Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Melbourne Bush-O at Eaglemont Flats. Fairly similar to last week in many ways - didn't feel too stiff or sore after a big day yesterday but no real speed, despite my best efforts, and got beaten by quite a few people I wouldn't normally expect to get beaten by. Missed 1 a bit as I hadn't quite got into the map yet (and hadn't worked out which brown dots were mapped). Some interesting bits of the course linked by some track or street running.

A big turnout today, and lots of people I didn't know - I get the impression the publicity machine was working overtime through various schools attended by various MFR juniors.

I've had a few very good long runs in recent years on the first weekend in June (it's often a weekend without significant orienteering activity because it's the week before the long weekend). This won't go down as a classic on the scale of the equivalent effort in 2007, but was still a solid day's effort and my longest run for a couple of years.

The most pleasing aspect of the set of four long runs in ten days which I've now completed is that I can get to around two hours without too much difficulty. The problem today was when I hit two hours there was still a fair way to go and that fair way was pretty hard going, with a fair bit of tiredness and a bit of soreness in the right hamstring making its presence felt, but managed to fight it out and didn't find the final hill the nightmare that seemed possible at one point.

The route went north though not quite the normal way, through a pocket of Springthorpe I haven't been through before, past the defunct Smorgy's and a small yellow sign advertising a development application that's been in the news this week, and through a bewildering array of flags which were presumably there to mark courses for junior cross-country in Bundoora Park. Hit the Apollo Parkways hill, perhaps the steepest road hill within running distance of my place, at about halfway - not a bad place to hit a big hill - then back through Greensborough and Watsonia.

(Smorgy's is the sort of place that I suspect we would have frequented in junior/post-junior years had we been in Melbourne - I recall in particular a pillage-and-plunder raid carried out by robw, feet and myself at the Liverpool Sizzler on the way home from a day at the Sydney Test in 1993 - but I think I only set foot in one of them once in my time in Melbourne).

This very un-lazy morning was followed by a very lazy afternoon in front of the football (including a certain amount of sleeping).

C • Sydney Test 3

A session whose principal purpose was recovery and which succeeded reasonably well in that aim. After a decent night's sleep I seem to have come up pretty well from yesterday, although tomorrow will be the real test in that respect.

Got a chance to display my inner Canberran (including pulling out a 20-year-old ACT top) tonight, too, with the Brumbies in town. Not the most attractive game I've ever seen but at least they won.

Something of a novelty for me this year - a long run which was at its best in the last quarter, on a classic route (or slight modification thereof) out through North Balwyn and Mont Albert. In part this was a comment on the first three quarters, struggling a bit in the dark, hilly and slow first hour, but it's good to see the endurance functioning OK at least. A bit of a detour at the end because the Burgundy Street traffic lights were out and I didn't fancy doing battle with traffic which is challenging even under normal circumstances.

Earliest start I've had for a while, and longest midweek run (at least in time) too. Not my most productive day at work afterwards...

This has been a pretty big month: cracked 40 hours for the month (with a bit of help from fortuitous placement of days in the week) and the most hours of running I've done in a month since December 2008.

And I noticed that one of the things that one of the things a man has been charged with, after making a violent nuisance of himself at a TV station office in Griffith because he was aggrieved over a local TV ad which mocked New Zealand accent, was "misuse of a telecommunications device". I wonder if this was done in the Russell Crowe style?

C • Placement of days 1

I was in a bit of an online discussion with Katelyn last night about the fact that she's doing Kainuu week in Finland as her first event in Europe. This took me back to 1998; Kainuu week that year was my first event in Finland, at the start of a rather frustrating trip - my last as a poor student (I started work at the Bureau the day I got home) - which featured lots of runs which ranged from average to awful (and lots of rain), and when I finally had a good run in the World Uni Champs relay, I got back to discover that both of the first two runners (who shall remain nameless) had mispunched.

I arrived in Kajaani, the event centre town, to discover that I'd got the dates wrong and the event was a day later than I thought it was (this was in the days when the web was in its infancy and often the IOF annual fixture list was the only source of info). In turn this meant the event centre accommodation wasn't open for another day. There was a Christian music festival in town so everything else within a 50k radius was booked out, and my tent had achieved the dubious privilege of becoming one of the last pieces of luggage to be lost at the old Hong Kong airport (it turned up a few days later). If I'd been thinking clearly I'd have got on the train back to Helsinki (which wouldn't have cost anything because I had a railpass) and tried again the next day, but I wasn't so just stretched my sleeping bag out in the forest, thus providing plenty of food for Finland's mosquito population (plus it started raining about 4am).

Once event registration actually opened, I was pretty surprised to see that day 1 was 17km - surely that meant it was fast terrain? No, it wasn't. (It turned out it was the Finnish long distance World Cup selection trial). Definitely a case of jumping in at the deep end, and it went sort of OK for the first 90 minutes, but that was about my outer limit. I finally finished in something like 2.31 to an audience of a handful of event officials (having been close to last starter), probably just about the toughest thing I have ever done - and it was all for nothing because I'd punched the wrong second-last control...

C • Cracker story Blair 3

Up through Watsonia and Gresswell. Felt better than the last two mornings but still pretty slow, especially in the first half.

3x1km session on the Tan at lunchtime after getting out of that rarity, a highly productive meeting. Not feeling especially lively but vaguely respectable for the first couple (mid-3.50s); got a nasty stitch right at the end of the second rep which didn't really go away for the last one, and battled through it without being able to lift my pace from the previous two. A bit of a worry that three years ago I was putting 21 of these together (and it wasn't a lot faster than the floats in Bruce's 500s set here a day or two back). Saw Bruce a couple of times as he was going in the opposite direction.

Going to/from the Tan. Part of a big day, which also included two 50-55 minute rides (not feeling as energetic for the ride home as I did last night).

Something isn't quite right with my body clock at the moment - I'm not really awake for these morning runs (but on the other hand I was as pumped as I can remember being for the ride home from work, and did it 6-7 minutes faster than normal - maybe I should have done this run at 7pm rather than 7am). Being not awake is not really the ideal state of affairs for a speed session and had the fairly predictable consequence that said session didn't feature much that anyone with pretensions of being an elite orienteer would recognise as speed.

Hopefully I don't have to wait until going to WA next week to remedy this situation.

An early-morning run which felt like I still wanted to be in bed, even though I was coming off a shorter Sunday than is normally the case. Up from the Fitzroy Pool up the Merri to Thornbury and back, with a bit of a detour around the bit of boardwalk which was supposed to be finished in April but shows no signs of being so. (Given that the funding for bicycle infrastructure was reduced to zero in the recent state budget, it may stay unfinished for a while).

This is going to seem a reasonably clear week - not too many commitments in the evenings, and not too many meetings or other distractions in the work week either. Might be a good opportunity to get a decent number of things done. I'm also planning this as another pretty heavy training week (and once again involving a Thursday-Saturday long run combination), the last such week before starting to crank speed up and volume down in the lead-up to WMOC.

Swim at Fitzroy. Nothing special but nothing wrong either. Thought yesterday that jumping into the water might be a highly unpleasant experience (at least for the first few seconds) but the leg chafing has settled down enough to be able to handle water now.

It seems there's talk that the Victorian EPA is going to have to generate most of its own revenue. One of their major sources of revenue is littering fines, so now if you dob in a litterer you're helping to keep someone in a job as well as helping to keep the environment clean.