Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Melbourne Bush-O at Eaglemont Flats. Pushed this harder than I sometimes do for the Melbourne Bush-O events (which is another way of saying that I didn't do a long run on the Saturday), on an interestingly technical course - particularly the 7-8-9 section in the flat, green areas around the billabong (nice setting/mapping work by Aston generally). Went a bit wide on 9 but otherwise clean technically. Running reasonable, but felt as if I'd perhaps dropped my intensity a bit on 11 (a long leg, mostly on tracks/roads) and this showed in the splits. A bit more competitive in the results than I normally have been in this series, although still 5.5 minutes down on Patrick.

Great turnout - it often is here (and the Melbourne Bush-O series generally has strengthened considerably in numbers this year). Warren had to do a dash to Officeworks to run off more maps.

This weekend has been an easier one than most for a while (it's the first for several weeks which hasn't involved either a long-distance orienteering race or a serious long run). Probably not such a bad thing as I move into a higher-intensity phase of training.

And avoiding criminal activity may have been high on the minds of many who attended WMOC last year, but perhaps we need to think about it this year too - it seems that a bikie war is currently in progress in Gothenburg (although warring bikies are normally pretty good at confining their murderous intentions to each other and leaving others alone, as I know from 16 years of incident-free commuting past the Hells Angels Melbourne HQ).

C • Great turnout 7

Much earlier than usual because of the annual trip of the comrades to Ararat (my last official Ivanhoe Branch function). Started at an hour more typical of Thursdays and was as slow through the first half-hour as I usually am on Thursdays, but feeling quite smooth in the last 20 minutes.

At Fitzroy, but in the evening rather than the morning because that was better suited to the day's logistics - always feels a bit strange doing this in the dark. Quads felt quite stiff when I started out but this gradually turned into a decent session - felt as if I was working pretty well through the second half. Hardly another person in sight at 6.30 on a chilly winter's night.

Those of you in rugby states will probably know, but others may not, that an arm-wrestling competition on the NRL Footy Show last night left one of the participants with a broken arm, live on air. This will bring back memories for the old-timers, in the form of a similar incident involving Warren Key and Grant Bluett (Warren coming off second-best, though the damage healed quickly enough that he was able to run World Cup two months later) in a Wagga pub after a National League race in 1994. For a sport which doesn't really do off-field incidents that was one of the more memorable ones of our history.

The answer to how well I was going to back up after last night was not terribly well; this was not one of my better long runs of recent weeks and I wasn't too upset to see it over, although managed to find enough enthusiasm for an extra loop to get it beyond 2 hours. Headed west for something different, taking me as far as Cross Keys Reserve, which is probably better remembered for crime than for sport (it was the scene of the most brazen murders of the Melbourne underworld war when a gangster and his small-time mate were shot while watching Auskick). A chilly morning in the valleys.

Odd sight of the day #1: someone riding a bike on the Capital City Trail and pushing another (unoccupied) bike alongside them.

Odd sight of the day #2: a 'Lock The Gate: No Entry to Coal Seam Gas Companies' sign. You see these yellow triangles all over rural Queensland (and probably rural NSW too, but I haven't been to any of the NSW CSG hotspots lately), but they're probably less relevant to a block of flats in East Brunswick.

C • Odd sight #2 1

Ran street-O at Mont Albert as a tempo run of sorts (though you always seem to be slower in the dark). This was longer than most street-O courses are, and I always had the sense that (a) I hadn't done a very good job of the route choice and (b) I was going to struggle to get them all inside the hour. The bid to do the latter was further derailed by some unusually sloppy navigation for a street-O (the first one probably wasn't in the right place, but the other two mistakes were entirely my own). Decided after 14 controls that I probably didn't have time to get them all inside 60 minutes (or even inside 61, which would have been worth it because the control I ended up dropping was a 5-pointer and the per-minute late penalty is 3).

Tonight, though, was mostly about the running and trying my hand at going a bit faster again. I wasn't always comfortable doing so, but did feel a bit quicker in the second half (and the splits bore that out). A long outing for a first faster street-O and I'll be interested to see how I back up in the morning.

Flew back from Adelaide first thing this morning after a pretty ordinary night's sleep (starting to think about work stuff when you wake up at 3.45 is not really conducive to restfulness). Didn't expect a lot of the run but it ended up being fairly reasonable. A bit different to the usual lunchtime - my parents are currently staying at my aunt's at Albert Park (there's a cat to be looked over while my aunt's away, in case you're wondering why they're not enjoying my new premises) and I had something to pick up from there. This was the first place I lived when I moved to Melbourne.

Albert Park College - which had been (temporarily) Jeffed while I was living in the area - is back in action and I had to do a certain amount of lunchtime football-dodging while in transit.

Residences past and present were a theme today - having taken in my first place in Melbourne on the lunchtime run, I headed out to the second this evening, in the name of checking which of my large collection of keys worked in which locks and leaving those that worked in something behind for the new owners when they take possession on Thursday.

On the way to this was a session at the Ivanhoe pool. Most of this was fairly mundane - coming off a weekend which was a bit less demanding than race weekends sometimes are - with one hairy moment when my left Achilles suddenly started hurting quite sharply after pushing off at the start of a lap. This led to a moment of mild panic - surely I haven't done an Achilles while swimming? - but the pain faded away and was gone after another couple of laps.

C • Swimming injuries 1

A middle distance (not a championship one) on terrain unlike anything I've ever run on in Australia - flattish limestone country, with low irregular hills (a bit sand-duney, though without quite the intricacy in the contours) with a bit of rock on them, and lots of coastal vegetation with gaps in between, rather like Cantara before the gaps disappeared. (Cantara was perhaps the most similar experience, although the contour features here were more subtle).

I'm well aware that my record in flat technical terrain leaves something to be desired and was concentrating particularly hard to stay in contact. Rarely felt completely in control but got through most of the course successfully, the only wobble being at 10 where I misread a flat knoll as being on a ridge rather than off to its side and lost a minute or so. Fairly smooth physically, without a great deal of speed, and was again the standard distance behind Simon (although John was much closer today).

This weekend was definitely well worth coming over for, particularly today; not sure if it can be made to work, but it would be great to see a national carnival out this way someday, perhaps in 2018 (and I think Port Lincoln, like Broken Hill, is one of those places a lot of people have always meant to go to but never quite got round to it). Excellent show put on by the local club, as well - I think Port Lincoln is the only town under 20,000 in Australia that has managed to sustain a local club long-term. (Smaller places have had clubs but none have lasted - mostly they've folded once their founder(s) move on).

And flat limestone terrain with lots of vegetation detail is very relevant to certain types of Hungarian terrain, which may or may not end up being something of interest to the considerable number of talented M/W16s who were here this weekend.

C • I am one of them 3