Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Yesterday was a good run but my back didn't take kindly to the drive back followed immediately by four hours sitting down in the teleconference - quite significant lower back tightness this morning with associated upper hamstring soreness. I headed out expecting it to loosen up, and to some extent it did, but this was never a comfortable run and by the end I was glad to see it over.

Bendigo event on the north side of Kooyoora, as noted previously in these pages the most difficult square kilometre in Australia. I didn't know this was on until Bruce mentioned it last week but thought it was worth the trip.

A little wobbly on 1 and 3 but didn't end up losing much time on either, and caught two minutes on David Brownridge at 4. We were essentially together for the rest of the course. He led me into 5 (a difficult control even by the standards of this area); from there I was leading more than trailing, but wasn't able to consolidate the small breaks I got at 7 and 11. I wasn't really attacking the terrain and didn't feel as if I was going that quickly, but had no time losses more than 10-15 seconds until 13, where we drifted a bit wide and lost 30 seconds or so.

Unless someone turned up very late I didn't know about, this was my first win in an event of any sort since last year's SA Championships, something I was pretty happy with in a decent field. Like the SA Championships I got some help with the fastest person in the field DNFing (although Bryan had apparently already lost a fair bit of time when he pulled out). Bruce, in his first comeback race, was about 30 seconds behind me.

C • Results 9

C • Jealous! 4

At Fitzroy, rather less leaf-cluttered than it was on Monday. There was a certain amount of meteorologicial excitement but the lightning didn't get close enough to make us get out of the pool. A reasonable session and didn't cramp up this week.

Being on a bike in the CBD at 6-ish on a Friday night is always slightly perilous. Tonight's extra element, on top of the usual quota of slightly tipsy and/or impatient drivers and slightly tipsy pedestrians, was a couple of hundred Adelaide United supporters marching down La Trobe Street en masse. (Seeing a group from a distance behind a banner with accompanying police, I thought at first it was a demo).

And so far there hasn't been a rush of volunteers in the climate game to provide Alan Jones with the "factual accuracy" training which the Australian Communications and Media Authority has ordered him to undertake. If he's only allowed to broadcast factually accurate content the only thing which will be left will be the traffic reports.

Continuing the process of gradually building back towards normal training, albeit slowly. A pleasant morning for a long(ish) run; headed out through Macleod and Yallambie. I never seem to be able to get my route right through the latter suburb, usually ending up at the high fence at the back of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (probably not a fence it's a good idea to make an unsanctioned crossing of). Flowing well at times although hills not great, and certainly not as sleepy as last time.

I was rather puzzled to get an e-mail today containing an ad for something called 'Barossa Langhorne Creek Shiraz' - evidently the Barossa has expanded considerably since SA Championships weekend. I noticed this particularly because (a) I've recently been through Langhorne Creek (which is east of Strathalbyn) and (b) one of the things I did today was put together the list of the 28 Australian sites which have complete daily rainfall records for 1900 to 2011, and Langhorne Creek is one of them. Not sure what's going on here as wine regions are usually fussy about their boundaries; about 10 years back I was involved on the fringes of a court case in which the issue was the boundary of the Coonawarra region.

C • Langhorne Creek 2

A short and fairly easy run on the Eaglemont loop, not feeling especially inspired and quite a few traffic interruptions.

There was no need to go hungry on Ride to Work Day this morning - with a few minor tweaks to my route I could have taken in nine different breakfasts.

A fairly standard run, flat along the river in the first half, hillier through Bulleen (including the pipeline track - minus any screaming children this time) in the second. Moving OK once loosened up. Again left hamstring a bit tight but not as bad as yesterday.

Riding in this morning was an excellent advertisement for Ride To Work day tomorrow - sailing past a three-kilometre traffic jam on Heidelberg Road (it usually backs up from the Chandler Highway intersection, but not that far). I wonder if any of the drivers in said traffic jam will get the hint? (probably not).

And, for the second time in a couple of months, a familiar orienteering name was spotted in the columns of the Economist, but on this occasion I don't think Francois Gonon of the University of Bordeaux (a neurophysicist who'd done an interesting study on how preliminary, and often incorrect, research results got more media coverage than the final outcomes did) is the same Francois Gonon as the one who's been a reasonably frequent presence on WOC podiums in recent years.

This was a reasonably warm and windy spring morning. A windy morning at this time of year means a lot of leaves falling from the trees of inner Melbourne. A fair number of those leaves ended up floating in the Fitzroy pool (particularly its shallow end), and despite my best efforts some of them ended up in my mouth. This made for a less than pleasant swim, with several bouts of coughing and spluttering trying to dislodge the latest foreign object to find its way into my system. Not too upset to see it over and done with.

(When I started I thought the pool staff might have been slack in cleaning the pool at the start of the day, but the amount of material which accumulated on my towel in 36 minutes disabused me of that notion).

I thought I might have had a bigger annoyance to deal with than leaves in a pool when the garage door openers failed to work, but it turned out to be nothing more dramatic (or expensive to fix) than a loose plug (and for good measure the back garage door which I thought was stuck opened without too much trouble).

This was supposed to be the first MFR Monday night in daylight but it turned out to be a solo effort, so I set out north from my place, having told the three-year-old next door that I was going to look for the monster that he's getting very excited about at the moment. (Personally, I suspect the monster lives in my washing machine and comes out to eat a sock every now and again).

Quite a decent run once it got going, although left hamstring tightness made its presence felt again. Finished off a day with plenty of physical activity, including my fastest ride home for a while (with a bit of help from a tail wind and a good run with the lights).

Those of you who didn't turn up - the red pumpkin curry worked really well this time.