Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Feeling pretty stiff today, and generally glad that this wasn't the day of the final - hopefully tomorrow will be better. It was the nicest day of the week meteorologically-speaking (i.e. there was only one brief shower), and once I was back from the jury meeting in town - protest dismissed - we spent some time on the coast of Tjorn, the next island upwards, with its bare-rock-slabs coast and quaint towns clinging to it.

Various bits of news from home have been somewhat unsettling this week - I've been quite glad to be out of the country for the ugliness associated with the Adam Goodes affair, which is not exactly casting our nation in a flattering light. Also unsettling were the goings-on at One Tree Hill in Bendigo - it helps that there's been a rapid arrest (and am I the only person who thinks it bizarre that the victim, whose name was all over the media this time yesterday, now "cannot be named for legal reasons"?), but you could certainly forgive people for being a bit apprehensive the next time they venture into Bendigo bush (something we'll be doing at the State Series in a couple of weeks).

As for prospects tomorrow; although I plan to run more aggressively tomorrow than yesterday, the 18-minute gap to the lead yesterday is a fairly good indication of where I stand relative to the best people in this type of terrain. A placing in the top half of the field would be great but may be too much to ask for. A technical course would help, although there seem likely to be more tracks than the last couple of days.

C • Bendigo 1

Went into today knowing that as long as I didn't blow up or make a significant mistake, I was almost certainly going to qualify, and hence had a race strategy centred on minimising the risk of either blowing up or making a significant mistake. I was a little apprehensive about the former - I've had a lingering cold through the week which doesn't seem to have had any appreciable impact on my running (except perhaps on the last day of O-ringen), but was at the coughing-up-stuff stage today so didn't quite know what to expect. (I must have sounded awful to anyone around me on the first leg, but was fine after that).

Whilst relevant caveats are the conservative pace and some conservative route choices (I'd almost certainly have gone straighter on 3 and 5 in a final), I think this is just about the cleanest race I've ever run in Sweden - nothing bigger than going around the wrong side of a rock a couple of times and one brief hesitation on the way in. Particularly pleased with the potentially perilous later part of the course - in particular, 16 and 17, both small features in green, screamed out "here be dragons!", but care was taken and dragons were avoided.

It did seem a course with less potential for disaster than yesterday, and this was reflected in the smaller number of blowouts; I was a little surprised to be as far back as 23rd (same as yesterday) with a better run than yesterday. Had about 10 minutes in hand over the cut line, but actually slipped back one place so I'll have an early start on Saturday. Others had other start time priorities - Tuomas Tala (2nd yesterday) started 2 minutes behind me and I suggested to him before the start that I'd see him early on, but he said he needed to start no later than 11.40 (equivalent to 12th place) on Saturday to make his flight. He was around me at times in mid-course but clearly decided that he needed to go slower than that because he dropped another 9 minutes over the last few controls, including a 3.30 finish chute. (His mission was duly accomplished - he was 18th).

I'm not going to get out of this week without some jury work. One of the W65 heats got incorrect printed descriptions (this sounds like the same problem as 2009 - can someone who remembers the details confirm or otherwise?) which were picked up by some of the earlier starters. The organisers have voided the course (thus qualifying on one day only) but someone has protested against that decision. We'll be meeting in the morning.

C • confirm 4

First WMOC long qualifier. A decent run in terms of finding the controls, apart from a frustrating one-minuter when I came in just below the third-last, but lacking in other areas which leaves me a little too close to the edge for comfort (23rd, with 26 to qualify). 27th is 8.30 away so as long as I don't do anything stupid tomorrow I should be OK, although I'd hope for something a bit more than barely qualifying, if only for a better starting position.

The main deficiencies today were insufficiently aggressive navigation - was very much going from feature to feature and not thinking far enough ahead - and, more pronounced, struggling to come to terms with the terrain. There were some very nice patches on the tops (the shorter courses spent most of their time here), much of it encountered on the two-kilometre first leg, but a lot of the map had shin-deep marsh-type vegetation even where there were no marshes, and I struggled to lift my legs enough to deal with those. Starting to lack a bit of strength later on, too.

