Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

A few stars aligned to set up this run. Lachlan and Susanne were coming in on the overnight train from Sydney towards the tail end of their Europe-to-Australia-without-using-a-plane trip, I wanted to catch up with them and their next destination was Ballarat; at the other end of the day, I have a workshop in Lorne tomorrow and Tuesday. On a more-or-less logical route choice between Ballarat and Lorne is Colac, and the stony rises country north of Colac that Invisible has mentioned here on a number of occasions; I'd been wanting to check out for a while and this was the chance.

This was a (deserted dirt) road run; the terrain itself is all on private land - old lava flows, with lots of small rocky knolls and ridges, mostly not more than 5 or 10 metres high, but enough of them to keep visibility down (along with scattered shrubs). The vegetation and visibility reminds me a bit of some farmed sand dune areas in NZ - at this time of year, the grass in paddocks which aren't being grazed is long enough to be awkward (especially given the rocky ground in places) but it would be better in August and September. The hills are very rocky underfoot but the gaps between them are sufficient that it would still be reasonably runnable terrain (not as full on as Mount Eccles from reports I've heard), though one negative is a lot of fences (some electric), and some stone walls which would probably require compulsory crossing points. Probably better for a middle than a long (if only to keep the number of landowners involved manageable), but may well be worth pursuing.

The run was decent, as my country back road runs often are. A bit twingey for much of the way from about 20 minutes onwards but never got any worse. Did have one puzzled local working on the garden in front of their farm.

Ballarat educational institutions have been into name changes a bit lately. On the way to the Prendergast residence (where I dropped my passengers off) is Phoenix College - I was wondering if it got its name because its predecessor burnt down, but in fact it's merely a merger of two other schools. The University of Ballarat is also changing its name to Federation University; as Red Symons very dryly said after interviewing someone from there the other day, he's looking forward to the T-shirts with the university initials. (I predict that it will become something like the Federation University of Australia no later than the start of the 2014 academic year). My favourite Symonsism of this type came a few years ago when he was interviewing someone from the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union about a dispute involving the zookeepers from Melbourne Zoo: "presumably they're in the miscellaneous bit".

Susanne and Lachlan inform me that one feature of Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan hasn't changed since 2004: they still use second-hand buses acquired from northern Europe and still haven't changed anything on the buses, so they still carry destination signs for various Stockholm suburbs or ads for Finnish supermarkets.

C • Middle 2

Event: Sprint Into Spring Race 4 Westgate Park
 

Sprint series at Westgate Park - essentially a bushy urban park with a few lakes, which I suspect used to be a rubbish tip or similar (as Darebin Parklands was). My first attempt to run hard since the injury and was fairly pleased with how it responded - still behind some people who I should be ahead of, but no signs of pain which was the main objective.

Started 2 minutes behind Lanita and 1 minute behind Angus Robinson. Didn't really expect to see them but both struck trouble on the butterfly loop out the back, going to 13 before 12 (Lanita realised, Angus didn't) - not the only ones to do this by any means. (I'd started around the loop the wrong way - there's a first time for everything - but picked it up quickly and only lost 15-20 seconds). Was with Lanita from 12 and thought we might be in for a good scrap given how closely matched we were last time, but I got a bit of a break when she missed the short 18 a little and didn't see her again. Brought it home reasonably well. 3 1/2 minutes behind Bruce, a respectable effort (for 16th place; there are a lot of people running this series, which is great).

I'm not 100% certain of the accuracy of the map scale; it was a decent run, but I'm not convinced it was sub-5s. (Update: have just cross-checked against the Melway and think it's about 1:4300).

The lakes were labelled as the Salt Water Lake and the Fresh Water Lake. This might suggest a lack of originality but there was an era when the two rivers in the area were also the Freshwater and the Saltwater. The Freshwater became the Yarra fairly quickly, but the Saltwater didn't become the Maribyrnong (at least officially) until the early 20th century - I've seen references to the Saltwater in 1890s and 1900s flood reports.

Some things just aren't what they used to be. I wonder what the reaction would have been if, say, the young Sebastian Vettel running up Mark Webber's rear end in Japan in 2007 had drawn a similar response?

Probably not a great day to be training at Kangaroo Crossing:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-08/inmate-escap...

The unusual feature of this session was that I was moving considerably faster through the pool than I ever have previously - didn't think I was pushing that much faster so something subtle must have changed elsewhere. Was threatening to cramp in the last few minutes but never actually did so.

Slept atrociously last night (probably through over-stimulation after riding home from a workshop dinner at 10.30 last night), but didn't pay for it during the day as I thought I might have - didn't even manage to fall asleep during the presentation on fatigue management (and other issues) by our work health and safety people.

I don't think I'll attribute the lack of sleep to the fact that someone has written to the Director of Meteorology to demand my sacking. When that gets short shrift probably his next move will be to write about the corrupt science peer review process to the Minister for Science (oh - wait a sec - there isn't one). One thing I am expecting is a mauling in certain corners of the blogosphere (possibly extending to related corners of the conservative media) sometime in the next couple of weeks, something I'm not especially looking forward to.

Fairly similar to last night - as a run in its own right, pretty ordinary, but coped better than I thought I might have done (hamstring-wise) with the added distance, the Eaglemont hills and running twice within 12 hours. Definitely in the post-injury lack of fitness phase though - felt as tired during the day as I would have in more normal times with a Thursday double this distance (as well as being fairly thirsty after a warm morning).

Another step up at the Wednesday night street-O at Smiths Dell - not running it hard, but adding a bit to the distance, on a night when all the ingredients were there for a lousy run - first hot run of the spring, not much fitness and not much sleep (midnight teleconference last night). Really struggled up the first hill, then settled into a grind - definitely running out of water in the last third. Made a reasonable job of the route choice, I think, but pretty slow; Simon Rouse was just behind me at the last control, having presumably run a fair bit further, but I'm not yet up to running fast and didn't contest a sprint I would almost certainly have lost anyway. A few twinges from time to time but nothing too serious, and no post-run soreness.

Is it just me, or does this map have two contour intervals? (5m on the west side, 10m on the east).

Spotted yesterday: a real estate sign "a new definition in executive style living". As the property in question was a block of one-bedroom flats in the lower part of Heidelberg Heights, I'm assuming that the target market is executives of companies which have gone bust and whose partners have walked out on them.

Another small step forward - in fact quite a significant step forward in that this time there was really no trace of hamstring trouble at all. (However, the back doesn't like climbing any more than it did four weeks ago). A glorious morning to be out - reminding me a bit of Cup Day in 2004. The difference was that in 2004 a strong cold front was expected about 1pm; on that day I looked at people heading to the station on the way to Flemington, mostly wearing not very much, and thought "you're going to regret this" - and headed straight for the TAB to back a mud-runner (which came second). Today was fine all day.

The Cup itself was a bit of a mixed day for me - minor placings in two sweeps, but the $10 I bet went down the drain in the most emphatic way possible - the horse I backed is now on its way to the Pal factory. (Presumably a lot more than $10 went down the drain for the owner, but as the owner in question is the Aga Khan I'm guessing he can afford it).

First swim for a couple of weeks after running into problems on my last attempt. No such problems today, and in fact feeling reasonably strong at times today, although drifted out of it a little in the later stages.

Cup Monday is usually the easiest commute of the year (although I suspect tomorrow will top it). It was made slightly more challenging today by the inordinate number of people who appeared to think that the day's status as a de facto public holiday extended to the non-application of clearways.