Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Melbourne Bush O at Woodlands, much of it in the semi-open parts but with a few proper areas of bush in the middle. This is the area where I last broke 5 min/km three years ago; I didn't get close to that today (although did get just under 6s), which could be attributed to any or all of the following:

(a) sleep disruption due to jet lag
(b) sleep disruption due to Olympics watching
(c) coming off a long(ish) run yesterday
(d) La Nina and the consequent growth of long grass in places
(e) lack of a relay first-leg pack for competitive pressure
(f) three tricky creek crossings which actually had significant amounts of water
and just possibly (g) I'm getting older and slower with every passing year.

Beforehand I thought this was going to be a real struggle, but loosened up with a warm-up. It still wasn't great and I suspect my scalp will get claimed by some non-usual suspects as it has in the last two such events (although, this time, not Dion, who is otherwise engaged with two-day-old daughter). Missed about 30 seconds on 6 after not reading the rock properly, and also lost a bit of time on 2 where the mapping was a bit marginal. Also found the tussock grass hard work at times - I may have cut up an ACT cross country field in tussock grass back in the day but it definitely wasn't smooth to get through today.

This series is bringing out a lot of non-regulars, some new to the scene, others people we haven't seen for a long time. Today's nominations for the latter category include Darren Southwell (good ACT junior of the early 2000s, and fellow resident of Mirning Crescent, Aranda) and David Rowlands (accompanied by mid-teens daughter).

On the way to the event I saw a car with a sticker 'Never pay unjust traffic fines again' - but not for very long as it was doing at least 90 in a 60 zone.
(Some googling revealed that this was an ad for a website citing dubious legal loopholes and proudly boasting 'political support from the new One Nation Party').

And where else but the Olympics would you see a headline (from the Guardian): 'Handball heroines go down fighting to Montenegro'?

Did this after watching a chunk of the opening ceremony but any Olympic inspiration was missing, on a run out through Ruffeys Lake Park which never looked like catching alight and was a struggle on hills throughout, and for the last 40 minutes or so. Quads feeling particularly tired. Not obvious what went wrong although perhaps didn't eat enough last night pre-football. A little shorter than I'd planned on as I was running out of time (to take my parents to the airport), but I didn't mind an excuse to cut this one a few minutes short.

It is grand final day in the main private schools' football competition, and large 4WDs were much in evidence around the host venue at Bulleen. Not in a large 4WD was a driver who abused me a few minutes from home because I was crossing a road he wanted to turn right into - definitely an indication I'm not in central Europe any more.

C • Glad that 1

Pool running at Ivanhoe with the usual crowd. Today's topic of discussion - notable suburban football brawls, which moved on to mentions of the old Army Reserve Cup and the name John Bourke. Those Victorians of a certain age will remember.

Friday's not a normal running day for me but Monday's not a normal rest day, hence the unusual lunchtime session today. Out to the Tan again. Never anything to get too excited about but did miss the rain. Would probably have been better off missing the football, too.

C • Football 2

This time slept through, more or less, to my intended wake-up time of 5.30, and headed out for a run longer than anything I did in Europe but slightly truncated from the usual (not that volume is going to be a massive priority in the next two months when my main priority is the Australian Middle and Relays), out to the north and west in a slightly different sequence to the usual - don't think I've done Mount Cooper (not that much of a mountain, but on an ancient definition of the metropolitan area marked on maps as the 'highest point in the metropolitan area') from the south-west before. Nothing special as a run but not too bad either. Seemed to go quite quickly in the final third.

Oddity of the morning was that I woke to a story on the ABC news of a political dispute in which I know both parties (Jenny Macklin for obvious reasons, NSW Disabilities minister Andrew Constance from school and because I did some maths tutoring for him when he was in Year 11 - so you can blame me if his numbers are dodgy). That wasn't the end of it because one of the main names in the Age's front-page story was Michael Magazanik (sometime orienteer and lawyer in a thalidomide case).

(There was a time when my standard Thursday morning long run wake-up call was then-NSW orienteer Alexander Stollznow doing the early morning finance report on the ABC).

I wouldn't have chosen to have such a busy few days on my return, but the IPCC deadline waits for no man or woman (to be considered for their next report papers have to be submitted by next Tuesday). Got the draft of a big one I was working on finished tonight (along with a smaller unrelated article).

With a massage session at 8 I didn't think I had enough time to do a run beforehand, so went at lunchtime instead. (As it turned out I had masses of time - I woke up at 4 and couldn't get back to sleep, which unsurprisingly led to some flagging from mid-afternoon onwards - but prefer not to do speedwork in the dark). Thought it might have been awful but ended up OK after the first rep - the fairly standard 250 on/250 off on the Tan.

Going to/from the Tan. As with yesterday, took a bit of time to loosen up. The Arts Centre is due to reopen this weekend, but they still haven't reopened the Southbank footpath yet - maybe next week?

A lunchtime session - wanted to sleep until 8 or so which didn't leave enough time for a run before work. Headed down around Fishermans Bend and along the waterfront to Station Pier. Strangely enough, half an hour on the train this morning set off the back/hamstring soreness that 24 hours on the plane didn't, and this was making its presence felt through the first 15 minutes of the run, but it eventually settled down and turned into a decent session.

Definitely knew I was back home when a too-fast big 4WD came through a suburban street in Port Melbourne.

Geneva-Dubai-Kuala Lumpur-Melbourne, stretching from Sunday afternoon in Geneva to the early hours of Tuesday morning in Melbourne. Didn't sleep as much as I would have liked but seems to have worked out OK so far - will be interested to see what difference the 1am arrival (and hence the ability to sleep immediately afterwards) makes to post-trip recovery.

I thought I might have had some company on the trip since the Sunday afternoon Emirates flight out of Geneva seemed a fairly obvious exit route for WOC people heading to Oceania or east Asia (as far as I know, no-one flies direct to any of the SE Asian hubs from Geneva, but the three big Middle Eastern airlines all do to their respective Gulf bases). As it turned out the company was the Muir family, as far as Dubai.

One plus of the route choice was that it didn't go through Hong Kong, which had a near-miss from what became a category 4 typhoon last night (although Jim says the flights got through OK, at least when he was passing through). I'd like to see a tropical cyclone sometime, but not really in the company of 20,000 of my new best friends scrambling for floor space in a foreign airport.

Seeing several people around me on the plane with little English struggling with the immigration form made me grateful that most EU countries don't require you to fill out forms - I certainly wouldn't fancy having to fill out a form in Finnish or Hungarian, say. Closest I've come to something like that was on the Kazakhstan trip when we were presented with a set of forms in either Chinese or Russian. I guessed that 'Nyet' was the correct answer to the question that mentioned SARS (which was much in the news at the time, although the epidemic ended up killing fewer people than die on Chinese roads in an average weekend).

And some above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty points to my parents, who are in town and came out to pick me up at 1am (although they're currently on the European sports time zone and 1am was early compared to what they'd stayed up to the previous night to watch Adam Scott not winning the British Open).