Many, especially the early starters, will remember today for its foul weather - 11mm in two hours between 8 and 10 (not particularly well forecast) on top of heavy storms last night. This turned the forest even wetter than it already was and wasn't especially pleasant to be waiting around in, either. I was especially grateful for one of the perks of being a jury member - officials' parking which means I could park 400m from the arena (instead of 2k) and could thus use the car for gear storage, and only go up myself fairly close to my start time.

Long model event with Jenny, in a forest on the edge of Gothenburg, late in the day but before the late afternoon thunderstorms really got going. After some navigational challenges trying to get there (which may have been exacerbated by my not paying attention to my passenger's directional advice), it was a typically slow model event session, trying to learn as many lessons as possible. Main lesson learned - steep slopes are difficult, with numerous 45-degree rock slopes which are mapped as bare rock rather than cliffs, but which I would consider effectively impassable (especially in the wet). Some very nice stuff on top of the ridges though, and between some of the hills (where it isn't marshy).

The enjoyability factor of tomorrow's course will depend a lot on the setting - the terrain has a lot of elongated north-south ridges, which will be nice to go along and not nice to go across. We've got 7.4k for a 55-minute winning time which suggests that it won't be especially easy.

WMOC sprint final. Ended up 33rd which was a result I considered moderately satisfactory - wondered before I started whether I'd run my final yesterday, when I often felt as if I was on the ragged edge, but today was smoother and probably a better run.

First decision was pre-race: there were small components of forest in the course and I was tossing up whether to go in runners or orienteering shoes (with metal). A heavy shower an hour or so before the start convinced me to go down the latter route and I think it worked reasonably well.

The first part of the course had a couple of interesting controls - in fact 1 was probably the best urban leg on the course. Settled down reasonably well, despite a couple of interactions with the traffic on 2, and managed the initial forest section through 7 and 8 fine. A little lacking for speed through a couple of transport legs, but was happy when I hit the second hill to see my 2-minute man punching 13 as I was going into 12 (putting me about a minute ahead of him). Didn't see the southern route choice on the long leg back but I don't think I lost much; from there it was a running race - the last part of our course was disappointingly easy.

Nick Barrable was just under 16 which was about what I expected the winning time to be. Thomas Jensen went even faster, but neglected to go to all the controls (as I understand it, he missed the control at the start of a marked route, so gained no advantage).

Generally satisfied with this, especially as I don't seem to be quite 100% well (although it didn't appear to affect my running today). Looking forward to the long now.

Great run of Geoff Lawford's to take the gold, and Tash (silver), Warren, Jo and Ted can be well-pleased with their day's work too.

Event: WMOC 2015
 

Those of you who have been to O-ringen will know about the showers - two large screened areas, one for men and one for women, with people disrobing en masse.

A picture of the men's showers appeared in the weekend's Goteborgs-Posten (the local equivalent of the Age, not the Herald-Sun), featuring the men's showers including at least a dozen bare backsides in their full glory. Can't see that passing muster in an Australian newspaper, somehow (in fact the mere act of taking a picture there would probably be seen in Australia as somewhat creepy).

WMOC sprint qualification. For the third time in a row in the WMOC sprint I made it without much to spare - 13 seconds to be precise. The last two times I had been a bit surprised to get a scare (in 2012 I'd been sick, in 2014 the heats were rather lopsided and the Brazilians were faster than I expected), but this time I knew before the start I was going to need to run well to make it - the M35s had gone early, Simon Rouse (who's faster than me these days) had only just made it through with a time of 18.00 and a decent run, the word was it was a runner's course (which it was), and I thought sub-18 was going to be needed to be reasonably comfortable.

Couldn't argue with the way I tackled the course mentally - can't think of any obvious time losses, maybe at worst a few seconds here or there. (This consistency is borne out by the splits - the only legs on which I was more than 5 seconds from 25th place in either direction were the two long legs, at +9 and -8 seconds respectively). Felt like I was lacking a top gear physically and seemed to be fading a little later, but others may have been fading more as my times picked up very slightly over the closing legs. Needed some luck to make it through; I don't think I'd have got there from the other heat.

