliest-ever 100F (38C) day two days after they had their latest-ever sub-freezing night.

Morning session from near work down along the bay to St. Kilda and back inland. Never felt especially smooth, but was essentially a normal run as it existed this time last year - this means that significant progress has been made, as churning out consistent 5-minute kilometres at comfortable training pace is something which hasn't been possible for most of this year. Still remains to be tested on hills or in terrain (Sunday will provide an opportunity for the latter, and probably the former too), but I'm feeling a lot more optimistic than I was this time last week.

Not as windy on the waterfront as I thought it might have been.

10-interval set on the waterfront at Fishermens Bend. Main challenge today was the wind - a stiff WNW which meant the odd-numbered reps were a lot harder than the even-numbered ones (the difference in time averaged 3-4 seconds). Took a couple of intervals to get going but moving pretty well after that; a bit hard to gauge relative efforts because of the difference between upwind and downwind. Body again behaving itself.

Warm-up and down.

I woke up briefly around 3.30, checked the EPL scores on my phone (I might have been tempted to stay up for it if the Norwich game had been on Foxtel, but their games were Man U-Swansea because it's Man U, and Sunderland-Southampton because both sides were fighting to stay up, not just one). Didn't really get back to sleep, and thought I might have paid for it but it didn't happen.

It's tempting to say that I spent this swim with "On The Ball, City" (reputed to be the world's oldest football club song, and possibly its longest) running through my head, but it didn't happen. A reasonably standard session, on a morning which hadn't turned too wintry yet. As those from southern states of Australia will know, football club songs, and the atrociously bad post-match singing of same, are a feature of Australian Rules football (quite often the tunes are taken from elsewhere; I'm sure I'm not the only person who's heard the French national anthem, something you get quite a few opportunities to do if you're a regular WOC attendee, and started mentally singing "We are the boys from old Fitzroy/We wear the colours maroon and blue").

C • Red button 1

Monday evening runs have largely disappeared from the scene this year but tonight was a resumption of it for me, doing one after picking some things up in west Ivanhoe on what felt like the first night of winter, with the crispness that comes a few hours after rain.

Picked up the latest in the street list early on, Abercorn Avenue, Ivanhoe - not exactly unfamiliar territory, as it leads to one of the Darebin Creek footbridges and features on most of my longer runs southwest. I then took to the Darebin Creek bike path to check out the newly-opened extension under Heidelberg Road - which I would have said proceeded at glacial pace, but it took three years to build the last 100 metres and I can't think of any glaciers which move that slowly. (That's before you even get onto the main Darebin bridge - after years of delays it's finally been funded, but the planning permit had expired and Boroondara Council, probably illegally, refused an extension so it's going to have to go to VCAT again. I've given the Boroondara Council and the people who vote for them sprays in these pages before from time to time, and perhaps they deserve another one).

And then a switch flicked, and the second half of this run became the best I've had this year, easily. You always feel like you're going faster in the dark than you actually are, but this was flowing very well, nothing was hurting, and by the end I didn't want this to finish. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

C • Bike path 2

Was a bit sore beforehand and early in the run (more so with the knee than anywhere else) but loosened up reasonably well and not a bad run after the first couple of kilometres, with no real sign of further trouble. No big climbs but hillier than yesterday, climbing up gradually through the bush at the back of Watsonia before coming back through Springthorpe. Flowing quite well at times in the second half although a solid tail wind may have helped; today had the potential to be quite a nasty fire weather day but I haven't yet heard of anything significant happening.

Quite a busy family day after that, with the combination of Mother's Day and the 21st of my youngest cousin (the knee didn't appreciate the landing after I went for a floating-across-the-front-of-the-pack mark in the backyard kick-to-kick, but seems OK now). My parents are based here for the next few weeks (providing support to my grandmother because my aunt's out of town).

One more small step on the Banyule alphabetical challenge: Abelia Court, Bundoora. I'll be seeing a bit of Bundoora in the next few weeks if I keep this up because they have more than their share of As.

C • Footy 2

A low-key return to running, staying on the flat (to the extent that I walked down the Hawdon Street hill to start and up it to finish). Wasn't exactly flowing but back didn't give me any trouble of consequence; in as much as anything was sore it was my hips (perhaps more evidence that there's a single underlying problem). As a flat run it perhaps wouldn't have been expected to test my back that much in any case, but the ramp up from the Banksia Street bridge would have been enough to set it off earlier in the week.

