Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Like Thursday, this was an early morning run (unusually so for a Saturday - I was off elsewhere at 8). Like Thursday, it was a run which was lousy for the first hour - in a fairly similar manner, no strength on even the smallest hill - and then picked up after that. Unlike Thursday, I didn't have very long to appreciate the better part of this run.

Next door was up for auction today; given some of the goings-on in the lead-up I was relieved to emerge this morning and see no obvious vandalism. Since I've been out of town all day I only know the price ($598K, at the upper end of my expectations), and not yet anything about who's bought it (which will be a fairly strong influence on my decision on whether to stay myself).

Making one of my not-terribly-frequent forays to Ivanhoe because of the logistics for the rest of the day. The renovations there have become more substantial (among other things, the changerooms are in one shed and the showers in another, which was all the encouragement I needed to have a shower once back home instead), and there was quite a bit of demolition work happening on the other side of the partition - something I'm familiar with from my first six months in the current Bureau building, which was far from finished when we moved in. (Highlight: hearing someone on the other side of the panels saying to his co-worker "Now, don't put that through the window or you might kill someone").

None of this made for the most peaceful of environments, but the session itself went OK. A bit emptier than I'm used to here - probably the state of the complex has discouraged some people.

Something of a run of two halves. The first half was dark, sleepy, slow and weak, struggling with fairly modest hills and generally not going at all, but picked up considerably in the second half, with the last 5k being the best of it (a reasonably familiar experience on longer runs this year). Still not a lot of energy for anything much faster than a plod. Longest run I've done since before Easter, and no significant injury issues (although hamstring was a little twingey at times).

10 reps at lunchtime (61-67). Was originally planning a fartlek session in the morning but realised on getting up that my loop wasn't really runnable in the dark and it wasn't going to get light until too late, so switched to the Yarra's Edge intervals session instead. Started out as some pretend speedwork of the sort I've been fairly familiar with of late, but got better as it went on and was starting to look like real speedwork in the second half. Went a bit lactic in the last 20-30 metres of the last couple of upwind reps.

Noticed that one of the properties I was running in front of was advertised as having 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and a 4-car garage. Presumably the target demographic is families with three uni-student-aged daughters.

One wonders if Alan Jones might be regretting launching Roger Rogerson's book a few years ago, and in particular saying at said function that the streets of NSW would be safer if there were police like Rogerson these days. At least the whole sorry affair is introducing a new generation to the expression "colourful Sydney business identity" (I expect to see "colourful racing identity" before too long). The sense of schadenfreude would be more complete if the aforesaid Mr. Rogerson had got the "you're nicked, sunshine" whilst speaking at a local Liberal fundraiser (an activity which he's reportedly not entirely unfamiliar with).

C • I met 3

Warming up and down. Pretty sluggish heading out (and foot soreness - in a new place - initially, but it only lasted 50 metres), better coming back.

Ivanhoe, which I wouldn't have thought was fertile territory for such things, has acquired one of the billboards you sometimes see with a biblical quotation and a PO Box in Burleigh Heads. At least the billboards which depict foetuses don't appear to have made it south of Stanthorpe yet.

Didn't have much energy riding home tonight. Hopefully this was merely a product of it being 8.15 and not having eaten yet, otherwise it doesn't augur so well for my plans tomorrow.

A very slow start - climbing out of my place (and uphill starts in general) don't get any easier, but at least the foot seems to be behaving itself. Started to get going a bit better after the first couple of kilometres but this was never a fast or strong run.

I don't expect to have to think about heat on early morning runs in Melbourne in the last week of May. In what's been an unusual month, this morning was particularly bizarre - it jumped to 22.1 around 4.30am as northerly winds strengthened, which was only 0.3 short of the highest ever maximum in Melbourne this late in the season. (By the time I actually started running, it had dropped back to about 19).

Tonight's engagement was a big integrity in sport forum which featured several high-powered speakers (Andrew Demetriou and John Bertrand being the highest-profile). Inevitably discussion focused on the big professional sports but it was still worthwhile; I can't help but think that sport is merely a reflection of the society it exists in, and if we have built a society which, at the highest levels, rewards a lack of integrity (whether you think this is a comment on the current government or the last one depends on which side of the political fence you sit on), it's a serious challenge to build the right culture in the sporting sphere.

