Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Into work via the Yarra Boulevard route. Didn't always feel that smooth and hard work at times into the wind later on, but ended up similar to last time. Much less traffic on the roads - Cup Monday is usually one of the year's easier commutes - but just as much on the bike path. Will need to get around to replacing my front tube - the valve is broken so I can't pump it up, and its pressure is dropping to the level where handling is a little awkward on tighter corners. Left it as late as I could in the hope of farewelling my parents (who headed back to Canberra today), but they were both still sound asleep at 7.30.

Had another session with the physio tonight. The calf has settled again somewhat in the last couple of days but she's seen enough she doesn't like that she thinks I'm still probably a couple of weeks away. The bike is going to be getting a fair bit of work in that time, I suspect.

I'm currently on one of my periodic bouts of intensive number-crunching which ends up taking a couple of weeks to get through the full data set, and thinking in terms of wanting to get to Woomera before lunch, or Adelaide by the end of the day. (On one such previous occasion, I was trying to get to Adelaide in a figurative sense on the same day I was trying to get out of it in reality, my original plans to get home having being thwarted by a Chilean volcano).

Had been down on the Peninsula over the weekend (joint 70th for an uncle and aunt) and had originally planned to put their lap pool to use this morning, but it ended up with a lot of muck in it after severe winds overnight so I decided to head out after returning to Melbourne instead. Northcote on the warmest day so far this spring featured a reasonable amount of exposed bodyart on the lawns, and a reasonable number of kids in the water to stay out of the way of (as well as plenty of wind). Managed to saty out of the way of everyone else (most of the time) and not to get blown around too much.

Calf feels significantly improved today but I definitely won't try running on it until after seeing the physio tomorrow.

Yarra Boulevard with a bit extra on the end - getting there is a somewhat easier proposition than it is during the week. (It will become easier still when the various bits of work associated with the new Chandler Highway bridge are done, but that's still a couple of years away). Felt reasonable in my own right, although still somewhat inadequate on the several occasions when I was passed by people going 50% faster than me on bikes that cost 500% (or more) more than mine.

Improved somewhat today but still felt as if I might be taking my chances doing anything more than a commute ride - as it turned out, handled that fine.

The commute in was a bit later than normal (getting some blinds installed at home), and I saw athletics in action on the Clifton Hill track both coming (school carnival) and going (Friday night Little Athletics). The latter featured a couple of boys whom at first glance I would have picked as being about 14 or 15 but whose shirts identified them as under-10s. (It must be said that nearly all the 14-15 year olds I know are orienteers, who may not be an entirely representative sample).

And a note to one driver on the way home: if you're going to do something which is going to really annoy people (like, for example, making a last-minute decision to change lanes before the lights, thereby occupying two lanes and blocking traffic from going straight when you're waiting to turn right), it's probably not a good idea to do it in a car you're trying to sell which has your mobile phone number prominently displayed on the back.

Statement of the bleeding obvious award for the day (from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-27/minister-apo...):

"Chauffeuring his pets more than 100 kilometres to a country home with a taxpayer-funded driver "doesn't meet community expectations", Victoria's Corrections Minister Steve Herbert admits".

I felt this morning as if I've gone back to square one, and perhaps I have - the next few days will reveal more. The pool was the most realistic option given the way I was feeling. Northcote is a pool I haven't always favoured for this despite its proximity, but one of its negatives - the lack of a visible clock - has now been remedied. (For good measure, it shows the temperature - which seemed to go up 0.1 every lap - too, although I'll reserve judgement as to the reliability of the readings until I see it on a morning with more sunshine than today).

I'm currently working with some software which is sufficiently old-school that you run it from a Windows command prompt. My computer must have detected that I was in an old-school mood because yesterday it gave me a genuine old-school Windows blue screen of death.

A bit of a step up today with Wednesday night street-O after having not done a run longer than 30 minutes for a couple of weeks. The area was reasonably kind - Highbury Hill is flatter than many are.

The first three-quarters was reasonable from an injury perspective - a bit of discomfort (more so up hills or pushing off around corners) but fairly stable, not deteriorating gradually as had been the case the last couple of runs. Fell away somewhat in the last 10 minutes though (and by the end a few of my other intermittently troublesome bits were being troublesome, so I was glad to see the end). Lasted longer than the last two runs, but have also pulled up tighter and sorer afterwards, so will see what happens from here. Not getting a sense that I'm ready to go beyond running every second day yet.

