Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: Victorian Championships, Long Distance
 

Victorian Long Championships at Chewton. At the head of the second bunch in 6th but the second bunch was a long, long way back - I would have needed to be 20 minutes faster to gain any places. This is a pretty good indicator that my speed is uncompetitive at this level at the moment, because technically it wasn't a bad run - three 15-seconders and a couple of dubious route choices.

As noted on Thursday I've been struggling with long runs lately, having fallen apart in the closing stages of several in the last couple of months, so was badly lacking in confidence - making today more about enduring than racing. Had an organiser's early start, no bad thing on a warm day (although not ultimately warm enough to be a real issue) - had to wake up the first few controls but that problem was solved once Bruce went through me at 4. Hesitant coming around the slope on 8 but eventually hit it, and had trouble getting good lines in the short mining legs from 12-15; pretty straight on the long legs at 10 and 16. Missed 16, a very shallow gully, a little, and my back (generally not bad today) had a few twinges in the steeper stuff around 18 and 19 (also slightly missed). This drew me into what turned out to be a sub-optimal fairly flat but wide track route on 20 - probably dropped about a minute there. Very slow over the hill to 23, but finished off OK and didn't fall into any of the traps of the later controls, and generally felt better in the last 20 minutes than on most other runs of this length this year (in time terms I think this was actually the longest I've done this year).

This was the first proper long race I've done since SA Championships (and even that was perhaps a little short for a true long distance). It's also only my second appearance in a non-metro Victorian event since May. Getting through will give me something to build from, but how much remains to be seen.

Things you wouldn't see in too many sports - at one stage the three finish officials were the presidents of the club (Jas), the state (Bruce) and nationally (me).

And I'm not exactly comfortable with the thought, as reported this morning, that there are plausible scenarios under which the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptic Party can get a Senator in SA with as little as 0.15% of the vote. Having them with the balance of power (possibly in the company of some other fruitcakes) is perhaps a scarier prospect than the Coalition having outright control. If you're wondering how such a thing could happen, the various right-wing micro-parties (e.g. Shooters and Fishers and Outdoor Recreation) preference tightly to each other, which may get whichever party emerges ahead of Family First; they would then absorb Family First preferences, and also end up getting Wikileaks and Sex Party preferences (so, if you're thinking of voting for either of those two, make sure you go below the line if you don't want your preferences to end up at some odd destinations). The key to all of this is the Nick Xenophon vote - he's preferenced against assorted loonies, but if he gets very close to a quota (as he did in 2007) very few of his preferences will be distributed.

Felt a bit out of sorts this morning but went out for a run anyway, and it went all right - not particularly sharp but then I'm not usually out this early on a Saturday. Started out on Aranda Hill and the west side of Black Mountain before finishing off around Aranda and Cook.

Ended up being a busy, but long, day - three talks in a day is a bit (even if it was basically the same talk). We had about 1000 people through during the course of the day which certainly exceeded expectations. Plenty of familiar faces to be seen (some from a long time back, like Marie Plunkett-Cole, one of my "colleagues" when I did Year 10 work experience at the ABS, and the head of the ANU Geography department when I did honours there). Managed not to get too distracted first time round by the restless toddler in the back row (will have to give ALJ a personal presentation of the last five minutes of the talk that she missed when I get a chance).

Some testing of things for the Australian Sprint at Grammar - not quite as things will be on the day because a critical gap was blocked off (it won't be on the day), but still a nice trial run. Felt more lively than in the last couple of days, although still a bit short of a top gear.

Heard a name from the past this morning: Klaus Pinkas, who was a few years above me in early 1980s ACT junior ranks. These days he's an official with whichever union is responsible for ACT garbos (and has been in the news because they've been on strike).

C • Must be quick 4

At a rather crowded CISAC after a rather hectic day. Couldn't really relax properly but did the necessary for the most part.

Not a run which gave me a lot of confidence for the weekend. The first two-thirds were a moving-along-OK-but-never-felt-comfortable session through UC and around the north side of Lake Ginninderra (where, for the first time I can remember, there were cattle grazing on the peninsula), then it became a real struggle for the last half-hour, with quads and calves both fatiguing significantly. Felt a lot better after stopping for a couple of minutes to talk with Hanny (also in the closing stages of a run, in the opposite direction), but who's to know if it would have fallen apart again given another kilometre or two?