I did have the chance afterwards to catch up with Simon Hollingsworth, the CEO of the Australian Sports Commission. In conjunction with a meeting that our Canberra-based people had with the ASC today, this reinforced that the ASC will be shifting its focus to building junior participation, which will probably mean a shift in our strategy too - something we'll need to think about over the coming weeks. It's something that NZ already does very well in my view; here, some states are better than others.

The good news this morning is that my latest attempt at a swim doesn't seem to have run into any foot-related problems (although it did cause a little soreness in various unemployed muscles, mostly in the shoulder area). Was floundering a bit at the start but started to get going pretty well in the second half, and particularly right at the end.

It continues to be exceptionally warm for this time of year (Adelaide added its name today to the list of places which have set most-May-days-in-a-row over 20 records, although only just). Featuring in the business section of the Age today was a piece in which the Australian Retailers Association, never slow to latch onto an explanation for poor results which doesn't involve their members selling things nobody wants to buy at prices that no-one is willing to pay, were blaming the warm weather for the lack of sales of winter clothing and various other winter-related items. I await with bated breath their strident support for the continuation of a carbon price and the renewable energy target.

Felt a bit more lively than in most recent lunchtime runs, although not that much faster. The most memorable thing about this run was a historical throwback; I understand the Tan was originally constructed for exercising police horses, and there was abundant evidence today that it is still occasionally used for that purpose.

Stat of the day: Birdsville's 34.7 today is the highest temperature ever recorded so late in the season at any Australian location outside the tropics.

Event: Vic Bush State Series 6 - Chewton
 

State Series at Chewton. At least I stayed on the map this week, but this was not a good race - obviously people like Bryan are always going to blow me away these days, but benchmarking against people I'm normally close to, something in the lower 50s would have been a par result. Perhaps three minutes went to getting caught in a fair bit of nasty green trying to exit 7, and another minute to wobbles on 1 and 9, but I'm not sure where the rest went - presumably through lacking confidence and aggression running in the terrain. No noticeable injury issues today but perhaps it was lurking in the subconscious.

The numbers today were again pleasing (after nearly 200 at the Melbourne Bush-O last weekend, easily a record); I think we ended up with 180-odd. You probably have to go back to the 1990s for the last time we reached 200 in a State Series event without significant interstate participation.

C • I think Jymbo was pretty pleased as well. 18

A run with some ups and downs in its course profile, and also some ups and downs in how it felt (the former didn't necessarily coincide with the latter). Probably a bit of an improvement on most other runs this week. Achilles a bit sore today, but no real foot issues.

I guess it was inevitable that once I so much as hinted that I might be considering moving, Mum (who's down here for a few weeks) would start looking for real estate that she thought might suit me. First one she identified was a location which would suit me (close to the Arthurs and Dalheims), but too big in both size and likely price, and I'm not ready to take the plunge yet anyway. Whether I am depends a fair bit on how the auction next door goes next weekend - not so much in terms of the price, but more in terms of who buys it (latest news is that a former work colleague is among those interested), and whether the other neighbours cause trouble at the auction and/or do something to indicate that things won't settle down post-auction.

Fairly standard session at Fitzroy. Was raining quite a bit when I started out but that cleared within the first 15 minutes. Felt much as usual for a Friday; no foot issues.

Ryanair and some of their fellow European budget airlines have committed some atrocities against geography in their time, but I'm not sure even they would have been shameless enough to refer to something out the back of Toowoomba as Brisbane West, as the owners of an under-construction airport there apparently intend to do.

Slowly rebuilding distance while I'm not entirely confident of my injury status. Today was slow, especially as it was a relatively flat route (Yarra Flats and Darebin Creek), and only got going very gradually, but not the worst of runs, with soreness at the 'minor niggle' stage and not getting any worse.

