Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Swim at Richmond. The water is hotter in the showers and less hot in the pool than it was the last time I was there, both of which I view as positive developments. (Easier to park than the last couple of times at Richmond, too; must have been the builders' RDO). Felt vaguely promising at times but gradually drifted out of it; not as stiff as I'd feared, though.

Something I neglected to mention from the weekend was Murray's discovery, more or less by accident, of the best way to get rid of grass seeds from socks which have been in Queensland bush; hang them in a bird cage.

C • good investment! 8

Obviously no-one else felt like coming up after the weekend's races - not entirely surprising - so it was just Amy and myself for a session from her new place in Richmond. Out along the river, back past the MCG, and through the crowd making their way to Rod Laver Arena (I guessed from the audience demographic that it wasn't One Direction; it turned out to be Prince). Not as sore as I'd feared but not an awful lot of energy. A bit of tightness in my left knee.

WOC long trials have a well-deserved reputation for epics and this was no exception, something well-anticipated once we saw a course length that started with an 18. I haven't run a course of that length since the 2001 Victorian Championships at Whroo (now that the long-O is almost extinct in Australia; my longest course of all was a 27k long-O (250m climb) in the New Forest when I was living in Winchester in 1989, my longest non-rogaine time a 2.57 when I thought that having just turned 15 was good enough reason to step up to the longest course at the ACT long-O).

The omens were not promising before the start. I'd woken at 4.45 and been unable to get back to sleep, and the about-to-get-a-cold feeling of yesterday morning had translated into a have-got-a-cold feeling this morning. Once running, though, it wasn't too bad, at least at cruising speed which was about as much as I could manage - big hills would have been a big problem but there were only a couple of major climbs today.

I felt as if I was doing all right when Simon went through me 4 minutes at 6 at the end of a 25-minute leg (as it turned out he'd lost a couple of minutes on 1, not a possibility one normally considers when assessing the place he's likely to catch you). Didn't find the green western end of the map pleasant but neither did anyone else, and continued to feel reasonable through a section with Sebba from 12 to 16, although this included a couple of errors, drifting wide into 13 (I thought this was a 1-minuter but the splits suggest it was double that) and a wrong track out of 15 (picked up quickly). Dropped Sebba on the climb into 16 and had a reasonable stretch after that, and still felt as if I had a bit left at the run-through with about 3k to go. It went a bit pear-shaped from there; first a sharp (but fortunately not persistent) cramp on the way out of 25, then missed the tucked-away-in-green 26, twice going within 20 metres of it and dropping 3 minutes (as did Robbie, who'd caught me there). Finished off OK and in fact had my best split of the day on 27.

I was surviving rather than racing today, but it was still an improvement on Queensland despite the unpromising circumstances. It's been an annoyance not to have been 100% well on so many race weekends this year - I suspect not sleeping enough probably has a bit to do with that - but getting through this will be a help for future long-distance races. (Not that there will be too many more of those this year, given that I'm event adviser for the Australian Long Championships).

Certainly knew I'd been in a race this afternoon (and will do so more tomorrow), and the flight back was not one of the more pleasant 90 minutes I've spent in my life as I tried unsuccessfully to find a sitting position that my hamstrings were happy with.

Long NOL 1 - Splits

Event: NOL Round 3 / WOC Selection Trial - 'Coalfields Classic'
 

NOL sprint at Newcastle University. Last Sunday may have been encouraging but this was awful - never managed to get a higher gear at all and felt very sluggish. Had the feel of an about-to-get-sick run. Struggled a bit to maintain concentration, although nothing catastrophically wrong in the technical department.

Out to my first experience of non-Stockton Newcastle bush, what was described as 'very public Crown land' near Kurri Kurri. It was actually a very good simulation of flattish continental terrain - not much definition in the contours, heaps of tracks and vegetation changes and lots of small point features which were often less visible than the control flags next to them.

Started behind Grant but I was never likely to get anywhere near him unless he'd been called on to take time out from his course to arrest a marijuana grower. Reasonable start once I got into the map - I'd felt pretty ordinary between races but OK once I started warming up - and it ended up being a good run for 27 out of 28 controls. Unfortunately, the odd one out was a big one - three minutes on 11, a vague leg that trapped plenty of others too - and that reduced what would have been a decent result into a mediocre one.

