Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

In Tasmania for work for the early part of this week so took the chance to take in one of the local events - wasn't entirely sure I'd make it in time for last start (I flew down this morning, mainly because I wanted to go to Essendon-Richmond last night), but everything went so smoothly that I was driving out of the Hobart airport car park three minutes after my scheduled flight arrival time.

The locals didn't seem to be massively enthusiastic about Lieemunetta, an areas which I believe has featured (under different names) in Tasmanian orienteering for the best part of four decades. For me, it was the first time, and it was a reasonable, if somewhat vertical, area (if I wasn't warmed up before the start, I certainly was by the time I'd done the 23 contours of climbing between 1 and 2). Quite a nice forest once on top, and mostly not as green as it looked on the map.

The course 1 numbers were a bit depleted because it was a Tasmanian schools team trial which meant a few likely prospects were running shorter courses, but there was enough overlap between courses that I saw a bit of various juniors, notably Oisin Stronach who was around me (running faster but a bit less smoothly) from 2 to 5. At 7 I went through Dion McKenzie and another local I don't know; both got back onto me over the next couple of controls and we were together at controls for much of the section to 15 (despite divergent route choices on 10 and 15 which came out even), including overshooting 14, an awkward cliff, together (probably about 90 seconds worth). This battle was settled by the route choice 15-16. I thought the high, left route choice was a no-brainer - shorter, no more climb, no green and some track running - but my companions evidently felt differently and I pulled two minutes out of them as a result. Finished off OK, although a better downhill runner would have gained a bit of time on the 140 metres of descent over the last three controls.

Apart from the miss on 14 I was reasonably happy with this run; not really flowing but was able to run almost all the hills, by no means a universal occurrence this year, and only on the sharp climb into 18 did my back cause any issues. I was in front when I left (Jemery 80, Dion 81) and will most likely stay there, but Ashley and Jarrah's times on course 3 suggest they probably would have got me had we been running against each other (if Brodie were here I'd have expected him to be mid-60s).

As those of you who have been following the Giro d'Italia will know, there has been a notable late-season cold outbreak in the Alps this weekend (snow down to 700 metres in Switzerland, which looks to be a one in 20-30 year event this late in May). This certainly isn't going to help preparations for WMOC - they were running pretty close to the edge anyway and potentially losing a couple of weeks to snow at this stage won't make things any easier.

Felt not very awake this morning and not as enthusiastic as I should be about getting out, but fine once I got started, and stretched the envelope a bit on a Saturday distance. Didn't feel as smooth as last Saturday did at times, but still a reasonably solid morning's work, just fading away a little bit right at the end.

Today's targets were Achilles Street, West Heidelberg (one of the poorest streets in one of Melbourne's poorest suburbs), and Acland Court, Bundoora (a small cul-de-sac and definitely not as abundant with cakes as its St. Kilda namesake). Neither sound inspiring but there was some nice stuff in between the two. The former name reminded me that it's quite a while since I've had any issues with that particular body part, although I'll give it a bit more time before being confident enough to remove it from my injuries list after the best part of four years.

Heading down to Tasmania tomorrow morning - mainly for work in Hobart Monday/Tuesday, but plan to get to tomorrow's event assuming no flight dramas.

Thought I might be doing this in the fog but it broke up a couple of kilometres short of Fitzroy, so it was just the mist from the (relatively) warm water of the pool that was shrouding things once in. A fairly conventional session; seem to have come up reasonably well from yesterday, despite the increased length and a lot of late nights this week.

Tonight was the annual Ivanhoe ALP quiz night (with the usual additional features like the paper plane competition, where contestants seek to fly a particularly odious Coalition media release - Eric Abetz is usually a fertile source of material for these - into a rubbish bin). Features this year included the match-the-TV-evangelist-with-the-scandal question in the 1980s section, the map of Victorian local government areas (without names), and the 'true or false' section where there was the chance to wheel out some bizarre (true) facts, like the 1943 US Army research program to investigate the possibility of attaching incendiary devices to bats and flying them into Japanese buildings (this failed at the first test - the bats had been put into hibernation to attach the devices, but they hadn't come properly out of hibernation and most fell directly to earth when released from the plane), and the 1992 guidelines of the British Board of Film Censorship under which one of the grounds for a film to be considered pornographic was that it depicted an appendage which made a greater angle with the rest of the body than the Kintyre peninsula makes with the west coast of Scotland. (You'll never think of the Wings song in quite the same way again). A certain NT News headline from last August previously mentioned in these pages also got a mention. The Centenary of Canberra round fell a bit flat, though - obviously no-one was paying enough attention on their Grade 6 trips.