Next challenge is tomorrow's final. As third starter any advance on my starting position is a bonus; to get into the top 30 (there are 48) would be a nice target.

Palmerville remains probably the most difficult of the 17 Australian long-term temperature stations that I have yet to visit, but the perils of the trip will be reduced somewhat now that the property managers are safely in jail.

Had thoughts at various times today of doing the sprint model event, more for something to do than because it seemed particularly important or relevant (there's usually not a lot to distinguish one urban sprint model area from another), but was dissuaded by today's generally miserable weather. The day still managed to disappear regardless. Tomorrow's forecast is not much better; there may be a bit of bare rock and I'm wondering if having spikes on the rock is worth the annoyance of having them on the pavement. Will make up my mind in the morning (possibly after hearing reports from the field, as I'm a relatively late starter). Will also try to remember to pick up the map from the right course this year.

During the course of our wanderings through central Gothenburg this afternoon, we encountered what appeared to be a skinhead/fascist/neo-Nazi rally (whose numbers were as minimal as their Australian counterparts). I must look more Swedish than I thought I did because they seemed very keen to thrust literature into my hand on the subject of keeping foreigners out of Sweden.

Forgot to mention my Swedish pizza experience last night: pineapple, banana, peanuts and curry sauce.

Felt very non-energetic on the warm-up (even before the route to the start began going uphill) and decided to take this one fairly easily - after all, the main game for me is next week and there's nothing really to be gained by flattening myself here. There was also the reassurance that, barring disaster, no-one was going to catch me in the chasing start (I had a 7-minute gap behind me).

Some nice patches of forest early on but much of it was a bit junky with fallen timber in rather too many places, and again this was a bit of a slog physically - most notably around 8, a steep slope with rocks, felled stuff, thickets and general unpleasantness. 9 and 10 were then in the nicest bit of the map, though. Lost concentration a bit on the long 11th, not noticing a track I should have done, but didn't lose a lot of time.

The highlight was at the end - coming out of the last control I spotted the person who started 2 1/2 minutes in front of me. He didn't seem to be going very fast and I thought I had a shot of getting him, positioned myself well for the U-turn in the finish chute, took him on the inside and held on. It's a rare occasion when I win a sprint finish against anyone, especially someone who I was actually racing against. Mikael Persson adds his name to a fairly select list (hopefully he won't be as traumatised by the experience as the one I outsprinted in a 1988 inter-schools cross-country race in Canberra who ended up going on a shooting rampage in the Northern Territory in the early 2000s).

Headed down to Gothenburg in the afternoon, in anticipation of more competition ahead, but with the evening diversion of the Gothenburg show of the Roxette 30th anniversary tour.

More technical (and definitely rougher) than yesterday. I didn't get off to a good start, losing probably 1.00-1.15 on the first through not reading the green properly, and small wobbles also on 3 and 4. Got going a bit better after that, with conservative route choices to 7 and 8, but there was no option other than straight on the long 10th. I've made horrible messes of long legs like this before in the Nordic countries (lots of small bumps and marshes, low-vis forest, and no big features), but got this one OK, if somewhat tentatively. Thought I was finishing off all right, but once again lost time on the second-last (rather ironically, I spiked yesterday's control without recognising it, possibly slightly rattled by a recent collision with someone coming downhill). Tougher for most of the field today - my position was slightly better than yesterday. Tired at the end.

My first competition day at O-ringen. After three days which had all been pretty lousy physically, and really struggling to get into the terrain yesterday, I didn't go into this with particularly high expectations. As it happens I was reasonably pleasantly surprised - still not particularly fluent in the terrain by any means (especially when it came to marshes), but a decent run technically, spoilt at the end by going down a wrong track on the second-last and dropping 45 seconds or so. (It's never a good sign when you find yourself on your own en route to an O-ringen second last control). Found some hitherto missing speed after that in my bid to get under 10 minutes/km, and even had a half-decent finish chute split.

