Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Decided to do something a bit different with a non-orienteering Sunday. Initially I'd had vague thoughts about the Metrogaine in my part of Melbourne, but this had already foundered for lack of a likely partner (the most obvious candidate being injured) even before getting injured myself. In the four months of my life that I've spent on the Hume Highway I've often seen the rock on the south side of the road between Seymour and Euroa and wondered what else might be up there, so decided to head up onto the plateau and see what I could find.

The run itself was an out-and-back west from Ruffy, a tiny settlement with a decent cafe (although as the timing was not quite right and a posse of motorbike riders had just arrived, I contented myself with buying a jar of their chutney and did my proper cafe stop in Yea). Mostly downhill after the first 10 minutes, with the obvious implications for what happened after the turnaround (although the shift from headwind to tailwind made it a slightly less acute contrast). Didn't really feel as if I was really flowing at any stage, but a bit quicker than I've usually done runs of this type in recent months. A couple of slight lower leg twinges on the bigger climbs, probably not anything to worry about.

Results of the terrain survey? Lots of rock on the hills (and in general the steeper stuff is the only area which hasn't been cleared), and a few areas of very photogenic boulders, although a certain amount of blandness on the plateau in between (and it looks like it's all private land, an obstacle although perhaps not an insurmountable one). As a terrain mix I think you'd be able to find a number of Tanunda Creek-type areas, but there's no big area of bush with forest (at least not one I found, and the 1:25000 map doesn't suggest there is either). The country itself on the high plateau (mostly about 500 metres) reminds me a bit of the Monaro.

A few rural Sundays of this type might be a good antidote to getting into a bit of a rut during the summer, although the sign on the noticeboard calling on people to report unfamiliar vehicles under the heading 'Prevent Bushfire Arson' is an indicator that outsiders probably wouldn't be as welcome in these parts in February as they are in August.

First venture back into running, purely as a test to see if things still worked, around the flatter parts of my neighbourhood. The run served its intended function well - there was a little bit of mild discomfort on rougher ground or uphill, but at a level which I probably would barely have noticed had it occurred on a normal day rather than coming off an injury one's conscious of. Also don't seem to have become sore or stiff afterwards (in fact it feels better this afternoon that it did before I ran). Won't pronounce myself totally cured yet but the signs are encouraging.

A 20-minute fitness-test run was hardly going to satisfy the day's exercise quota (especially on a weekend) so headed out on a bike around a fairly normal circuit for me on such occasions, the Koonung Creek-Doncaster circuit (the first half, with its 10 traffic-free kilometres, is better riding than the second). A steady ride and managed to throw a fair bit at the final climb. The lowlight was the first magpie of the season (at traffic lights, so a quick getaway wasn't available either), but as I don't expect to be back there during the magpie season it shouldn't cause further problems.

With the persistence (if not extreme quantities) of the cool, wet conditions, there are a lot of muddy suburban football grounds around. Last weekend the local league, usually a high-scoring one (suburban leagues often are, because the players are skilled enough to be able to score heavily but not athletic enough to be able to flood the defence), the average score was 55 and only two out of 24 teams topped 100. I'm guessing the weather can also be blamed for sky-high prices for a lot of vegetables at the moment.

Probably could have got away with running today - just felt slightly awkward (but no dramas running for the pedestrian lights coming out of the pool) and thought it best to wait another day. Headed for the waters of Fitzroy instead, for a reasonably solid session.

C • Awkward 1

Switched today to the extended bike ride into work, via Kew Boulevard (once I'd waited forever for the lights to cross Chandler Highway; at least I had Rob Crawford to talk to) and the Yarra Trail. Was reminded in the process that my back doesn't enjoy being in the crouch position with a backpack for extended periods (on a normal commute it gets periodic breaks at traffic lights). A decent ride otherwise.

The leg is continuing to improve and is no longer painful to walk on, just a bit uncomfortable, and didn't freak out when I ran a few steps on it today. Perhaps a couple of days away (maybe even tomorrow depending on how it feels when I get up).

Part of my evening activity was my intermittent practice of trawling historical newspapers at the State Library for a series of articles I write on notable weather events - tonight's was a notable severe windstorm and associated flooding (both river and storm surge) which affected first South Australia, then Victoria and Tasmania, from 6-10 August 1955.