I'm starting to make more detailed plans for the South American trip, having spent a bit of time over the last few days checking out things like which countries require visas (only Brazil and Paraguay of the ones I'm considering going to), and whether the routes I want to do are feasible by public transport (mostly yes). I have also noticed that the rough dates I was looking at arriving in Rio are a day or two before the scheduled runoff in the Brazilian presidential election, which may or may not be a good idea - I imagine Brazilian elections are accompanied by a certain amount of loud merriment and horn-blowing by supporters of the winning candidate, and possibly some freelance rioting by supporters of the losing one.

Easing my way back into this - I'm pretty sure this is the slowest I've ever done this session, but it's the first time for a while I've got through it and you have to start somewhere. Again a bit of foot soreness (bottom this time), though better than yesterday and not enough to be a real issue. Lacking any meaningful pace.

Dad Joke of the day goes to the NT police, who (amongst a few other excruciating puns) reported that a cow was loose on a street in Palmerston and that drivers were advised to take care in order not to T-bone it.

Original plan was to do something fairly long early in the morning. That was scuttled when we were told we were wanted at the venue at 8 (getting up at 5.15 was more than I could handle this morning), so instead I decided to do something shorter between the workshop and the flight - especially once I knew I had a partner in crime for the exercise (Lucy McGarva, who's recently joined the Bureau, was at the workshop too and on the same flight out as me).

Settled on something on the eastern shore on the way out to the airport - knew we were going to run out of light so didn't want anything too adventurous, instead doing an out-and-back along the waterfront (more or less) east from Bellerive. Foot wasn't great today (though more the bottom than the top) and was glad I wasn't going that much further. Nice night for it, with decent views of the mountain at sunset in clear skies.

Even by my usual standards this was a bit of an epic day - start the day in Adelaide, work most of it in Melbourne (albeit not as much as planned, as the flight from Adelaide was delayed) and finish it in Hobart, where I'm presenting at a drought workshop tomorrow. The only realistic time to fit a run into this was lunchtime, and I duly went out for a session which was somewhat mundane but not too bad by the standards of recent lunchtimes. A little bit of a foot niggle at times, something absent on the weekend. Again very warm for this time of year.

Throat feels a bit sore tonight; hope it's not turning into anything significant.

Probably the most spectacular mistake I've made in Australia for many years was the lowlight of this run - a major parallel error from 6 to 7 which took me some distance off the map (further than I thought, which meant my first attempt at recovery simply meant another parallel error). Lost 9-10 minutes in time, but quite a bit more in frustration (especially as most of the unmapped area I traversed was pretty green).

Up until that time, it had been a steadyish but fairly unenergetic run, on an area which was tougher physically than I'd anticipated (it's greened up a fair bit since the map was last updated). Came in a bit high on 1 (thanks to the aforementioned additional green), but otherwise didn't miss much. Slotted into a bunch with John, Troy and Belinda (whose first 8 controls were common) at 5; I was to lead Belinda astray as she came unstuck on 7 even more spectacularly than I did. Was struggling badly for motivation after that, and facing the prospect of 2 hours plus, the leg past the finish a bit after halfway was too tempting, especially coming out of an injury. Felt at the time that my sluggishness might indicate oncoming illness, but no further signs of that in the evening. Simon did 89.

1 - Splits

Over in Adelaide for the SA-Victoria Challenge (not too many Victorians, though). Having heard that Bridget, Belinda and Olivia were going for a run 10-ish, I was keen to join them if the flight schedule allowed (which it did - in fact things went so smoothly that I got a bus into town earlier than the one I expected).

This wasn't quite the sort of run I expected - the map, at Horsfall Gully, looked well-contoured, and indeed it was. The first stage was definitely in OMG territory (not sure whether I was prompted to think of that description by the demographic profile of my companions) - 300 metres climb in the first 2km, much of it in the space of 500 metres which involved scrambling up a number of dry waterfalls and was effectively unrunnable. It settled down after that as we climbed to the ridgeline and then were level or downhill for a lengthy stretch, but then there was another big climb, though much more even than the first one (it's part of the Yurebilla and Heysen trails). A big downhill to finish.

I hadn't had great expectations going in - hadn't slept much with the combination of a late arrival home, an early departure and overnight railway works - but the run went OK, and most importantly the foot coped with a course which I thought would test it, just some mild discomfort on the last downhill. Longer than I would normally do on a pre-race Saturday, so it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow (that said, Simon - whom I need to beat to get a somewhat improbable point for Victoria tomorrow - did further today than I did; he met us at the end having come from home). One of those days - cloudy but warm and dry - when you lose a lot more fluid than you think you do; didn't feel thirsty on the run but needed a couple of litres over the next few hours before feeling restored.