I didn't really know what to expect as far as the strength of the field was concerned (I'm running an open men 3-day class). The winning time, around 43, was about where I expected it to be but there was more depth than I expected, suggesting that the 21s make up a fair slice of this field.

It was a bit of a surprise to arrive at the start and see Brett Weihart as the start official (although not as much of a surprise as it was at the Norwegian World Cup a few years back to see Cassie as a start official).

O-ringen organisational logistics were as impressive as ever - my favourite being that there were officials stationed at turns in the cycle route to the event (it was rideable from the event centre, and walkable from the centre of town) to point people in the right direction.

First foray into the Swedish terrain, in the form of the forest northeast of my current abode in Boras - using a 1:12500 map of the whole city and surrounding forests which, it was quickly apparent, was stitched together from existing maps with minimal fieldwork of the parts which weren't on existing maps. Set out early in the hope of beating the rain which was forecast to (and did) fall for much of the day - didn't completely manage that, but conditions not too bad.

The object of today was to get my "terrain legs". They will want to be better when racing than they were today because this was a struggle with no real fluency - although the terrain is pretty tough and others have found the first two O-ringen days hard going. Had a "welcome to Sweden" moment when I went knee-deep into a marsh within two minutes of leaving the tracks...

At one point I saw numerous control flags and at first wondered whether I was somewhere I shouldn't be, but it turned out to be for the trail-O.

A swim wasn't really part of my original agenda for today, but when Cassie made plans to take the family to the indoor swim centre I was happy enough to come along and get some laps in while they were taking in the waterslide. Half the rest of O-ringen had the same idea which made for a very slow line to get in, but the lap pool was reasonably uncrowded. The swim itself seemed to drag on for a long time but was reasonable on the while.

Fairly predictably woke up at 4.something this morning (to the sound of rain reminding me that maybe hanging the washing outside wasn't such a brilliant idea). Didn't need to be anywhere in any great hurry this morning (the bus to Gothenburg was at 11) so headed out 7.30-ish. This was definitely an improvement on yesterday (which wouldn't be hard), but still finding climbing hard going.

Spent most of the rest of the day making my way down to Boras - realised in the process of changing buses there that I haven't been in Gothenburg (except passing through on a train) since 1996. I haven't done the Oslo-Gothenburg road since then, either, and can't remember whether the monstrously large shopping complex on the freeway at Uddevalla (a fair bit of the target market for which, I suspect, is Norwegian) was there in 1996 or not.

C • Shopping center 1

Event: O-Ringen 2015
 

The trip itself had a mixture of the good and the bad. The good was scoring an upgrade on the Dubai-Oslo leg, and also getting a smooth run into Dubai (it often gets congested and I've had a few anxious occasions circling nearby watching a rapidly shrinking connection time). The bad was being next to a two-year-old on the first leg (more room and not as much noise as I might have anticipated, but intermittent kicking was unhelpful to sleep), and also the slow immigration line at Oslo - 45 minutes for me, and it would have been much worse for those at the back of the plane. (We came in just behind an Aeroflot flight from Moscow whose occupants were clearly being given the nth degree).

I missed out on the ugly - the equivalent flight scheduled on Friday night (which two of the people from our conference were on, en route to another meeting in France) was cancelled on the night and didn't end up getting out until 30 minutes before ours. There was also a bit of a reminder of a bit of extreme ugliness as we tracked for some time parallel to the Russia-Ukraine border and perhaps 100 kilometres east of it, probably close enough that those on the other side of the plane might have been able to see where MH17 was shot down from. (Coincidentally, the last 24 hours have seen the heaviest fighting in that area for months).

I'm staying at Cassie's tonight (although without Cassie, who's already at O-ringen). Went for the standard shake-the-legs-out run once the Tour stage was over, but felt awful - my back clearly didn't like the flight and also felt pretty weak generally. Hopefully this is just a jet-lag thing. I was just looking for not-too-steep options to stretch it out to 30 minutes when I saw Zsuzsa and Henning (who live a couple of hundred metres away) coming home, which was all the excuse I needed to decide that this was enough for this run and that catching up with them was a more attractive option. Nice to get my first taste for this trip of Nordic forest at the far end, though...

