Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Darwin to Melbourne is a long haul, and it's a longer haul when done via Sydney. When done (partially) in daylight, though, there's some good scenery to be had, notably the rugged sandstone gorge country inland from the NT Gulf of Carpentaria coast - very interesting-looking, and no doubt utterly inaccessible except by helicopter. (I got a small taste on the 2009 trip).

Certainly knew today I'd been in a race and had a few other misadventures. The scoreboard of bits that were hurting read: one left elbow (cause: last Wednesday's altercation outside Crown Casino, although normally altercations outside Crown involve bouncers and not trees); bruised/grazed areas on the left thigh (same area as in Switzerland), right shin and right hand (cause: all from a fall coming into 13 yesterday), and a stiff neck and two sore shoulders (cause: your guess is as good as mine).

Normally I'd have loosened all this up in the water but that isn't an option until I get the stitches out of my elbow later this week (not that two sore shoulders would have been ideal for swimming), so the Monday night run from Ilka's was the place where it happened. A slow-paced run in which I was the token bloke. Started to loosen up a bit as the run went on, which means it did its job.

Ilka seemed a bit surprised when told that a picture of a past Australian orienteering champion was hanging on her wall. (The thing hanging on the wall was the Bureau calendar, which this month includes a picture of three of the Bureau's tsunami researchers, one of whom is 1981 W14 winner Diana Greenslade; my intermittent suggestions of a comeback have fallen on deaf ears).

C • Depending on exactly where ... 1

C • Shoulders 3

NOL long at Lok Cabay. Felt optimistic at the start - it's the first time for a while I've gone into a long race without wondering deep down whether I was going to fall apart (a feeling not really backed by tangible evidence). That optimism was dashed pretty quickly, though - on the long vague first, I thought I'd undershot when I'd actually overshot and dropped a couple of minutes, not the start you want to get off to. Robbie caught me there and didn't get away quite as quickly as I thought he might, but was still out of sight by the end of the first butterfly. Settled down well with just a couple of minor drifts in the flatter areas, and ran quite well to halfway. The next miss came at 16 - Craney caught me there and I concentrated too much on what he was doing and not enough on the map (we lost 30 seconds there, which lost him the race), and another minute was lost at 21 - a flat leg where missing low had the potential for disaster, and I was so focused on avoiding that that I missed high instead. Thought I might get back on Oliver, who dropped me there, but never did. By then my quads were starting to fatigue quite badly - something which happens to me in longer road races but rarely in orienteering - and I was drifting back a bit. Couldn't put up much of a fight when Josh went through me at 26 (but did get ahead of Toph at the same stage). Didn't make too big a mess of the kilometre-of-nothing 29, and plodded home. Don't know my final placing (since the USB stick I downloaded results onto is, I hope, in the pocket of the shorts I packed as cheked luggage) but think it was 10th - my highest of the year at this level but in a field which was a bit lacking in depth, and I can't be happy about doing 88 when Simon and Craney did 67.

This was a great set of events - the build-up was certainly stressful for the key players (I got to see a bit of the stress at close quarters on Thursday or Friday), but if anything went wrong on the day I didn't notice it. A great job by Top End in general and Lachlan and Susanne in particular.

NOL night event at Lok Cabay. Was a bit apprehensive going into this given my lack of night racing experience (something shared with most of the field) and my less than stellar performance the last time I tried, but this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable runs I've done for a while - three short loops in amongst the big rocks, mass start, and people all over the place.

Predictably a bit slow out of the start for the drag race to the first control and lacked a bit of confidence coming into it, but hit it well and reasonably clean for the most part after that - always in and out of people but not always easy to see where the packs are forming at night, and the splitting meant there was a bit of reshuffling from time to time until the final loop. By the final loop there was no splitting and I was around Gareth, Bryan (who kept running away and kept making mistakes) and Piotr. We all drifted a bit wide on 20 but picked ourselves up, and missed 30 seconds on 21; hit the scary 22, and then Gareth and Bryan kicked away. Found a good sprint for the finish chute but it turned out I was running away from a shadow (the nearest opposition was 3 minutes away).

Event: Northern Territory Championships and National League Races
 

NOL Sprint at Charles Darwin University (with assembly area looking over the sun setting off the Dripstone cliffs - very scenic). A decent sprint race, not terribly fast but pretty clean, only a very slight wobble on 3 where I didn't quite make the olive green on the map match the garden beds on the ground. Expected to be caught by Robbie and was, around 8, but held on better than I expected (helped by his missing 11 a bit). Felt as if I was slowing down a bit in the dunes section at the end but the splits suggest otherwise (indeed my finish chute split was more competitive than usual). No issues with the elbow while running, which wasn't a surprise. In the points comfortably this time, though that owed a bit to a smaller field than at some NOL sprints. A good start to the weekend.