NOL 1 - Splits

Middle NOL 1 - Splits

Pool running session at Ivanhoe. This isn't a favoured venue for me for this because the deep end is small, but the company is good - topics of conversation today included Brent Stanton's junior football career and people famous and infamous who live locally. (I already knew about Mick Gatto, and presume the Energy Watch guy is also a local because his court appearances have been in Heidelberg Magistrates').

I was a bit concerned about the trip to Newcastle, because the Jetstar website gave a rather cryptic error message when I tried to check in online, which I thought could mean one of four things: (a) there was a problem with the website, (b) the flight was going to be cancelled, (c) I was going to get bumped from the flight or (d) I'd been allocated to an exit row. Bruce had the same problem, rang up and found out that the answer was (d). I'm at the airport waiting for the flight now - so far listed as 10 minutes late but as the incoming flight is 40 minutes late I'm guessing that that might be optimistic.

And an e-mail came in today from 12 co-signatories (including one Senator Bernardi) asking for a copy of all data, documentation and computer code relating to the new temperature data set. The fun begins...

C • Is there any evidence 1

A run of two halves, although not the way it usually happens for me - normally this takes the form of a slow first half and a good second half, but today it was the reverse, accentuated by the fact that the run was done in two loops. The first loop was done with Jenny (who stayed with me last night) and was pretty good, heading out through Viewbank while it was still dark and then hitting the singletracks of Banyule Flats (still pretty muddy) at first light. I then went on on my own on a western loop and promptly felt flat and uninspired; thought the long descent to Darebin Creek might get me going again but it didn't. Never as much of a struggle as the last 30 minutes last week, though.

Got home and Jenny was still waiting outside the front door; the spare key I'd given her didn't work. Oops....

Again cramped on the bike coming home, which is a bit of a worry (at least from the viewpoint of 18+ kilometres on Sunday).

A run which had its good patches but mostly nothing to get excited about - route mainly confirmed the non-existence of some long-standing gaps between buildings in the surrounds of La Trobe University. A very warm morning for this time of year (certainly in marked contrast with what's coming up this weekend - as well that we're in Newcastle and not Orange).

Cramped on the bike on the way in, for no obvious reason.

I noted that Canberra Raiders coach David Furner was fined $10,000 by the NRL for criticising referees this week. They do things differently in Spanish football, as this account of last weekend's Granada-Real Madrid match indicates.

Made one of my occasional forays into Wednesday night street-O in winter (as much as anything, to carry out a test of my light, which seems to work pretty well). Going at cruise speed but still thought when we started, given that we weren't going south of the freeway (as is normally the case at Tunstall Junction), that we would get the lot easily - but it was a pretty convoluted course with numerous long in-and-outs, and it wasn't until the last three or four controls that I was sure of making it. Did a rather different route to most people (getting 7 and 8 after 17 and then coming back in for a loop 2-1-18) - will be interested to see how it worked out. Felt smooth, although a bit tired on some of the later hills.

Came across this in the course of today:

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2012/05/08/the-fastest-mi...

It's an account of a court case from 1973 in which a Grenfell man was appealing against a one-month jail sentence for assault, arising out of an incident in which he found his wife in bed with the local milkman. The appeal judge took the view that the milkman deserved everything he got and reduced the penalty to a fine of 20 cents, a trifling sum even by 1973 standards.

The reason this particularly took my attention was that one of the protagonists shares a surname with one of my friends from kinder and Grade 1, whose father (quotation marks possibly required) was the local Aranda milkman, a creature which still existed in 1976-77. Possibly he had a more interesting family history than I'd suspected as an innocent six-year-old.

I wasn't terribly awake this morning. I'm not sure exactly what the right session is for such circumstances, but I'm fairly sure that a set of 400s isn't it. Nevertheless, I persisted in the hope that I might wake up eventually, which I sort of did in the last couple of reps. Not a session I'll be especially proud of though - finally ended up doing 82s.

Warm up/down for the intervals session.