Early morning session from Lance and Wendy's. There are few flat options from there and I wasn't really looking for flat options (it was quite a challenge on a previous visit when I was looking for flat options because of an Achilles injury) - hilly for much of the way. After some initial ups and downs, climbed Mount Coot-tha via the Slaughter Falls track (thinking once at the top, looking at the view of the distant ranges, that this time yesterday there might just have been the novel sight of snow on the top of them) - this was a gentler climb than I expected, although fairly long, and while my hill-climbing wasn't brilliant nothing went horribly wrong. Across the top, which is up and down in itself, and then came off the northwest side where it felt like I lost all the height gained in about three minutes, before a less hilly return, apart from the final climb through the saddle back to the finish (which was stronger than any other climb today). Not a brilliant run, but probably a step up on what I've been doing in the last couple of weeks, especially later.

About to set forth to Europe (Oslo, via Dubai). I had been thinking of getting last night's flight and trying to get there in time to do the full five days of O-ringen, but it's just as well I didn't - last night's flight hasn't left yet (it's due out only 30 minutes before ours).

And there was a certain amount of schadenfreude today on hearing that one of our occasional nemeses, an NT government ministerial staffer, has been arrested on corruption charges....

Would normally take to the pool on Fridays. The place where we're staying has a pool, but it wasn't heated and this was not exactly the day for it - as the Queenslanders will know, today saw the most significant snowfalls in Queensland since 1984 (5-10cm at Stanthorpe, which was worth the first 10 minutes of the TV news), and while Brisbane was well short of any snow, it was chilly and very windy.

The conference finished off well. In Brisbane for one more night before heading off to Europe.

A run which had a soon-to-get-sick feel to it for most of the time, despite having some good places to explore - south to the "green" bridge initially, across to UQ, sort of along the river to Indooroopilly and then back along the bike path. Nice morning to be out. Was reminded periodically (until the flat last 5km) that Brisbane is hilly, and didn't always handle it especially well.

Today's run took me past the Go-Between Bridge, named for a much-loved Brisbane band. The thought crossed my mind that the Brisbane City Council could continue a similar theme with other local bands, and perhaps name a park after Savage Garden, or the building occupied by the council's environmental health inspectors after Regurgitator.

The conference continues to go well, although today was a long day. (Unexpected encounter of the day - Olly, whose girlfriend is here). Two of the last three papers of the day both looked at conditions in Melbourne on the morning of 29 January 2009, which have had some discussion here previously.

C • Powderfinger, surely? 3

10x1 minute along the West End riverside. Felt rather sleepy early on and was never really sharp, but the principal objective of this session was achieved - getting through something faster with no injury issues, before a predictably long day conferencing. (For the second day in a row, getting to an evening venue - at QUT this time - would have been facilitated considerably by possession of an ISSOM sprint map).

Warm-up and down - returning via Vulture Street, which would be a familiar name to cricket fans (although the Gabba is a couple of kilometres further east).

Heading up to Brisbane today for a conference (I'm then flying out from there on Saturday to Europe). The flight wasn't until noon so that enabled me to run a bit later, notwithstanding the packing that needed to be done - headed out to my old place to drop in the spare garage-door opener I found in a cleanout of the car the other week. Not the greatest of runs but reasonable in the injury department.

Proceedings get properly under way tomorrow, but there was a forum this evening at UQ. I feel somewhat naked without a decent map, and finding my way from the ferry wharf to the relevant building in the dark was something of a challenge (should have brought the sprint map with me). It didn't help that the theatre has just got a new name which doesn't appear on the UQ website yet.

Lunchtime Tan run on a somewhat bleak day (I chickened out on riding, partly because I didn't want to create any more sets of wet gear on the last full day before leaving, and found myself sitting next to someone in bike gear who had obviously done similarly). No rain for the run, though, and felt like a reasonably standard lunchtime run - not exactly sparkling up the Anderson Street hill, but not the back issues of yesterday. Stopped briefly en route on spotting a colleague on Southbank to enquire how our cyclones paper (of which we're two of about eight authors) was going.