Quite an interesting course - took a long time for me to finalise the details of what I was going to do. Seemed to be in the mid-range of what most people did (I dropped 4 and 10). Undoubtedly the longest courses were those of Simon Rouse and Bryan Ackerly, who forgot that it isn't a score event like it is in winter, and got all 20 controls when they only needed 18.

Mosquitoes were making their presence felt last weekend anywhere where there was, or had recently been, floodwater, and now they've made their way to Melbourne. I was swarmed this morning in possibly the least rural place in Victoria, waiting on my bike at the traffic lights outside Flinders Street Station.

At Fitzroy. A fairly nondescript session before a rather frenetic 25 minutes on the roads (albeit not as frenetic as it was further out in the city, a load of toilet paper fallen off the back of a truck on a freeway being one of the highlights).

I did well to alter my plans to stay in Moulamein on Saturday night; it turns out the SES issued an evacuation order for levee-enclosed areas of the town (which I think is pretty much all of it) five minutes after I left. (The predicted flood height doesn't seem to me to be enough on its own to warrant such action, so perhaps the issue is the water supply or other critical infrastructure).

A very similar run to Saturday, both in the way I felt on it and afterwards, although I was slightly more ambitious this time in my choice of terrain (partly in Darebin Parklands). Not quite sure how to take this - in its current condition I can definitely run on it, but I don't really know whether I'm going to do it further damage by running more (and I'm always wary of injuries that feel a little worse as a run goes on).

The Hay Plains are reputed to be the flattest place in the world. As so often with such claims, this depends on how you define it, but it's definitely flat in all directions from town. I chose the Booligal road, mainly on the basis that as a north-south road it wouldn't have sunglare for myself or for drivers who I wanted to see me, and wouldn't have a lot of traffic (I was right there).

The plains may be hillless but they are not windless. For the first half this was not such a bad thing, with what seemed to be a southwest wind giving a certain amount of assistance, and I was rolling along nicely, averaging around 28 km/h which is at the fast end for me.

Turning around I realised instantly that I'd had more of a tailwind than I had previously suspected, and now I was going to have to work back into it for the second half. From the training point of view this was a good thing, but it was a hard slog. It might have paled into insignificance compared with what the Around the Bay people had to cope with two weeks ago, but I was still struggling to maintain 20 km/h into it (in the end it took 15 minutes longer for the inward than outward journey). Thought it might get a bit easier as I got closer to town, with a few more trees and buildings to break the wind up, but by then it had shifted to be a direct headwind so that didn't help much.

Also had my first magpie encounter of the spring, near the edge of the 80 zone on the fringes of town. It paid me only passing interest on the way out but rather more serious interest on the way home (perhaps because I was moving more slowly).

Had a bit of a look around town before heading south, mainly the war museum (Hay had a large POW/internee camp). One story of interest was the only successful escape from the camp, an Italian who made his way 150km down the Murrumbidgee to Balranald and then by train to Melbourne, where he found work before being recaptured a few months later. Many years later he came back out to try to re-enact his trek, but 1974 was not the best of years for such an exercise and he only made it a third of the way, defeated by the sort of floods and swamps that I've come to look at. Only sour note of the morning was the rudeness encountered at the local supermarket (from someone who couldn't cope with the idea of being given $5.35 to pay a bill for $3.35), but I was uplifted again by the two locals in the queue behind me who apologised on the way out on their town's behalf, suggesting that her grumpiness was well-known to the community. (I'd speculate that she keeps her job by virtue of being the owner's wife).

I didn't meander as much on the way south as I had going north, but still saw plenty of water in places it usually isn't in the vicinity of Deniliquin (which also features a ute on a pole) and the Barmah Forest. Also ended up going back through Kyabram which, I think, was the largest town in Victoria I hadn't previously been to.

Oops: at last weekend's Victorian Premier Cricket match between St. Kilda and Footscray, the players were wondering why the bowlers were having trouble hitting a consistent length and the quick singles were harder to get than usual. It wasn't until after close of play that it was discovered that the pitch was marked as 22 metres instead of 22 yards. (The four batsmen who were run out have a certain cause for grievance).

First attempt at a run, on a route which started a theme for the day - looking at watercourses with lots of water in them (Darebin Creek in this case). Felt reasonable to start with but enough minor discomfort on the run, and tightness after it, to reinforce that I'm still not quite right and won't be able to launch myself straight back in. Definitely an improvement on a week ago though. Missed all the showers.