Standard session at Fitzroy. Felt fairly cool in the water, which is possibly indicative of how warm it was elsewhere.

Under normal circumstances I'd have considered this a pretty poor run - feeling sleepy in the first half and a bit lethargic throughout, although the performance level picked up a bit as it went on, and I ground my way through the hills of North Balwyn OK. The good news, though, is getting through 80 minutes without anything hurting; not sure if I quite yet dare to think that things are getting close to being back to normal....

It was a warm morning, and there will be more of them in the coming week (perhaps more). It looks like the warm spell is going to last for at least a week more, by which time its length will have set numerous records for this late in the autumn.

Support you'd rather not have department: one of the few public submissions in support of the Government's proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act has come from notorious Holocaust-denier Frederick Toben, who says he supports the changes because it will mean he can say what he really thinks of Jews. (In a rather different context, another example of not-really-wanted support was perhaps Warwick Capper describing Tom Hafey as his main role model).

250 on/250 off at the Tan - the first time I've attempted to do anything fast since Easter (but probably not the last; if I have trouble doing long distances for now, it will be time to shift to more quality). As usual for a first time trying to do something fast for a while, it wasn't very fast, but nothing hurt which I'll take as a positive.

A warm(ish) and sunny late autumn day, part of at least a week of such.

Did this coming off a Budget briefing at work - nothing too drastic in our area (although I'm wondering if someone has something against the letter C because three of the four field offices to close will be Carnarvon, Ceduna and Coffs Harbour - in case you're wondering, this doesn't affect my temperature data set because all will continue as automated sites). The thing I'd been most worried about from the overall science point of view was the rumoured shutdown of the Australian Climate Change Science Program, under which a fair number of climate scientists at CSIRO and the Bureau (not including me) are funded. As it turns out, it's been merged with another program with the sum of the two parts having about $3M less than the combined total of its predecessors (26 to 23), so we'll have to see how that plays out. While being personally relieved at the outcome, I share the disquiet of many that the group targeted most strongly by the Budget are those least able to cope with it. (As noted last night, the Budget has been good for one thing - Labor Party recruitment).

Going to and from the Tan, not terribly quickly. Didn't feel especially inspired in either direction.

There was an early departure this afternoon to set up for the evening event. As previously flagged the Templestowe Heights map is amply contoured (although I didn't use the steepest part, the northeast corner) and the start/finish was at more or less its highest point, which meant a lot of people underestimated how long it would take them to get back. A decent turnout, though, and once they'd regained their breath people seemed to appreciate it.

(Melbourne street events not being governed by ISOM, I shrank the map to 1:10500 to get it onto an A4 sheet, describing the 5% extra distance per centimetre of map covered as a Budget efficiency measure).

C • ACCSP 1

Felt considerably sleepier at the start today than I did yesterday despite having had about 7 hours' sleep instead of 2. Sluggish at the start but gradually built up as it went on, and the good news is that the 40-minute sore spot was (largely) absent today.

At the far end (in Thornbury next to Merri Creek) there were lots of signs advising of local non-enthuasiasm about high-rise construction. I'm not sure what their definition of high-rise is, but it seems an odd place to build any (by the standards of inner Melbourne it's a pocket reasonably remote from public transport).

As far as I know I still have a job, though we'll find out more in the morning. (Possibly indicative in other ways is that Ivanhoe Labor had the highest turnout I can remember tonight, including enough new members that it almost triggered the anti-stacking rules).

Massage didn't feel as brutal tonight, which may be a good sign.

This had the potential to be a bit of an epic day - the combination of Clare's Eurovision party last night and a 4am IOF teleconference this morning (and to make matters worse, I didn't actually manage to sleep for terribly much of the roughly 4 1/2 hour window between them). I turned out to feel nowhere near as bad (in the tiredness sense) as anticipated and even managed to get a respectable amount of work done, but the first training session of the day didn't work out. It's the first time I've attempted to swim since the immediate aftermath of the injury, and while there's nowhere near as much pain as there was that time, it's still apparent that I don't have a lot of vertical movement in the ankle area - which makes my kicking even more of a disaster area than usual. I decided fairly quickly that I was wasting my time.