The football last night was a big night even if the result was ultimately not what I wanted. You could tell it was a big night from the beginning, negotiating the crowds on the bridge and going past four different lots of tin-rattlers (one was the Australian rowing team; as I've noted earlier on these pages, the annual budget of the Scotch College rowing program is rumoured to be larger than that of Rowing Australia). Going to a night like this, though, is a reminder of a lot that is right about this city and country (in an era when a lot of people are dedicated to telling us what is wrong), not least the completely peaceful mixing of the two tribes throughout and afterwards - symbolised in my mind by the embracing couple walking back to the station, him in red and black, her in blue and white.

One of my neighbours at the game was a small boy called Ryder who had, I would guess, just learned to read his own name and was very excited on numerous occasions to see it in my copy of the Record (and, unlike the Ryder better known to most readers here, he was wearing the colours his name suggests he should). By the last quarter I was muttering that if the Essendon selectors had seen fit to include his namesake we might not have been losing.

Session at Ivanhoe, before coming back to hang around home for most of the day while waiting for some gas work to be done (first time I've been on the Heidelberg station platform at school getting-out time). Not too bad and working pretty hard in the second half, but back still a bit tight. Might try a run on flat ground tomorrow if it feels OK when I get up, and see how it goes.

Feeling a bit better than yesterday but still some away from thinking I want to get running - not that it's the worst time for a bit of a break, providing it's not too protracted.

Reviewing papers can sometimes take a bit of time but I've dealt with an easy rejection in the last couple of days - someone who claimed to have found that a large part of observed warming in the UK was driven by urbanisation, but had actually found the not-exactly-earthshattering result that Scotland is colder than England. (He was comparing "urban" and "isolated rural" sites, but all his "isolated rural" sites were in Scotland, Wales or the far west of England, while all the "urban" sites were in southern or eastern England except for one in Glasgow).

No better today - in fact probably a bit worse - so gave it away early. The tightness was more in the hips today which makes me think it's all fundamentally glute-related.

Plan B was to switch to the pool instead, not that this was 100% comfortable either. At least managed to get some exercise behind me; the regulars know me well enough to know that a midweek appearance normally means bad news of some kind.

The topic of conversation was the proposed east-west freeway. If this is built with interchanges into the city (not currently planned, but who knows?), it's possible that the pool will be a casualty as it will probably be considered more expendable than houses. I'm not convinced the tunnel as proposed is going to do a lot to help peak-hour traffic as the bottlenecks are mostly before you get to Alexandra Parade. There is a bottleneck going west on weekends, when there are no clearways, but this could be fixed for the price of some "no standing" signs by getting rid of a few parking spots near the Dan O'Connell. Wonder if the Victorian taxpayers are going to offer us any commission on the $7.99999 billion we've just saved them?

Felt as if I'd improved enough to venture out for a run this morning. Most of this run was managing, but not much more - certainly a struggle going up the first hill before I was properly warmed up (not that there's anything unusual about that). Some good patches going down through the parklands in west Ivanhoe, in steady light rain (not something we're going to see much more of for a while).

Streets collected - Abbotsford Grove, Ivanhoe.

Still pretty sore on getting up this morning - enough to ditch any thoughts of a run today. Will see how it goes tomorrow. Wasn't too bad swimming but faded away to a somewhat worrying degree in the second half.

Things I didn't know before this weekend #1: one of my fellow travellers is officially qualified to hold a stop/go lollipop sign (not that it's a skill which is likely to be employed in her current job).

Things I didn't know before this weekend #2 (and still don't know for sure): I'm wondering whether the new Shep/Jo residence is built on the location of my first solo control, in early 1980. I don't have the map but do remember where the assembly area was, and the (former) track bend where their house is located would have been a logical novice course first control from that start location.

C • #1 2

There were moments today when I was reminded that there are few places in the world where I would rather be than running free on a crisp day through the more open bits of the southern end of Namadgi. Unfortunately, those moments were interspersed with more injury problems, which eventually put a premature end to this race.

Took a conservative route to 1. Bryan passed me going into 1, not a huge surprise given the length of the leg. He passed me again leaving 2, and again leaving 3, and again leaving 4. By that stage it was already obvious this was going to be a bad day for the back; the main thing it stops one doing is lifting one's legs properly in rough or steep terrain, a real problem on an area like this with lots of fallen timber in the bush. I'd more or less decided to call it a day at 6 (close to the finish) unless it improved. It did improve, for a while, and the stretch through 8 was reasonably enjoyable, even if it was a bit of a shock when the drinks at 8 were part-frozen (it had probably been about -8 overnight). It became more of a struggle from there, though, and by the rugged section from 10-14 walking and jogging was the best I could do. Knowing that the Nuggets almost certainly wouldn't need me, I came in from the first pivot control, skipping the butterfly loops. The way it felt at the finish (and on the drive home) suggested that this decision was not made a moment too soon.