It would be fair to say the media coverage of the weekend's weather events was the subject of a certain amount of derision in the office this morning. (It was locally the most significant event since 2000 in parts of northern NSW, such as Armidale, but in Victoria it was pretty much a non-event except for the rain in Melbourne). Queenslanders headed for New England in droves, to the extent that the KFC in Glen Innes reportedly had to close because it had run out of chicken.

Switched this to the evening because of the aforementioned media storm (to wit, an early interview with Radio National, at the more sensible end of the spectrum). As I've noted before, it feels a bit strange doing this in the dark. Water seemed unusually cool tonight at the start, but seemed reasonable once I'd done a couple of laps.

Readers are invited to guess the context in which I read today the following words: "a small, localized region of southern Sweden experiencing notably later FU than normal".

Run from my (parents') place with Rob and Andy before the OA board workshop - Grant sent his apologies because he was on nightshift, but noted he had successfully achieved a chase and arrest. No such excitement on our run, which went OK for the first 50 minutes or so (including a climb of Black Mountain, considerably more ambitious than anything else I've attempted in the last couple of weeks). After that, though, my back started playing up on the hills, which put paid to plans to come back over Little Black as well, but it was more or less OK on the flat and we finished off reasonably round the northern side of Aranda, then doing the seriously daring thing of crossing Bandjalong Crescent without using the underpass (this will make sense to Aranda Primary parents or former students). Not as cold as I thought it might have been, and definitely no snow in Canberra, although it was visible to around 900 metres on the ranges.

Late morning terrain run from Aranda once I'd made it to the house - good to get into the bush again, in old haunts on Aranda Hill and Black Mountain (though didn't go as high on the mountain as I sometimes do). Enough tightness to remind me that I'm not quite 100% without being a significant impediment.

My parents are still somewhere in the outback so I had the rare experience of making my way from the airport by public transport (I could have got a taxi, which would have saved an hour but I wasn't in any particular hurry). It's the first time I've been into the Civic Interchange for quite a few years (when I'm working in Canberra I pick up buses on the west side of the centre) so I hadn't noticed how much redevelopment is happening, not least the disappearance of Canberra House which I traversed on many a day in between buses. (Also noticed that Action seem to have acquired the Swiss on-bus displays which tell you what the next few stops are and how long it's going to take to get there). The most notable disappeared childhood landmark was still to come though - the treehouse out the back of our place, which had been around for more than 40 years and perhaps a dozen generations (of which we were the third) of local kids, is no more, apart from one lonely plank which survived the fall of the branch the main platform was on. (I'd occasionally mused about nominating it for a heritage listing).

And I got the chance for the first time to check out the new cafe at the Aranda shops, which lived up to its reputation (OK, so places like this can be found on every second street corner in Fitzroy, but it's a novelty for suburban Canberra). Good to see something useful done with the Aranda shops, which have been more or less derelict for the last 25 years (I believe the owners were holding out in the rather forlorn hope of getting planning permission for a mega-apartment complex).

And headlines which wouldn't make much sense to speakers of varieties of English other than Australian English: "Extent of ice usage revealed in water" (Weekend Australian).

C • Night terrain run 1

Nothing terribly exciting, but another step up in distance. Not feeling quite 100% but nothing that would get too much in my way. Did tail off a little towards the end so the capacity of the injury to last a long distance may still be questionable - will find out a bit more this weekend.

There's much excitement afoot about the prospects of snow in various parts of the country this weekend. I'll have a better chance than some, because we're heading to Canberra this weekend for an OA Board workshop (among other things, working out how we go about spending the participation funding and paying for the things that participation funding can't be spent on). At this point I think it's most likely that it will be the usual story in Canberra, running out of moisture by the time it's cold enough, but I'm prepared to be proven wrong (I think there's maybe a 20-30% chance of getting something). The most unusual aspect of this event is how far north it will get, with good prospects for snow in New England (and perhaps even in Stanthorpe).