You won't be surprised to learn that various aspects of event quality, and what can be done to support it, occupied a fair bit of the discussion time at the aforementioned teleconference. The rest of the Foot O Commission were somewhat amused to learn that (a) there are Eurovision parties in Australia and (b) I was at one.

The MFR Monday nights are back - a healthily large group from Rob and Clare's in North Fitzroy down into Clifton Hill and back through the top end of Yarra Bend. Felt reasonably smooth, and foot pleasingly good (although that might be because I stopped three seconds after the blow-up time mentioned in yesterday's entry).

Had to take off immediately afterwards for my second orienteering teleconference of the day - OA Board this time. Don't know about you, but I reckon a full day's work, five hours of orienteering meetings and two training sessions (or attempts at same) is a fairly reasonable effort for one day (which is why I anticipate being asleep within 10 minutes of finishing this log entry).

One thing which won't be distracting me this week is exciting weather (at least close to home - the Americans will have plenty of it). Canberra's forecast for the next seven days: fine throughout, 2/18, 2/18, 2/18, 1/19 (just for something different), 2/18, 2/19, 3/18. Melbourne and Adelaide are only slightly more variable.

40 minutes seems to be the magic number for me at the moment. Today that was towards the far end of a longer run, and while things were never bad enough in the second half for me to think seriously about bailing out (I had taken my Myki with me in case I'd had to, this being my first long run post-injury), it wasn't entirely comfortable. As always, the question will be what it's like tomorrow. Felt OK climbing hills, of which there were a reasonable number, and briefly interrupted towards the end for some political discussion (thanks to an encounter with local state MP Anthony Carbines).

Restarted the alphabetical list through Allens Road, Montmorency and Allima Avenue, Yallambie (before taking on the Yallambie rollercoaster). This quest might not last for too much longer if I do indeed end up living somewhere else in the moderately near future (if I do look elsewhere, my leanings would probably be towards somewhere closer in, which would put the St. Helena end out of range on anything except the longest of runs).

Also on my list for today was checking control sites for the street-O I'm setting on Wednesday at Templestowe Heights. Not a night that you want to be ignoring the contours. I also dropped into the Doncaster mall on this trip, not a place I'm especially familiar with (if I do have cause to go to a suburban shopping mall it's more often Northland). Much to my annoyance, all of the maps have been replaced by touchscreens where you have to scroll through 200 items to find what you want (either that or download an app).

Bendigo event at Crusoe. Mostly fairly open forest, as most of you saw at Easter last year (we weren't starting at the reservoir so there was, I presume, none of the grief over access that we had last year), though quite hilly early on. Ran decently, though lacked a bit of confidence in my footing on the steeper downhills (it had rained through the morning and the ground was wet and sometimes slippery) - not happy with my pace, though - I know it's Bendigo, but I should still be closer than 5.40 to David Brownridge on a course of this length (especially as I think he made more mistakes than I did). Took the high road on the route choice which may not have been the best option. The good news, though, was that the foot gave only the slightest of twinges (and that late).

This was the muddiest assembly area I've come across in Australia for a while; driving out was slightly adventurous (and it would have been worse for 2WDs).

There was a bit of thinking to be done on the way up. As some of you will know, relations between myself and one of my neighbours, number 3, have often been tense for almost as long as I've been here, and relations between numbers 1 and 3 have become downright poisonous. Number 1 is now on the market (they were looking to move to the country at some point, but I suspect the events of the last year have accelerated things), and the first open for inspection was today - the start of which mysteriously coincided with number 3 dumping a substantial quantity of rubbish on the nature strip. (When I asked him about it he said it was being collected "by a mate", but it's still there eight hours later). I await with some apprehension what might happen on the auction day itself (for which I'll be elsewhere, which may not be such a bad thing). All this has led me to conclude that I need to think seriously about looking elsewhere myself, although I'll wait and see how the auction goes (in both financial and other terms) and whether there's any major fallout for me from the Budget before making any commitments.