It looks like this problem isn't going to go away quickly of its own accord and all I can do is try to gradually strengthen it. There's not a lot of major races to come before September, and maybe with four solid months behind me I'll be able to do something better then, but it's fairly discouraging at the moment.

Event: ACT Champs Carnival (NOL Round 3)
 

WOC sprint trial. A disappointingly slow run, out early in order to do commentary later (but the controls were already awake so I can't blame that). A few bush controls early I didn't really expect, and hesitant and wobbly on both 1 and 2, then settled into decent navigation mode with only a bit of time lost on the slightly strangely mapped 8. Never found much of a gear, though. Only beat a handful of stragglers.

Perhaps part of my rattledness on 1 was caused by seeing dead rabbits on the ground - are CSIRO secretly testing the successor to calicivirus? - and a tent just up the gully.

Second stage of a big day was the middle distance at Orroral. Didn't find it easy to get myself going in the warmup and didn't find a lot of pace on the run either, particularly on occasional short sharp hills (there was only one big one). Also took a while to get into the map - the rock really blended in with the low regrowth which covered much of the forested area - and paid for it with a 2-minuter at 3, unsure what was green and what wasn't in a vague gully. Technically decent after that with my time losses coming through poor lines in the green at 20 and, to a lesser extent, exiting 14, but still felt pretty slow and the results showed it. Just scraped into the points this time.

Pool running session in a new venue - the outdoor pool at Northcote. (The indoor pool is not deep enough, plus it was at a ridiculously warm 32.5 degrees according to the sign). A fairly nondescript session in which headwinds and tailwinds were relevant. On the road to Canberra this afternoon.

In recent weeks something I've been following is what appears to be an attempt (having come in late on this, I haven't quite worked out the exact details) by Murray Strain to run in every street of Edinburgh, in alphabetical order. This seemed like an interesting idea but to do it in Melbourne would take more than a lifetime. A few days back I had an alternative idea - do it in the City of Banyule, whose area is probably not so different to that of Edinburgh (for those not up with the latest in Victorian local government area boundaries, it's bounded by the Yarra to the south, Darebin Creek to the west, and extends as far as Bundoora, Greensborough and Montmorency on its north and northeast sides).

I almost didn't reach first base - Aanensen Court, Montmorency - thanks to a particularly inattentive piece of driving. After a reasonable start on a crisp morning - certainly a much more awake one than yesterday, despite being half an hour earlier - I hit a pedestrian crossing on a side street at the Watsonia shops, which a car was approaching. Some very rapid acceleration was called for at the moment that I realised that the car wasn't going to stop (or even slow down); I don't know exactly what the margin of non-collision was but am pretty sure it was measurable in centimetres rather than metres. Difficult to resist a bit of a spray after that effort (which drew the response cyclists have come to know and love, "sorry I didn't see you"), although I did restrain myself from any naughty words on the grounds that young children were present. Not seeing me must have required some particular cluelessness as the light was decent, the lines of sight were good, and someone else had crossed the crossing (in the other direction) a few seconds before me.

Once I'd cleared myself of a desire to see the driving licence of Ms. Clueless flung into deep space/the crater of an active volcano, the run settled down, slower than last week (but hillier too, particularly at the Montmorency end) but not fading out to anywhere near the same extent. Back a little tight on the steepest climbs. A bit longer than I'd planned on before the run started, which meant a bit more along main roads coming back than I would normally have liked (the closure of a useful section of path also contributed to that). Had a random encounter towards the end with my old PhD supervisor (among other things).

In the light of events, you won't be surprised that this was the song running through my head for most of the second half.

Progress on the alphabet challenge will be slow - the first four are scattered at opposite corners of the municipality and it's going to be hard to get more than one in a single run. It isn't until I get to Aberdeen and a trio of Acacias in the Bundoora/Macleod/Greensborough belt, at positions 5-8, that there are options to kill a few birds with one stone.

I slept well last night. Very well. So well that I still felt as if I was sound asleep at 7.30. This was a problem as I had started running at 6.55. As you might expect, this didn't make for an especially good run. At least no body parts hurt (much).

This was followed by one of those morning commutes where everyone seemed on edge, with intermittent horn-blowing and general tetchiness.