Another step up in distance, if not intensity, with 2015's version of the old MFR Monday nights, with the two CBs from the Studley footbridge. Pretty slow (a bit less so in the second half), but happy to get through with no real issues on a course with more hills than yesterday.

Had a bit of a "you know you're getting older" moment when I noticed that at least seven of the competitors in the women's A final at the JWOC middle are daughters of people I used to run against. In the 1990s when WOC was run only in odd years, a lot of pregnancies were timed for even years - 1998 was a particularly large crop and I recall wondering at the time how many of them would turn up at JWOCs of the mid- to late 2010s.

Celebrated my birthday (a rare one in Melbourne) by getting out for my first training run in a bit, on a crisp morning. Not entirely convincing but no real dramas on the flat; felt slightly awkward on the couple of small inclines but I'll take that as a starting point.

One occasionally sees names pop up from one's past in unexpected places, so I was interested to see this over-the-top claim this morning. Assuming it's the same person, I have a certain amount of history with her in her incarnation as a first-year geography tutor at ANU with whom I had a less-than-stellar working relationship (the highlight of which was being penalised for using both sides of the paper in an essay on forest conservation). Let's just say that producing substantive data in support of assertions wasn't one of her stronger points 25 years ago either.

Had originally had thoughts of a short test-things-out run when I got home from work, but was feeling a bit tight when I got off the bike so figured there wasn't anything to lose from letting a return wait another 12 hours or so.

To the pool on a morning for the hardcore (although tame compared with next week if some forecast projections are to be believed - and going to Queensland will be only a partial escape). Felt a bit of tightness beforehand and early on (partly in the groin this time), and never entirely convincing but managed to get through OK. Then followed a rather unpleasant ride in sleety rain (which included my closest dooring near-miss for a while).

Stirred up my WA colleagues by telling them I'd just come across a newspaper story which reported a shooting in a cafe in Hay Street (around the corner from our Perth office) and that the shooter was still on the run - then told them that the story in question was from 1929. It was one of several 1929 stories which could have appeared in today's paper - in particular, the paragraph "Efforts to induce Germany to share the sacrifice necessary to meet Britain's demands were unsuccessful" could just have easily appeared today, with "Greece" and "Germany" substituted for "Germany" and "Britain" respectively. (As someone pointed out last week, the Germans should remember that trying to force countries to repay unrepayable debts can lead to economic collapse and the election of radical governments).

Other stories which could well have appeared in modern times included a taxi driver being robbed at gunpoint in Sydney's inner west, civil war in Afghanistan, the SA government being upset at the failure of the Feds to come through with a promised grant for disability services, and "Officials of the Australian Labour (sic) Party declare that the Federal Government, with its budget, has written its epitath". They were right - Labor would take power a couple of months later, but it was the ultimate hospital handpass, as they were hit almost immediately by the Great Depression. (Labor wouldn't have had the numbers to force an election except that they'd won Indi by default in 1928 after their opponents forgot to nominate; one wonders how history might have been different otherwise).

I doubt very much, however, that anyone has appeared today in Muswellbrook Local Court for the alleged possession of 25 possum skins.

Melbourne Bush-O at Woodlands. The remaining tightness when walking had disappeared by this morning and the warm-up jog was promising enough to make me think that I was ready to have a go. In reality I was probably a day or two early; my back was not having a good day (fortunate that there were so few hills on a day when every contour was a struggle), which I suspect is not coincidental as I think that's the fundamental underlying problem. The hamstring also became somewhat iffy in the second half, to the extent that I might well have pulled the pin at 10 had there been 20 minutes left and not 10. The plus is that it seems to have pulled up OK post-run, but I think I'll still be pretty cautious in the early part of this week.

Unsurprisingly, I was slow and my scalp was claimed by a few more than usual (most notably Asha, who got me by three seconds). Nicholas Collins ran through me around halfway. A fairly straightforward course for the most part, especially those parts in the open, though I was worried that 3 might be a bit bingoish (the flag was quite visible as it turned out). Only time loss was hitting a bank at the gully crossing 13-14 which was too big for my liking (especially when not 100% fit).

Then it was on to Docklands. A 70% effort was certainly more than what my football team was able to put up this afternoon....