Once I realised a few days back that I wasn't going to be doing much serious running this weekend, with no other commitments I decided it was a good opportunity to see the Murray and related rivers in a once-in-a-couple-of-decades state. There was a bit of a change of plan when I found out this morning that my tentative target for tonight, Moulamein, was under an SES prepare-to-evacuate warning (they're worried about the town levee withstanding the flood peak). Route ended up as Maldon-Bridgewater-Durham Ox-Boort-Kerang (crisscrossed the Loddon, which is on its way down, quite a bit on this stretch)-Barham-Moulamein-Maude-Hay. In many cases the secondary rivers look more impressive than the main ones, probably because towns like Barham and Moulamein are built in places where the rivers are at their most confined. However, the highlight was late in the day, crossing the Murrumbidgee plain at Maude; the river must be about 5km wide at that point at the moment.

By the way, places which floodwaters are retreating from smell somewhat unpleasant.

C • Hay, Hell and Booligal 8

At Ivanhoe this time - which is often a more social place for it and was again this time (this time the discussion was recalcitrant dogs and their more recalcitrant owners). Was in a bit of a rush but ended up finishing just at the right time, because I ended up just making the train I was looking for.

The calf is continuing to improve in exercises, and I think I'm ready to give it a go running. Will have a try tomorrow.

Ivanhoe Boulevard, then out on the Koonung Trail as far as the bridge over the freeway. The Koonung part of the ride is one I've liked for a while if using for training - 10km without any road crossings and just enough of an uphill gradient (on the way out) to add a notch to the degree of difficulty. Quite a nice ride, on a crisp sunny morning with a hint of frost in sheltered areas (so much for last Friday being the last of these).

I seem to be making reasonable progress with the calf; at rest it feels like there's nothing untoward at all but its movement in exercises is still slightly limited, so I'll give it until at least the weekend.

Dad was in town last night which is often an excuse to expand one's exploration of the Station Street restaurant scene. Last night was my first visit to the Greek place, which had a certain air of authenticity by virtue of the signs 'No Smashing of Plates' and 'No Dancing on Tables' (although you can buy plates to smash if you really want to).

First occasion from these premises of an activity carried out during injury layoffs - the elongated training ride to work, using the Yarra Boulevard early on and then the Main Yarra Trail thereafter. Getting to the start of the Boulevard was a slightly fraught matter and may have involved some route choices of questionable legality, but once on there it worked out OK (and I didn't have encounters with any of the infamous tacks). Felt reasonable and a nice morning to be out.

Apparently someone has started a crowdfunding page to help erstwhile Senator Bob Day pay off his debts. I can think of more deserving causes (his company's customers, for a start).

At Fitzroy, a bit earlier than usual after an early airport drop-off. Had a good look at some interesting clouds, which didn't precipitate quite as vigorously as I thought they might have been going to. Session itself was fairly straightforward. Didn't seem to be a lot of people around - perhaps scared off by the forecast.

Felt predictably stiff this morning - one day when I wasn't too upset about the warm waters of the Northcote indoor pool (usually a bit stifling for comfort). Swim functioned reasonably well, although it didn't seem to do as much to loosen me up afterwards as I'd hoped it might.

Spotted someone walking through the carpark wearing Speedos and little else - not really a sight one expects to see in the suburbs in a coolish October.

The calf has improved considerably (at least walking) in the last 36 hours. Saw the physio tonight and her assessment was much the same as mine, but she doesn't want me to start running until I can get a similar range of movement on both sides. Hopefully that's not too many days away.

Settled down enough overnight for us to go out for a loop into the area west of the assembly - in contrast to the east, a lot of this is pine forest. A lot of the pine forest is not very nice to go through (blackberries being a common feature), so the track network was well used (and more reliably mapped than in the eucalypt).

Didn't quite get our strategy right for this one. There was a strip of high-scoring controls in the eucalypt west of the pines, but we spent too much time picking up other stuff on the way and didn't leave ourselves enough time to have a crack at those, instead having to settle for some 40s in the pines on the way south. Most memorable control of the day was our second-last, 67 - when there's a 60-pointer just over 1km from the hash house one suspects that there's something a bit feral about it, and in this case it was a 300-metre bash down the creek through the pines where you had the option of either wading or battling blackberries. We waded. (Water was not in short supply on this rogaine, given what the last few months have been like).

The pleasant surprise today was that the calf pulled up OK, and even managed a few jogging sections without flaring up afterwards. Hopefully this means I just tried to come back on it a day or two too early (but I'll be interested to see what the physio thinks when I see her tomorrow). Usually even a low-grade muscle strain (assuming that's what it is) would see footballers miss a week so I was probably trying to be a bit ambitious.