Fairly standard session at Fitzroy although not feeling super-awake. Foot seemed OK.

It was the annual Ivanhoe Labor quiz night tonight. As usual, I had some fun coming up with the questions, starting with number 1 - who out of Troy Buswell or Lance Franklin crashed into the greater number of parked cars, or were they both the same?

Good, if rather slow, for the first 45 minutes on a very nice morning (on a day which was channelling Canberra in early May). I was thinking that maybe all my injury issues were behind me and then things started hurting a bit from that point onwards, although it doesn't seem to have come up post-run which is a better sign.

I'm currently writing questions for tomorrow night's annual Ivanhoe Labor quiz night, which has involved a certain amount of research - including finding out a bit about the somewhat colourful private life of Lord Melbourne (after whom the city is named).

Continuing to build slowly back into things - managed to string two days together, and I think there was also further improvement on the injury front with no issues except on one downhill (and even that was minor - though that might be because today's downhills were pretty tame compared with yesterday's). A modest run but at the moment I'll take that - there will be time for more serious training in the weeks ahead.

It was a fairly eventful ride into work after that - today's scoreboard was having to take evasive action three times as a result of people's failures to give way (one turning right, one changing lanes, one entering from a side street), one L-plate motorcyclist who still has a bit to learn about the road rules riding illegally in a bicycle lane, and someone driving illegally in another bicycle lane.

Big positive from today: the foot has eased to nuisance-level twinge (and has got through to late evening, the time of writing, without flaring again) - best it's been since before Easter. Not prepared to call this one over yet but I'm a good deal more positive about it than I was a few days ago.

The run itself was scenic - the classic eastern beaches run, down to Bronte then along the coastal walkway to Bondi - but wasn't that brilliant as a run; back a bit tight at times. There are plenty of hills (and steps) on this route, not somewhere you go to run particularly fast. Perhaps should have got out earlier too - the traffic was pretty nasty coming back with holdups at several road crossings.

Didn't see anyone engaging in the latest Bondi sport of Packer-whacking. The question has been posed of whether an assault conviction would damage his prospects of being considered a "fit and proper" person to run a casino, an expression which reminds me of Queensland prostitution reform laws in the early 1990s under which one had to be a "person of good repute" in order to legally run a house of ill repute.

Truth in advertising department: the sign on the Tamarama Life Saving Club which is in the paint commercials is actually on the sheltered side of the building.

Spoke a bit soon on yesterday's post - it became painful last night and this morning, enough to make me think a rest day was a good idea. Much better this evening though. I've realised that one of the things which stresses it is holding it up in the air without support, and have changed my workshop sitting position accordingly....

The workshop I'm at is about heatwaves in general and promoting cross-disciplinary research in particular. One of the speakers was Liz Hanna, from the population health group at ANU, who was looking at various human physiological impacts of extreme heat (including something which tallies with my own experience of running Summer Series on days near or above 40, that if the body can't regulate its temperature effectively through evaporation or conduction then its upper limit of exercise before core temperature starts rising rapidly is 20 to 30 minutes). Something they mentioned in passing was evidence of a decline in cognitive performance with dehydration - which immediately suggested to me the potential for a study looking at how error rates varied between early and late in orienteering courses on hot days. The WMOC 2011 long final would seem to me to be a particularly suitable basis for a study for a number of reasons - it was a hot day (34), the sample size is very large and can be well-stratified by age and ability, and the 2010 and 2012 events (both run in mild weather with a substantial overlap in fields) could serve as control studies (in the science sense of the word).

State Series at Irishtown. Decided it was about time to see what I could do, and either give it a go or blow up trying. The good news is that I didn't blow up trying - while I was never 100% comfortable, the foot was not a significant impediment to running except perhaps to make me a bit tentative on downhills, especially on rougher ground. It remains to be seen what it will be like tomorrow, although after the longer days of Easter I knew all about it within an hour of finishing, and that hasn't happened today.

