Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Today was apparently International Stay in Bed Day (in support of raising awareness of some disease or other), but my one concession to it was to stay there until near 7. Headed out for a bit of a hitout with Bruce from his place, occasionally venturing onto some rougher ground (including in an area I hadn't been to before, the NMIT grounds).

Not a great run - my back/hamstring was occasionally troublesome and will need watching. (The back tightened up badly during a toilet stop after 30 minutes and I was worried that my run would end then and there, but it was OK once I stood up). I've had experience of this before so am not too worried about next weekend, at least not yet.

Made the trip to Diamond Hill, feeling that I needed a bit more technical work after rather too many careless mistakes on straightforward gully-spur controls in the last few weeks. Not the greatest of runs physically; still think I'm not 100% well, and took until the second half before I felt as if I had any fluency in the terrain. Decent technically though; 15-seconders at 2 and 16 but clean otherwise. Ended up 2 seconds behind Warren, and somewhat more than 2 seconds behind Evan.

You don't go into this game for pretty legs and today was especially prickly. At least the prickles don't seem to embed themselves in one's body long-term like WA ones do.

Epic Fail of the Day: to the person or persons responsible for the reference to "Julie" Gillard on the front page of today's Age. As subediting blues go, getting the name of the Prime Minister wrong on the front page is about as good (or bad) as it gets.

(The standards of political subediting haven't been great lately. There seems to have been a fair bit of confusion as to whether the name of a certain allegedly enthusiastic user of union credit cards has a "p" in it - it doesn't - and one, possibly an Adelaide supporter, even called him "Scott Thomson").

C • Diamond Hill 3

A reasonably standard session at Fitzroy, which has a new clock (which looks harder to read than the old one, but the test will be doing it through foggy goggles on the last lap next Monday).

Vehicle sights of the morning: (a) the clearly committed supporter who had a bright purple ute sporting a Fremantle Dockers sticker and (b) the big 4WD with a mountain cattlemen's bumper sticker with a big Australian flag flying off the aerial. I'm guessing they didn't vote for the Greens.

Also unlikely to vote for the Greens are those who are planning to attend next Friday's No Carbon Tax demo in Melbourne, which is being organised outside our premises - although they obviously don't know who does what where because it's going to be outside our Victorian forecasting office (we climate people are in a different building). Naturally word of this has been passed to certain comrades who are in no way being encouraged to organise a counter-demo (in fact I believe two separate counter-demos are being planned; this could be fun). What will be splendidly ironic is if the demo coincides with the announcement of this September as Melbourne's warmest on record, probably a 50:50 chance at present.

C • bumper stickers 2

Another rather patchy run as I gradually ease back the long run distance. Hamstring tightness at times. Probably at its best on its toughest section, the middle through the hills of Templestowe, but never really sparkled. A bit later in the morning than usual because of a 9am meeting with the OA auditor, but it didn't seem to make a lot of difference to the run.

I've noticed that I'm going to be in Spain on their election day, which could be interesting. A past experience with a European election was being in Milan on the day of regional elections in 2004; there was a certain irony to the fact that the party whose representatives were most enthusiastic about pressing their literature into my hand was one whose principal platform was kicking foreigners out of Italy.

Another slightly-off-my-best run, a 3x1k session on the Tan which was 3-5 seconds slower per repeat than last time was (although still faster than anything else this year). Felt like I was working fairly hard; perhaps not 100% well (woke up coughing at times last night).

Going to/from the Tan, in the process seeing an entry for the Department of the Bleeding Obvious, council workers installing 'Subject to Flooding' signs on the bike path under the Swan Street bridge. (This underpass floods at high tide in any decent southwesterly, and judging by the amount of debris on the path, did so again at some point in the last day or two).

And today's bit of bizarreness was the deer's head found in a Queanbeyan shopping mall. Presumably Queanbeyan's mafiosi have run out of horses.

I've gone off the boil a little bit in the last few days and today was indicative of that, a little slower than last week although surface water (following a quite attractive thunderstorm last night) might have had a little to do with that. Started a little frustrated after spending half an hour trying without success to get a bike tyre back on the rim (my next-door neighbour, with a better lever, and probably a better technique and more brute strength, managed it inside a minute).

Swim at Fitzroy. Felt pretty good despite a little hip soreness at times, and second half a bit faster than in recent weeks. The person with the three bottles of product was there again this morning.

The ride in didn't go quite so well - my front tyre has been gradually deflating for months (the valve is broken) and my commuting times have been drifting backwards commensurately. This morning I finally decided it has reached the point of being unrideable, bailed out and got the tram instead.

MFR Monday night from Vanessa and Ilka's, acting as the token bloke. In years gone by, venturing into these parts on this particular day could have been a perilous exercise, but (a) Brendan Fevola no longer plays for Carlton and (b) Naughton's Hotel is no longer trading. Instead the only perils were presented by a squally northerly wind (which became a squally westerly after we finished); this may well be the warmest run I do before December given that I'll be missing for most of November.

Didn't feel particularly brilliant, although better in the second half.