One of the occupational hazards of this activity is being sidetracked by other things which appeared in the papers, and the story which particularly got my attention was the one which was competing with the storm for the front pages of the 8th - a shooting in which a man (described by the Adelaide Advertiser as a "crazed migrant") stormed into his ex-girlfriend's house at 46 Otterington Grove, Ivanhoe, and killed her father and wounded four others before turning the gun on himself (and you thought this sort of thing was a recent development?). The reason this got my attention was that at the time, my mother (who was five) was living at number 48. Family folklore has it that my grandfather and another neighbour were crouching in the bushes, ready to shoot the perpetrator themselves if the police didn't turn up PDQ (guns being a lot more widespread in 1955 households than they are now). I knew this had happened sometime around 1955 or 1956 but hadn't previously known the date.

And that wasn't all; other highlights included:

- a big splash in the Herald-Sun about the unpaved streets of Macleod turning to mud in the wet winter and the Heidelberg City Council's disinclination to do anything about it
- proof that political journalists were ready to let their imaginations run ahead of reality in 1955, too, in the form of a Sydney Morning Herald story which reported as fact that on Monday the NSW Labor Party was going to follow the lead of their Victorian comrades and split (they didn't)
- a piece about snow and ice potentially affecting the first stage of the Tour of Tasmania (and if you ask me, Hobart to St. Mary's sounds like a pretty decent haul for a first stage).
- and, still in Tasmania, an editorial in the Mercury lamenting how young people these days weren't interested in sticking with a job and instead were fickle souls who moved on whenever they found something more lucrative or more interesting - except for the absence of the term "generation Y", just about every word of this could have appeared in a newspaper in 2012.

Tweet of the day: "Prince Harry's antics blamed on broken home, family living off taxpayers, growing up on estates & time spent in institutions".

A false start because I got to the pool and realised I'd left my swimmers behind (fortunately it was Ivanhoe, so not too long a trip to go back and get them) - this also meant a slightly shorter session because of train-departure deadline after wasting 15 minutes. A pretty nice session once in. Leg continuing to improve slowly, but still feels a bit away from being ready to run on.

Leg had improved a bit today but was still some way short of being runnable (I'm cautiously optimistic about sometime late this week), so took to the pool instead, this time to swim - at MSAC because it was on the way to an evening engagement in Albert Park. A fairly mundane session which was just a case of getting the job done; leg not quite as comfortable swimming as it was pool running (or riding), which may influence my choice of substitute activities (hopefully not something that has to go on for too long).

They definitely operate to a different clock in Spain: I noticed today that two football matches in the Spanish league last weekend were scheduled to start at 11pm. (That said, with Seville having had a number of days in the last fortnight in the low to mid-40s, if you're going to play football at this time of year it's probably not such a bad thing for it to be happening in the middle of the night - unless of course you are trying to prepare for Qatar 2022).

From a news story about a proposal in Scotland to introduce a minimum sales price of 50 pence per unit of alcohol:

"The move would target people like Kirsty Forsyth, a young Glasgow woman who drinks about three litres of cider a day.

She does not believe a price rise is the solution.

"I don't think it's right, because people with drink problems, how are they going to afford to drink if they're going to put the alcohol prices up?," she said."

I thought that making it so they couldn't afford to drink was the idea?

(And I was also amused that the body launching a legal challenge against the proposal is the Scotch Whisky Association, whose members would, I would have thought, be unaffected by the move - if anyone knows where to find Scotch whisky which costs only 50p per unit of alcohol I suspect a lot of people would be interested).

C • Drink problems 1

My vague optimism yesterday about the post-run soreness wasn't really justified - was just as bad today, and difficult to walk on, especially without shoes (OK for riding, though) - soreness on the left side of the lower right leg. Decided as an initial step to reshuffle the Friday rest day to Monday, but I think this one's going to take more than a day to sort itself out. How much more isn't clear at the moment.

The good news was that the stitches finally came out of my elbow today, which made going into the pool an option (and one taken up in the evening once the Monday night run from my place dissolved for lack of interest). Not a particularly inspired session, and was threatening to cramp at times but never quite did, but at least the leg didn't hurt during the session (at least not very much).