It was a bit disappointing the way this ended up (and it always feels worse when it's a team you've let down and not just yourself), but at least I've learned some useful things for the next time I try a proper 24 (and now that this is unfinished business, I do plan for there to be a next time at some point, although I'm not sure when). Two things I've definitely learned: (a) my light would not have been good enough for night navigation (something which as it turned out wasn't really put to the test) and (b) Jenny swears by English muffins with cheese but I have a lot of difficulty digesting these while moving, so I'll need to find something else as fuel for the long haul.

C • eating on the run? 2

Victorian Rogaining Championships with Jenny at Korweinguboora. The plan was for this to be my first "proper" 24 - I've twice entered 24s during my early 1990s partnership with Ian McKenzie but we didn't go all night either time (once planned, once unplanned).

Given the way my calf had felt post-run yesterday I wasn't especially confident, but it was OK starting out walking, and during such running as we were doing (basically only downhill on tracks). Terrain on east side of the road was much as expected - gullies generally thick, other areas a bit of a mixed bag with some open areas but a lot of what we'd call light green. (The southeast end of the 1981 Korweinguboora O map, which took in a few controls of this section, was 100% light green or thicker, but there were some more open bits, usually where there had been burning).

66 to (near) 79 was a downhill road run. This may (or may not) have set my calf off, because it worsened significantly on the way out of 79, to the extent that I was limping noticeably when walking and couldn't push off running at all. Whilst I could tolerate it at this level, and was OK to continue for the time being, I wasn't willing to take the risk that it might break down altogether on the far side of the map in the middle of the night, so we decided to plan to come in overnight (making it more of a social rogaine in a sense). Got in just on dusk.

No navigational issues of any consequence (I was just about to have one coming out of 74 when Jenny pulled me up).

A run but not a terribly convincing one. Moving OK and calf was at nuisance-level soreness early on, but tightened significantly after traffic stops (not an issue I'll have to deal with tomorrow) and remained pretty tight for the rest of the day. Definitely glad tomorrow is a rogaine and not anything faster.

This was too good a morning to pass up - clear and crisp (with even a hint of frost in more sheltered areas). Probably won't see anything like it again in Melbourne this side of Anzac Day.

Thought I'd try to test things out this morning but the first steps indicated I wasn't quite ready to do so. This is a little frustrating; it should hold up walking this weekend but I'll be more confident if I can get through a run of some description between now and Saturday - maybe tomorrow.

As someone put it today, there is one positive for Donald Trump about the last few days - no-one is talking about his taxes any more.

Calf was better than it was yesterday - able to walk freely with minimal discomfort - but still not quite right, so I took to the water instead, for what was a fairly routine session.

It was Ride to Work day, which meant a proliferation of free breakfasts on various popular bike routes into town. One of these was outside the Fitzroy pool - it felt a bit like cheating to take this one in only 200 metres into a ride, but I didn't feel too guilty about this. Carl Dalheim was also on the scene.

For most of the way a fairly typical run of its type (starting with something increasingly rare, a swing past the nearest mailbox to post a couple of letters), starting a bit sleepy and stiff but gradually improving as it went on and I got into the hills of Eaglemont, featuring a rarish sighting of a Rolls-Royce on a back street.

Did a final small loop to get the time up past an hour. This may have been a bad move as I appear to have strained a right calf a couple of minutes from home. Don't think it's terribly serious, but it was a little uncomfortable to walk on during the day and might sideline me for a day or two.

A rather up and down session - felt promising at times, but quite a few interruptions in the first half through goggles trouble (it's a new pair and often it takes a few swims before they're fitted properly). Felt strong in the last couple of laps but wasn't actually going any faster.

This was a prelude to a pretty good day - got a couple of major bits of writing done (and also got just about the clearest ride in to work I can remember). At least it was a day when things went right up until going home when, 100 metres from the end of the ride, I found myself stuck on the wrong side of a red light as a hail shower unloaded....

Victorian Relays at Brimbank Park, a combination of running race in open parkland and tough slog on steep, long-grassy slopes. As has usually been the case in recent years, I ran first leg for a Yarra Valley team which wasn't going to be competitive for the win but was hoping to be challenging in midfield. At least this year I had a teammate under 60 (Glen White, a relative newcomer to the sport with a couple of highly promising sons of late primary-school age).