The doctor who stitched me up was mildly concerned (although not absolutely horrified) that I was intending to race on Friday night; given that (and that it was stinging a bit when I went to bed on Wednesday - or to be more precise in the early hours of Thursday morning after arriving at midnight), I thought a rest day was in order - even though that means I don't get the chance to do any proper heat acclimatisation. (As it turns out, the forecast for Sunday is such that it won't be needed).

Had a productive morning archive-trawling, including unearthing a whole set of Darwin records from the 1860s through to the 1880s that we didn't previously know existed. Next move will be to properly label and organise the 300-odd pictures of documents I took there.

Not surprisingly, there were a few other orienteers on hand at the Mindil Beach markets (Craig/Rachel and family, Tracy and parents, Robert Spry). More surprisingly, given it's the middle of the NT election season, the only political campaigning I saw there was on behalf of the Australian Sex Party. (It was a different story on TV, where there was a Labor ad - not that they mentioned Labor except in the speakers-J.Blow-and-J.Bloggs-authorised-by-F.Nerk-ALP-Darwin blurb at the end - in almost every ad break during the Olympic coverage; obviously the NT branch of the ALP is not struggling for funds).

C • If you ever happen to find ... 3

Cut on left elbow from collision with tree (or object protruding from it). Four stitches required.

C • Match review panel 3

250s on the Tan. Had some misgivings about doing this the day after something long(ish); wasn't feeling especially sharp but not too bad on the whole. The rain (which had more or less stopped by the time I started) and the wind was obviously a deterrent - you don't often see the Tan virtually deserted at a (latish) lunchtime. Harden up, Melbourne!

I'd already had a bit of drama in the preceding 24 hours, with a too-close for comfort encounter with a vehicle door while riding home last night. The police have promised a crackdown on such things so one might have thought it was fortuitous that two police were on hand to witness the incident - except that one of them was the opener of the offending door.

Southbank may not be an especially perilous place but a few minutes from home heading back, I ran too close to a tree in the crowds, clipped it, and immediately realised from the blood that this was more than clipping a tree. (There was a cable running up the tree, and I'm guessing from the cleanness of the cut that I hit something holding the cable to the tree). It wasn't going to stop quickly so I spent the rest of the run holding my right hand over the area of my left elbow where the cut was, which must have looked an interesting sight. By then it had stopped bleeding but it started again when I bent the elbow, so I thought further intervention was warranted - fortunately, there is a medical centre on the bottom floor of our building (and walking into a medical centre holding a blood-soaked paper towel over your arm is a good way to get seen quickly). Four stitches later, I'm ready to head to Darwin - swimming will be no go but running should be OK (and I wasn't about to ask questions that I might not like the answer to).

A Friday sprint meant some reshuffling of this week's program was called for. I was tossing up whether to do something long on Tuesday or Wednesday, and made my decision on the basis that I wanted to see the women's 100 hurdles tomorrow more than I wanted to see the men's 400 today. Still took the radio out with me, and with an 8am massage it was a pre-6 start from the Clifton Hill area, on a fairly flat route through the inner northern suburbs. (The broadcast ended after the 400, meaning that I didn't get the chance to find out via the ABC, who were next door to ESPN Latin America at the Australia-Argentina hockey match, whether the word "gol" has 24 Os in it in hockey Spanish as well as soccer Spanish - although as it turned out there were no goals anyway).

Unlike last week, it was a fairly slow (if not unpleasant) start. The middle third was good, flowing well, but as with last week it started to hurt a bit from about the 80-minute mark onwards. Managed to finish off OK. A very nice morning for it, if perhaps suboptimal for NT acclimatisation.

Overtaken by events department: the Commonwealth Bank ad on a bus shelter 'Bring back gold, James'.

Going to the Northern Territory does mean getting to see some of the more colourful parts of their media, and the NT News was in fine form recently with this front page. We'll also be heading into the middle of an election campaign, which has had an early highlight in the form of a bit of spice being added to the launch of the Opposition law and order policy, when a drunk biffed the deputy leader in front of the TV cameras while he was launching it.

And the NT Championships is the first event for which I've seen a notice in the event information saying that no pornography is to be brought to the event (it's illegal to bring porn onto Aboriginal land, which the event area is, in the NT).