The Canberra Raiders are doing their best to knock Essendon off the back pages (at least here), although as someone remarked, it's a bit harsh to suggest that Blake Ferguson has done the full Todd Carney trifecta - he may have been speeding while disqualified but as far as is known he was not drunk.

In Canberra the election campaign technique of choice is the roadside sign. Most prominent are the Greens and their 'Abbott-Proof the Senate' (I'm told that down in Tuggeranong a local eating establishment has posters alongside with 'Hunger-Proof Your Stomach'), but numerous parties feature. Liberals v Greens for the second Senate seat is the only genuine contest in the ACT - it's one the Greens have long hoped for but never quite got, but with more-than-usually-intense rhetoric about public service cuts, and a messy Liberal preselection where the incumbent was dumped (in legally dubious circumstances) because he wasn't right-wing enough (probably not something which will play well in Canberra), it might be closer this time. A Greens win here would just about ensure that an incoming Abbott government wouldn't have control or effective control of the Senate, regardless of results elsewhere.

Was looking at Tasmanian rainfall figures today. Diddleum was not particularly dry underfoot when used in early autumn for Easter 2009, so I'd be interested to know what it looks like at the moment - the nearest gauge has 499.6 millimetres so far this month.

Back to an old stamping ground - a circuit in Cook I used for fartlek sessions in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I'm not sure I've remembered exactly where the sprints were, but think I was reasonably close. One immediate discovery - 5 minutes is not enough to warm up for such a session these days.

As is often the way when I run at the end of a long day which has involved some travel, I felt ordinary at the start. Often it comes good. Today it didn't. At times I was wondering whether I was really doing anything useful but it's now in the book.

A very lively start to a run which didn't ultimately quite live up to that promise, though still not the worst I've had this year by any means. Once again not great up the hills. A nice crisp springlike morning; by this time next week we may well be counting the records broken by what is shaping up as a heatwave of historic proportions for the time of year. (It's still unclear whether the hottest air will get as far south as southern Victoria, but if it does, there are possibilities for Melbourne to get close to 30 on Sunday and again in the middle of next week; could make for a tough day's work in the Victorian Long Championships).

My next move, tomorrow, will be to Canberra in preparation for a presentation I'm doing on Saturday as part of the Canberra centenary celebrations. Best score so far has been tracking down a photo of John Curtin holding a snowball in August 1929 (would have been better still if he had been in the process of throwing it, but you can't have anything). Something I was looking at today was trying to find out whether Canberra's coldest day (2.1, 25 June 1949) was snow or persistent low cloud/fog. It was a Saturday so there was no paper the next day, and I eventually found myself going to the football reports from Monday's paper, which failed to mention any snow so I'm assuming there wasn't any. The scores were also implausibly high for it to have been snowing, although Manuka did their best to kick themselves out of it - the quarter-time score against Queanbeyan was 5.15 to 5.1. (They eventually got 24.35).

Monday night's run was in a different part of town to usual, so the swim was also in a different place to usual, the Brunswick Baths (inside, rather than outside as on my one previous visit there because the outdoor pool was being renovated). Fairly short pool (20 metres) and glad that no-one else was in the lane until the very end. Also quite warm in the water. I must go faster pushing off the ends of the pool than actually swimming because the time was quite fast.

There was quite a media scrum outside AFL House when I went past on the way to work (it was bigger still on the way home - the biggest crowd I've seen there since the Sydney Swans supporters' vigil outside Barry Hall's tribunal case in Grand Final week 2005). I was tempted to do a bit of mischief-making, and wander across and see if any of the journos would ask me for comment. (Could really have some fun with this - could truthfully say things like 'I don't accept that the AFL Commission is the appropriate body to hear any matters relating to me' and 'I'm not aware of any use of banned drugs or supplements in the sporting bodies I'm responsible for').

Monday night from Clare's place on the west(ish) side of Coburg, though once again we went east, ending up at Merri Creek and on up to Coburg Lake before returning through the old Pentridge site. A pleasant if undemanding run, which was more than I expected after some back soreness on the bike after work. With 3/4 of the run involved in the climate game in some form or other, there was a certain amount of work talk.

I've occasionally remarked on the quirks of the minor parties contesting the election. The latest one I've noticed is that the Outdoor Recreation (Stop The Greens) Party haven't put the Greens last on their Senate ticket - they're ahead of the Trots and a few independents. (In ALP parlance, all of the various fragments which have emerged from the myriad splits in Australian communism are referred to as "Trots", whether they're Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Eurocommunists, or even followers of Kim Jong-Un if there are any).