It was a late night, which is why this hasn't been posted until the following morning - hope no-one was too worried. (I occasionally have visions of featuring in news stories along the lines of "the body was discovered after police were notified by friends, who became concerned after his blog wasn't updated for six days").

A long run which was respectable but not more than that. The starts are well before dawn now, and with no moon the Rosanna Parklands are a particularly dark place - it's not normally necessary to run with a light in urban Melbourne but it would have come in useful there (if only to stay out of the way of a number of off-leash dogs). The target was Acacia Court, at the east end of Greensborough (and only a couple of hundred metres from the council boundary). This was a bit longer than last week but that's no bad thing. Steady coming home after a pitstop at the Montmorency shops - I'll be back this way a few times in coming months because amongst the names which featured in that section were Airlie, Alban, Alma and Astley. A decent run on flatter sections; slow on the hills, of which there were many in the middle third, without feeling especially weak on them.

This was again done in temperatures just above freezing - not bad for a long run. It would have been a different story a little further west - at 6.30 it was 0.9 at Viewbank and 10.8 at Laverton. It's not unheard of for Viewbank (and Laverton) to be several degrees colder than central Melbourne in the early mornings, but it is unusual for two suburban sites to differ so dramatically (it seems that the wind got up earlier at Laverton, bringing in milder and more humid air and breaking down the overnight low-level inversion).

C • Are you planning to run all... 2

Never got going this morning - probably not the ideal morning for doing anything fast (a bit frosty on the flats) and it showed. No soreness though after the warm-up. Must be cross-country season as there were some markers out in Banyule Flats, after seeing the same (plus the Athletics Victoria van) in Yarra Park yesterday.

You may recall mention on previous occasions that I thought Palmerville, in the southern interior of Cape York Peninsula, was going to be the toughest nut to crack of the 21 long-term temperature sites I still haven't been to (a number I hope to reduce by three or four by the end of next month). You may also recall my last mention of it, last year when a gold prospector had disappeared on the property and the landowner "had declined to be interviewed by police". Latest update on this comes from a news report a few weeks ago which I came across today, to the effect that said landowner and his wife were due to appear in a Cairns court on charges of murder and interfering with a corpse (presumably the latter relates to the alleged disposal of the body, which has not yet been found). I couldn't find any more recent information on the case (which may well still be in progress) - if our Cairns correspondent has any such information I'd be interested to know about it.

C • Your window of opportunity... 2

Once again from North Melbourne because of evening engagements in the area (a quiz night this time) - this time without any rapidly descending truck drivers. Went north as far as Moonee Valley racecourse before returning through Ascot Vale. Wasn't feeling that confident before the start and hard going for the first kilometre, but quite reasonable after that.

Quite a bit of distraction at work today following the events in Oklahoma - the tornado itself wasn't extraordinary (there would be several of that intensity somewhere in the US in a normal year) but the fact that it made a direct hit on a large town was. The University of Oklahoma has, perhaps not surprisingly, one of the leading meteorology programs in the US, so most of us know people who are there now (all fine as far as I know) and many more who have lived there at some point in the past.

C • A linguist friend of mine l... 1

Lunchtime session around the Tan - albeit a somewhat late lunchtime because I waited until the heaviest of the rainband had passed through. Not many people out - not sure if this was because people were scared off by the conditions or because not many workplaces have the flexibility to define lunch as being from 1.15 to 2.15. A fairly ho-hum run but no injury problems.

Evening swim at Fitzroy before the MFR AGM - felt a bit strange to be swimming outdoors in the dark. Started out quite well but drifted out of it a bit later on. All the showers were working for the first time in a while.