At Northcote, on the way back from acquiring what turned out to be a grossly over-estimated quantity of supplies in preparation for showing off my house this afternoon. Had originally been thinking of the outside pool but settled for the indoor one given the cold and wet conditions (at the time of writing it's failed to crack double figures in Melbourne, something which only happens every couple of years on average).

Main objective today was to see if I could get through this without injury getting in the way, which was more or less achieved. Pool was much quieter than I expected late on a Saturday morning, but I guess it is school holidays. I'm at least thinking about running tomorrow (although it remains to be seen whether I'll actually do it).

One moment at end of housewarming: my study features a genuine 1980s ghetto-blaster (which I think dates from either my 12th or 13th birthday). These days I use it only as a radio (a function it still performs admirably). Bruce and Nicola invited the boys to identify the strange item in the front part of this piece of equipment, something which drew a blank. (It's a tape deck).

Felt a bit improved on yesterday (and, like last time, the tightness has wandered a bit and now feels closer to the rear of my knee), but doesn't feel runnable yet. It was, at least, up to commuter cycling without too much difficulty.

As I've noted previously, AFL House is just around the corner from work. I saw the gathering media scrum as I rode past and assumed that a big football story must have just broken, because there'd been nothing on the morning news which would have warranted such treatment. (Going home, the media were no longer there, replaced by seven scarves - one for each of the clubs Phil Walsh played or coached at).

Didn't feel as if I achieved that much at work today, perhaps because I spent rather too much time trying to contribute towards hosing down a climate sceptic-driven brouhaha about alleged July cyclones in Queensland before 1970 that we were allegedly ignoring because of a green conspiracy, or something like that. (Our comments about Raquel being the first explicity referred only to the satellite era, post-1970, because we don't have the data pre-1970 to be confident about telling the difference between tropical cyclones and non-tropical systems like east coast lows). Perhaps they should have looked a bit more closely at the document which they thought was the smoking gun (which quoted various newspaper reports from an era when "cyclone" was used much more loosely than it is now). Personally, I would think that a document which is headed "East Coast Lows" and is linked from a webpage about east coast lows is probably referring to east coast lows.

C • And of course 1

The hamstring seemed to have settled time by the time I went to bed last night and I thought it might have been only a temporary issue, but on waking up it was tight enough that I didn't think I should risk trying to run on it (pity to waste a 5.30 wake-up in that sense). Plan B was to head to the pool, but after the first few minutes it was apparent it was no good there either.

I think this is a similar injury in nature (back-related rather than a tear/strain) to that of last December or October 2013. It feels worse than the former but better than the latter, so hopefully the impact will be somewhat intermediate between the two as well. Might be pushing it to do much running by the weekend.

A spectacular setting moon when I was on the way into the pool this morning.

Something of which I was not previously aware is that all fireworks not used on Territory Day are legally required to be handed in to the authorities by noon on 2 July. I was not surprised to read that last year the grand total of 30kg was surrendered to Worksafe NT, which I would guess is considerably less than 1% of the total in circulation.

Street-O at Bellfield. I don't always push these flat out in winter but was definitely running hard tonight. At first, this was to play catch-up and come through the field after having to stop for 10 or 20 seconds early on to sort out some problems with the light, but after three controls or so I settled into a spot 50 metres or so behind Ted. (Perhaps it's a bit of a worry to be using someone 15 years older as my benchmark here). A solid next few kilometres without gaining or losing any ground (almost seemed as if we'd borrowed the WA rogainers' towrope), but started to drop the intensity around the middle, and also had a hint of a stitch for a while. Ted gradually edged away from there and his break became absolutely definitive when I took a risk on a route choice which didn't pay off, but that wasn't my last head-to-head of the night - ended up in a sprint finish with Warwick Davis (which, like most sprint finishes I'm in, I lost).

A bit disappointed to fade out in the second half but will be better for this run. Only 3 seconds/km slower than my fastest street-O of last summer, and that's with daylight and no light-fixing stops. Hamstring a bit tight post-run though didn't feel anything on the run itself.