Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

My first taste (this season at least) of the Melbourne street-O enduros. I went in thinking that I might last 2 minutes or 2 hours, and was pleasantly surprised that it was the latter - a few patches of soreness but nothing especially acute. Definitely tired in the last quarter, though - in particular I don't think I would have had anything for an uphill sprint to the finish had one been necessary - and flaked out for most of the rest of the afternoon; a bit of a worry that 2 hours at middling intensity can leave me as drained as that.

The Fairfield/Studley/Kew/Clifton Hill area makes for a good area for this sort of event, with plenty of "you can't get there from here" legs. It was long enough to make getting them all less than a formality, and in the end I didn't do it - hitting 34, with two controls potentially to go, I thought I needed 8 minutes to get both of them and only had 6 1/2, so dropped 24 (as it turned out I probably would have needed 9 or 10 minutes; even only getting one of the two, I had only a minute to spare). Some ups and downs, and even a few patches in terrain which were fun even if they slowed things down a bit.

The control format for these is a multiple-choice question based on something at the control site. This seems to work fairly well on the whole, although some of the questions could be answered from a distance and didn't require one to go all the way into the circle (I probably saved 90 seconds by being able to answer 37's from the Chandler Highway bridge and not having to go underneath it). Don't think anyone got them all, although people like Bruce would have done so easily had they been there.

The humidity was very low today despite the cloud, which probably explains the impressive post-run skin salt deposits.

Morning swim at Ivanhoe. Seemed to be going reasonably strongly for the most part, although the hip muscles were occasionally troublesome in the water too, which is a bit of a worry. Will be interesting to see how the place continues to function, as they say it will, when the development starts in a couple of months (at least our rate increase is going somewhere).

In the changerooms afterwards a small child turned to his father and said "Daddy, that man's got a really big belly". I think he was referring to the man under the next shower. With those diplomatic skills I'm sure there's a job waiting for him in future as an Australian envoy to Indonesia on asylum-seeker policy.

And Berlin is forecast to reach 37 tomorrow, close to its all-time record (which I think is 37.something). This brings back memories of JWOC relays day in 1991.

An abortive attempt at a run - better than Wednesday but still not right, and while I could push through it if I really wanted to, it seemed better to give it a bit more time. The plan at this stage is to swim tomorrow and try running again on Sunday, although probably not the full two hours of the Fairfield street-O enduro.

Took to the pool while waiting for my body to sort itself out (something it is showing some indication of doing; certainly riding felt more comfortable than it did yesterday). A fairly standard session on a cool morning (although this time the mist wasn't deemed heavy enough to be a problem).

My body has been troubling me on and off in the last few days but today was the crash-and-burn day; the hip muscles, which have been going on strike late in long runs from time to time lately, did so after 15 minutes today. (I'm assuming it's ultimately back-related since both sides went at the same time). No point in trying to push through what had become a very slow speed session. It wasn't great on the back to and from work, either.

I'll do some rearranging of my program and tentatively shift tomorrow's run to Friday, but I have the feeling that one easy day isn't going to be enough to get this sorted.

Inspired idea of the day goes to the Guardian: they had a button on the front of their website 'Royalist' or 'Republican', and if you selected 'Republican', all the royal baby news was instantly cleared from the front page of their website.

Never really got going on a dark, drizzly morning. Back still a little troublesome although improved a bit later on. Covered up the heel this time so no newly decorated socks....

Like many people, my attention was grabbed by exciting news coming out of the UK overnight - it's not every day that it reaches 33.5 degrees in London. (This is their hottest day since 2006, in what is looking like it will be England's hottest month on record or close to it).

Not bad for a Monday morning once initial cobwebs shaken out, flowing along quite nicely through Yarra Bend. Spotted en route: someone on the bridge over the freeway with a camera, presumably there to record the likely uselessness of the proposed East-West tunnel in resolving peak-hour traffic jams (hint: not much of the traffic at that point is going where the tunnel would).

A heel blister was making a bit of a nuisance of itself yesterday. It didn't feel too bad on the run today, but a post-run sock whose colour scheme was somewhere between Sydney Swans and St. George-Illawarra suggests otherwise.

Always feels a bit strange to be swimming in the dark. Heel was stinging quite badly at the start (with a quick stop called for to make sure that it wasn't actually bleeding), but settled OK after a couple of laps. Flailing around a bit.