Quite a hilly start (though not as bad as it looked because of the 2.5m contours). Matt blew through me at 2 but otherwise the first half was decent; knowing I was a bit down on pace, I concentrated on trying to nail controls and effectively succeeded all but once. Unfortunately, the one exception was quite big - a ruin in the green at 10 which I overshot and lost 2-3 minutes at. Patrick caught me there, and we caught Craig at 11. They edged away over the next few controls (impressed by Patrick's smoothness through the most technical part of the course), but a small miss by Craig at 15 meant I could get back through him and we were close for the rest of the race. Thought we might have been reeling in Patrick a bit in the last few but got no closer; had enough in hand to stay ahead of Craig over the last couple though. Reasonably encouraged by this run (apart from 10), and never tired to any real extent. Bryan did 73, Brodie 75, and then a cluster in the 83-87 range with Bruce still to come.

On my way to Sydney now, which I'm in for work the next couple of days (south side of the harbour this time).

Last night's football experience was definitely in "at least we got the four points" territory. After moving away from an obnoxious drunk, I found myself in front of a trio of Bulldogs fans with whom I exchanged some good-natured banter; they knew their football history, because they followed "Go the 'Scray" with "Go the Tricolours" and "Go you Saltwater Men", to which I responded with "Carn the Same Old". (Essendon were known as such in the early 20th century because their club song at the time had the chorus line "we're always the same old Essendon"). They also remarked after one unforced Brendon Goddard turnover that "he must be on some of his old man's stuff", to which I remarked that he was definitely a case of someone who's done better from playing football than going into the family business. (Mr. Goddard senior did some time a few years ago for running a pill press).

Thought I needed to ease my way in a bit more carefully after Thursday so tried this as the next stage of my return. Felt a little awkward, but not deteriorating as it went on in the way that it did on Thursday (and also seems to have come up reasonably well afterwards, another thing which has changed since Thursday). Not sure how it will respond in terrain tomorrow - and don't really expect to do the full course - but we'll see what happens.

Managed to dodge the various commuting hazards in the Fairfield area (among them, a track fault causing delays on the rail line, level crossing gates stuck down - presumably because of the the same fault - and somebody having done a runner from the local mental health institution), and made it to the pool. The main purpose of this was to see how the foot responded - the answer was not 100% but better than the Monday equivalent. (It's since improved considerably through the day as the calf has loosened up from last night's working over, and now feels better than it has at any time in the last fortnight - tomorrow's run will be interesting).

There was further commuting interest on the way into work, in the form of a car displaying a sticker "Australian Government Zombie Hunting Permit". This may point to an area of federal-state duplication as I had been under the impression that the regulation of hunting was a state responsibility, unless it involves threatened species listed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act; I wonder what the Commission of Audit's view on this is? (On the other hand, it has been suggested that countering zombie invasions may fall within the Commonwealth's defence powers).

First attempt at running since the weekend. It didn't feel outrageously bad and the foot didn't deteriorate during the run in the way it did on Saturday (when it became increasingly painful from about 15 minutes onwards), but it's come up a bit sore afterwards so coming back is definitely in "proceed with caution" territory; will be surprised if I come up in time for 11k at Irishtown on Sunday.

Had one of the more vigorous massages in living memory this evening (i.e. it still hurts a couple of hours later); the left calf was much worse than the right, which may indicate either that (a) the underlying problem is in the calf and sorting that out might clear the foot too or (b) in the process of favouring the foot I've done some damage to the calf as well. I'm hoping it's (a).

Discovery of the day: it appears that all of the Australian 1:250000 topographic map sheets can be generated as PDFs off the Geoscience Australia website. (As long-term readers of this log will know, 1:250000s covering a fair proportion of Australia were salvaged by yours truly when I discovered in the nick of time a few years ago that the Bureau's hydrology section was about to throw out its map collection, but I've never got round to sorting them out and they still live under the bed in the spare room). Fortunately, neither Geoscience Australia nor the Bureau of Meteorology are recommended for abolition in the Commission of Audit report (and the Australia-Netherlands Committee on Old Dutch Shipwrecks lives to fight another day too).

(Speaking of the Commission, as someone suggested today, maybe the next Labor government, whenever that is, could appoint a similar commission, consisting of three union leaders, a Rudd/Gillard government minister and a left-wing academic).

C • pdfs 1