Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

2-hour event at Berwick which I took as an opportunity to do a long(ish) run somewhere different. Some heavy showers in the 30 minutes before the start but it stopped just before we headed out and we did OK with water coming out of the sky (just one brief sharp shower). Different story on the ground, though, with almost every grassed area which wasn't on top of a hill sodden and much either slippery or muddy - a reminder that the relatively dry last few weeks in inner Melbourne haven't been matched in the outer east.

Unusually for one of these events, it was obvious fairly early on that there was no chance of getting the lot. That did take a few controls out of play (40, on the top of a big hill in the middle of nowhere, and a couple on the western edge), but did make for some more interesting strategic decisions than might otherwise have been the case. Had a bad patch through the middle of the run but much improved in the final half-hour (whether this will extend for the further 1-2 hours which will be needed in three weeks' time is an open question). Decided at the end that I was going to chance an out-and-back to one extra control and managed to find a sprint finish in the dash for home, but didn't make it.

I assume that the signs for Ernst Wanke Road are regularly augmented by local graffitists.

Made the mistake of visiting Fountain Gate (a shopping centre the size of a small suburb) on the way home (in search of a USB charging cable from Dick Smith). I think I may have expressed the wish previously that there is a special place in hell reserved for those responsible for shopping malls that have got rid of their maps and want you to install their app to be able to find where anything is, and Fountain Gate is even worse than Doncaster in that respect.

C • You were brave! 5

It was a pretty late night last night thanks to the less than efficient rail system coming back from the football (no trains for more than 20 minutes, meaning that the crowd was spilling back well into Wellington Parade; don't think the Napthine government was winning too many votes on the platform of Jolimont station). Didn't sleep that well either and had a reasonably busy day ahead, but still managed to fit a run in the window that was available for it - on a classic Saturday route (at least when I'm not chasing streets), the Yarra Flats path to Wilson Reserve and then onwards from there. Reasonable run but not terribly special; still, seem to be through the worst of the back/hamstring issues (though tomorrow will tell me a bit more about that).

Winning votes was also the theme of the afternoon - my first stint of doorknocking in an election campaign for more than 20 years. (The first time I did it, in Canberra in the early 1990s, it was an eye-opening experience for non-political reasons - my "patch" included a retirement village and it was fairly obvious that for some of those there I was their first human contact for weeks). Not a lot of people at home, but the response was almost entirely positive from those who were. Unsurprisingly, for those on Rosanna Road the most commonly mentioned issue was trucks on Rosanna Road.

Noticed at Preston Market today that pig's heads were on sale for $1 each, although I'm not sure what you use a pig's head for other than to send a message to people you don't like - something which is done by other means in some parts of town.

C • Despite being vegetarian... 1

Pool running at Ivanhoe, a little later in the morning than usual, to fit in with the rest of the morning's logistics (which involved being at the post office on the stroke of 9am to pick up what indeed turned out to be my passport back from the Brazilian embassy). It was a reasonably relaxing session; seem to have come up OK from yesterday.

This was an unusual point of origin, if not totally unexpored territory - I had something on at Lalor at 6pm and so used Reservoir station (whose car park was already fairly full at 6.15am, probably because it's the last zone 1 station on that line) as my launch pad.

Definitely felt like I'd rather be somewhere else for the first 20 minutes, but this then became one of those reasonably typical Thursday runs which progressively built up; the third quarter was pretty good, and while I felt I was tiring towards the end, got a nice second wind in the last 10 minutes, doing an extra loop past Preston Reservoir (which is actually in Reservoir, but I guess calling it the Reservoir Reservoir would be a bit silly - especially as the first word would be pronounced "war" and the second "wah"). No injury issues though the flatness may be relevant to that.

Coming in from a slightly unconventional direction, two more streets were ticked off: Ambrose Treacy Drive in Bundoora and Amethyst Walk in a new development where the Mont Park asylum used to be. The former is next to Parade College and is presumably named after someone from the Christian Brothers (and fittingly, one of the early houses in the street had a statue of the Virgin Mary out the front). Without making any suggestions about the individual concerned, the thought did cross my mind at this point as to whether I would consider it necessary to do a street again in the event of its being renamed by virtue of the present incumbent falling into disgrace. (I've mused here previously as to what might have happened to all the things named after Russ Hinze had he lived long enough to be convicted of receiving the bribe that someone else was convicted of paying).

First street-O for a while, at Camberwell, treating it as an intervals session (alternate legs) after warming up on the first four - something which always confuses those around (not that there were many of those tonight).

Unusually for a winter Wednesday night, getting all the controls inside 60 minutes was not a formality. It was fairly obvious that 12, on the western edge of the map, was only worth getting if you thought you could get them all, but I wasn't prepared to make the call that early in the course that I couldn't. Knew I was struggling, though, and even though the course got a bit less convoluted later on I had to drop a couple. Route was a bit suboptimal, I suspect. Felt reasonably good when running hard though pace doesn't seem great - difficult footing on a dark, damp night might have contributed to that, as might slow punching in an ultimately vain attempt to stop my card from falling apart. (Don't know if they're using a lighter grade of card these days - I've never had my card reduced to pulp before, and even before the days when wet-weather events usually have waterproof cards, I've run in much worse conditions than tonight's).

Various things are being checked off my to-do list: got the necessary injections for South America this morning, which meant slightly sore shoulders tonight (also got the good news that malaria isn't a risk anywhere that I'm going, although dengue fever is - but then it can be in north Queensland, too), and have a card for registered mail to be collected from the post office which I presume is the Brazilian visa.

Through West Heidelberg and west Ivanhoe, partly in pursuit of a couple more streets (Ambon Ct and Ambrose St) that I would have gone to last Saturday had I lasted the distance. Made use of this for delivering a different set of political newsletters (I normally mail this cluster), one of the drop-off points being a little concerning because the mailbox of one of our more elderly members was overflowing. (I've dropped a note to the local MPs office asking if they can check that she's OK).

Had a few twinges but nothing on the scale of the weekend, and after the inevitable-these-days slow start, felt pretty reasonable through most of the second half. It was a warmer morning than the last few.

Whilst on the political theme, I'd noticed last night on the way home that the mobile billboard of the local Liberal candidate was parked by the roadside next to a reserve in one of the dodgier bits of West Heidelberg (it's the same reserve where we turned up for a late 1990s Summer Series event to be greeted by a burnt-out car in the car park). Went past again this morning and it was gone, but whether it was moved by its rightful owners, stolen, or impounded by the local council for not having whatever permits it needed, is unknown.

C • Own party? 1

Decided to have a break from running today in the hope of settling my back down a bit. Still did the regular Monday morning swim, but at Northcote rather than Fitzroy - as noted in last week's entry, we'd been warned that the heating at Fitzroy was going to be under repair today, and with its being the second in Melbourne's coldest pair of nights since 1997 I wimped out. Northcote is the other extreme - very warm (probably too warm, at 32 degrees). Didn't feel too bad swimming, but very slow, especially for a 25-metre pool.

Probably the most notable stats from the weekend were that Sunday was, in area-averaged terms, Victoria's coldest August night since 1944, and also saw the equal-lowest on record for August for any site in SA (-6.0 at Yunta - definitely wouldn't have been a good night for camping in the Flinders). There were all-time record lows at Hay, Hillston and Hawker, though at all three of those locations the observing site has moved from in town to a colder location out of town (Hay and Hillston in the mid-1990s, Hawker in 2005) so it's not quite as impressive as it looks. Of my set of 112 long-term sites, the score is one outright August record (Marree) and two equal ones (Mildura and Adelaide).

C • in Hay, Hillston and Hawker 2