Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Long(ish) mass-start race in Bendigo, at Crusoe, on a fast course even by Crusoe standards (Bryan did 46). I knew I wasn't up to taking off from the mass start - this mass start usually fills the function of providing various unexpected characters the chance to spend a bit of time ahead of me - but even given that (lack of) expectation, the first few minutes were awful - coughing and spluttering and feeling distinctly out of sorts. At that stage I thought I might be lucky to see out a few controls, but settled down and was able to go around at cruise speed, though not beyond - fortunate this was a physically easy course.

Didn't see many people early on (had a long split on the first pivot), but once on the common second half of the course, started to spend a bit of time around others. Caught up to a bunch of John N, Bridget and Lachlan Cherry at 13, and got through them a bit through a lower line to 14. Lachlan was able to stay with me (and made a certain amount of the running), and we were still together at 19 with a few short legs to come. I turned out to be the one who cracked technically with 20-second misses at both 20 and 21; the latter brought Bridget back within striking distance too, but not quite close enough. Lachlan was just ahead at the last but I was never going to win a sprint against him.

Getting a bit frustrated with the slow rate of my recovery, though that was farly similar in 2012.

Bendigo sprint. First attempt to run harder since I've been sick and took a few controls to work out what pace I could sustain - too fast at the beginning (overcooking things a bit trying to drop Charlotte), then slow for a couple of legs. Settled down OK after 5 and was reasonable for the rest of the course, although still below par speed-wise. Picked off a few of the women in the second half, more through efficient control entry/exit than additional speed. Probably about a minute below par and Bryan's time was consistent with this.

Session from the south side of the river near work (location originally prompted by logistics for going out to Monash later in the day, but it turned out I had a headlight globe blow yesterday so needed to get it fixed anyway). Round past Westgate Park (a bit tricky because of roadworks), then along the foreshore as far as Kerferd Road.

This was the longest I've done so far this week. Like Wednesday, it was OK as far as it goes but without a sense that there was an extra level which I was capable of going to; recovery has been a rather slow process (in fact I was probably coughing more today than I have at any stage during the week).

Normally at 6.45 on a Thursday morning, I would long since be out running. Had I been out running, I wouldn't have been spending that time getting into (yet another) argument with the occupant of number 3 (this time because he objects to the fence with next door getting repaired, a decision he has no legal say in because he doesn't own the property, but legalities don't seem to matter too much). This pushed me into thinking something I'd been progressing towards for a while - that I didn't need this sort of intimidatory behaviour any more and it was time to start looking elsewhere. Mum (who thinks I should have done this about 9 months ago) was obviously reading my mind because a couple of hours later (without having heard from me) she sent me an ad for what sounds like potentially a very interesting place in Fairfield, which goes to auction the weekend after next.

(I do wonder sometimes why we bother with teaching people in schools in Australia that bullying is a bad thing, when all the evidence of adult life in modern Australia is that bullies get rewarded....).

The running side of things happened at the end of the day. It was an MFR intervals session at Studley Park but I'm not yet up to running hard, so just circulated while others were going hard for assorted values of "hard".

C • House ad 6

C • bullying is bad 1

Street-O at Nortons Park - first time I've been out here for a while, and quite nice in the park section. More incremental progress; my objective tonight was to get through at a reasonably normal training pace, and this was achieved (despite an ordinary start). Didn't feel as if I would have had an extra gear in me, but this will still do for now. Even hills weren't outrageous.

One of those courses where you never have a lot of confidence that you've done it right (with only two creek crossings there was plenty of potential for disaster), but my route didn't seem too bad.

Made a little progress today along the continuum from totally pathetic to moderately pathetic. Still weak on anything more demanding than a flat path, and think it will be quite a few days before I'm back in shape. (Struggled again to get through the day, too).

Saw it reported today (here) that "Speculation is mounting that there may be a sinister circumstance behind a South African family's axe-murder." This wording has presumably been deployed to distinguish this case from all those multiple axe murders which don't have any sinister circumstances involved.

You have to start somewhere, which is about the best that can be said for this run based in Clifton Hill and taking in some of the Yarra path. More or less OK on the flat but predictably very weak up hills. Met up with another runner at a corner; she said I'd run away from her and I informed her that she was sadly mistaken. At least it was a nice morning (probably the nicest running morning we'll get for at least another week).

I've thought for a couple of days that this illness has close similarities with the one I got before WMOC 2012 and this session felt very similar to the WMOC sprint model. If that's anything to go by, it will probably be the weekend before my running is close to normal again. (In 2012 I ended up just scraping through the sprint qualifier, then had a crack in the final but ran out of energy after the first 6-7 minutes).

Lots of excitement once at work. I think it would be fair to say that Tony Abbott doesn't enjoy a great deal of support in your average Australian climate science establishment, though there were those (myself probably included) who were sort of hoping he might hang on in the name of making eventual election defeat more likely. As I've mentioned on Facebook, once a leader has faced a spill motion, even if they see it off the first time, that's almost always the begnning of the end; of the 13 federal leaders (government or opposition) who have been in this position in the last 50 years, only one made it as far as the next election (and lost).

I presume it's a paragraph which won't apply to our current PM, but readers are invited to guess which Latin American country's president was the subject of the following familiar-sounding sentences in this week's Economist:

"Seven months after stepping down from office, he has left the country on his private jet, amid accusations that his government ran a corruption and political-espionage racket. He denies wrongdoing."