The start was part of the running race component and I was rather left behind (seemed worse than it was because there were also course 2 people with shorter splits in the mix). Eventually settled into a contest with Chris Norwood, who was a little faster than me in the open but a little slower in rougher country. We both missed the first really rough control, 11, a bit (maybe 30 seconds for me, a bit more for him). The next couple of legs across the steep river slope reminded me of some of the hard-to-stand-up slopes in Switzerland and were slow going. Open out again after that and we caught Belinda just before the spectator leg. Chris then got away from me a bit on a short split on the final loop, while I lost contact with Belinda when I didn't read my descriptions properly at 24 and went to the top of the boulder cluster rather than its foot. Ended up about 20-30 seconds behind them (but 9 minutes behind the lead pack, led by Toph).

Unfortunately Glen missed a control in the easy parkland so we didn't get a result, although I think we would have been down around 8th. MFR won fairly comfortably despite a last-leg flyer from Leon.

This event will probably be best remembered for its high winds. It wasn't as bad at Brimbank as it was in some parts of town which were getting 100 km/h+ gusts, and I didn't see any debris larger than small to medium branches, but still not the most pleasant of days to be out. At one point I saw a map flying off - it was last seen 20 metres in the air and heading towards Sunshine. (If anyone finds a Brimbank Park map in Tasmania over the next couple of days, it's probably that one).

Wouldn't normally go to a Saturday afternoon park/street event but this one had the added purpose of being billed as the 40th anniversary of Melbourne park/street orienteering (although, as I was to discover, the actual date which is being marked is somewhat fuzzy), and given that I didn't have any other commitments I thought I might as well go (a) for somewhere different to run (Garden City, familiar ground in the mid-1990s) and (b) to be presidential if required.

Didn't feel brilliant in the early stages but was moving OK, and ended up as a reasonable run without pushing too hard (particularly as the control procedure took up a bit more time than usual). If this is anything to go by then I shouldn't find going sub-5s as much of a challenge this season as I did last season (although perhaps not the first Summer Series week, which will be three days after a rogaine). Lovely spring day.

C • You mean 4

Back to Fitzroy on a warm blustery morning. The location was living up to its reputation - on the suggestions board there was a comment from someone that the music in the gym was too mainstream for Fitzroy. (Later in the day, I discovered that one method of campaigning for council elections in these parts is to attach your poster to the side of a parked bike). Fairly standard session, a little earlier than usual because I'd been up early to see the second half of the Australia-Saudi Arabia match - just as well the Budgie Nine didn't go to that instead of the Malaysian GP.

Not exactly a classic Thursday of the sort which will hopefully be a regular feature a few weeks from now, but still reasonable enough, taking to the Yarra parklands and surrounding streets whilst avoiding most of the likely muddy spots. A few reasonable hills on the south side which I wasn't super-energetic for, but not moving too badly on the whole, ahead of an intense day at work on a number of fronts (some predictable, some not).

This week is the week of the UK Conservative Party conference. The Prime Minister was boasting about how the UK was the world's 5th largest economy, but the pound fell sufficiently far as a result of what she had to say in her speech that it was only the 6th by the time she'd finished. There was also a minister who said "we're selling wine to the French!" (or words to that effect). An unkind journalist pointed out that last year UK wine exports to France were 940,000 pounds, but UK wine imports from France were 881 million.

First post-championships run, out into the south end of Ivanhoe. Didn't feel too enthusiastic at the start and took a bit of time to get my Achilles going, but felt OK once I got into some hills, then hit a very nice rhythm in the last kilometre just when it was time to finish, which I take as a good sign.

Haven't been game to take to the riverside paths yet - suspect it would be a mudfest. Even a couple of millimetres of rain was enough to get the Darebin and Merri Creeks into full flow, an indication of how saturated the catchments currently are.

Original thought was pool running at Fitzroy, but the appearance on the radar of what one of my colleagues described on the ABC as a "chunky" line of showers convinced me to swim indoors instead (the indoor pool at Northcote is too shallow for pool running). Ended up fairly routine, and the rain had cleared out by the time I finished for the ride into work.

I'm currently working on a report on the extreme rainfalls of the last few months in general and September in particular (highlight so far - Hillston's May-September rainfall broke the previous record by 188 millimetres). I've talked a bit in recent days about 1980s Canberra-Gold Coast road trips and some familiar names (from road signs off to the side of the Newell) popped up in my searching of site lists, including North Star, Come-by-Chance and Terry Hie Hie. A more appropriately named site in the current situation was Forbes (Muddy Water) - won't be holding my breath waiting for a September report from that location, a farm about 15km west of town. (There also is, or rather was - it closed in 1969 - a site called Tin Tin, somewhere between Balranald and Lake Mungo).

A national carnival often brings the emergence of new stars, this year most obviously Angus Haines and Caroline Pigerre (whose Schools run was the most obvious standout, but I was actually more impressed with her Australian Relays run). Three other names to note for future reference, all of them in their first year of orienteering - in fact I believe that for two of them the selection trial was their first bush event - were Haydn Tang, sixth in M14 on Saturday, and Tia and Noelle Chitty in W14 and W12 respectively. The Chitty girls are already scarily fast with 3k times which I would think would be national-class for their age group. Quite a few people introduced Haydn (whose mathematical credentials are also very considerable) to me as the "next Blair", although from what I know about him the next William Hawkins is possibly closer to the mark.

The Australian Championships is not quite as complete an end to the season as it sometimes is; we still have the Victorian Relays next weekend, plus I've (possibly foolhardily) let Jenny talk me into a 24-hour rogaine two weekends from now. Nevertheless, I still plan to have a reasonably easy couple of weeks.

Would have struggled to find time to train today anyway, with the trip back from Brisbane. Certainly wouldn't have found it in Brisbane with a 5.15 wake-up (well, once in my younger days I did go for a run at 3.45 before a 5am departure), and I'm not sure the environment I was in would have been the most inspiring for it - a motel in amongst two racecourses and various airport-related business, in or near the suburb of Hendra whose name is these days probably most closely associated with a deadly disease (which probably doesn't work wonders for local real estate values).

Stepped back up to join the big boys for the middle distance. Didn't feel as good today as yesterday (although I suspect I wasn't alone in that respect, most of the field having run twice as far yesterday). A bit wobbly and nervous on the way to 1, a control which claimed a fair number of victims, but got it OK, then smooth if a bit slow for the next few (Manuel going through me 4 minutes at 6 before giving it back at 8). Missed 7 slightly below (distracted by the ACT junior boys' pack) and then took a poor option to 8, climbing to the top of the bare rock when I would have been better off going round its base. This was a very physical section and I wasn't really strong enough to make good headway on it. Settled a bit more as it flattened out again and seemed to be finishing fairly well, but then made a silly mistake on what should have been the giveaway second-last, drifting to the right and dropping 45 seconds. I thought that had cost me my main target of the day (making the NOL points) but I forgot that they go down an extra three places in the final round. Still, I couldn't be happy with this run - even benchmarking against my own age group (most of the main players of which also ran elite today) I was rather further back than yesterday.

Had a couple of good battle wounds to show for the day's work (more visually notable than substantive). I suspect there aren't too many sports where the president gets up to speak at the national championships presentation looking somewhat the worse for wear from their own run...

The week went very well on the whole. I was worried that there would be at least one major technical issue arising from one of the myriad of areas Eric Andrews was responsible for not being picked up by someone else, but we got through fine (the one potentially significant issue, wrong printed control descriptions for today, was picked up before it did any real damage). Most people seemed to enjoy themselves and I think it was a good week.

Picked the biggest competitive day of the year for what turned out to be one of my best runs of the year. Despite a lousy night's sleep, felt up for this race in a way I haven't often been this year (to the extent that it was a bit of an annoyance, trying to get myself into the zone, to have people ask me about various OA things in the run-up to the start).

First leg was a bit scary and I wobbled a bit in the middle but picked myself up OK. Settled down well after that, and whilst not feeling particularly fast did feel like I was making consistent progress through the terrain. Got a lift catching Shane Doyle at 5 and seeing Scott coming out of 6, knowing that I was well ahead of people I'd considered likely rivals in the positions 4-7 bracket. Shane got away from me a bit again on the faster forest on the way to 7, but I then got through him again on the long leg to 8 - a long haul through the forest where I kept thinking there must be an around route choice but there wasn't. Had my biggest miss of the day on 9, 20-30 seconds through being one line of cliffs too low, but was feeling reasonably on top of things by then and finished off pretty well.

The run ended up being enough to get me into 3rd, a couple of minutes ahead of Eric (although 11 down on Steve and 5 on Jock). This placing was definitely my upper limit at my current level of fitness and I was pleased to get it on the board - actually the first time in 18 years that I've been on an Australian Championships podium (discounting relays). I suspect we'll be crossing paths for the next 30 years so if I want to get higher up the lists I'm going to have to start running faster again...

C • Ageing 2