Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

A morning of promise that turned into frustration. Set out with the intention of 2.30 or thereabouts and my body (or most of it) felt from early on that I was up for it, helped by conditions as good as you'll get in mid-February. The left hamstring issue was always lurking away, though, and it gradually got worse from about 30 minutes onwards - enough to make me think that I'd better not get too much further away from home. Eventually I decided that it wasn't worth pushing on further with it, particularly with three races on the program this week; the way I felt in the last 10 minutes definitely made me glad I wasn't an hour from home at that point. Hopefully will settle down in a day or two; it usually does.

One of the early sightings of the run was going past one of the cafes next to Fairfield station and seeing advertised their range of shakes, which was sufficiently tempting for me to test out afterwards. As it turned out it was so indulgent that I should probably only do it in future on occasions when I've covered the distance that I originally intended to today.

I want to get at least one more proper long run in in the next few weeks. The last weekend of February is the available window now, but I can't necessarily assume the weather will be as kind as it was today.

Out earlyish today for a Saturday, partly because it was going to be warm and partly because I didn't want to miss too much of the cricket in NZ (which started at 8.30). Somewhat hillier than most of my recent training runs, and felt better than some of them too (certainly better than yesterday), although a bit slow on the hills and on the rougher sections near the river. Hamstring a bit twingey at times in the later stages.

Intervals session. Like yesterday, felt rather sleepy at the start but unlike yesterday didn't really snap out of it; not disastrous while the sprints were actually happening but felt rather out of sorts on the way back. Feeling rather tired at the moment (it's been a long week with the conference), and perhaps a bit sick - something which showed up more during the day but improved again by evening.

Definitely not one of my more vigorous warm-ups or downs, despite getting an unusually good run with the traffic on the two major road crossings.

Have discovered that the number plate YVV001 can be found just around the corner from me. Unlike NEV001 (which is, or was, owned by one of the Johnson clan), I think this is a perfectly normal number plate and nothing to do with anyone in Yarra Valley.

Also spotted later in the day was a car with the number plate '8COUNT', driven by a well-built bloke with plenty of tatts - probably not someone to get into a road-rage incident with. While on the subject of boxing, the news came through today of the passing of Arthur Tunstall at the age of 93 - which means he would have only been in his early 70s at the time of the 1994 Commonwealth Games (younger than he came across as at the time). Definitely an old-school amateur sports administrator, who appears to have done a lot for his sport even if he didn't make quite the same contribution to race relations.

A reasonably convoluted route in Royal and Princes Park, including my first excursion into the development that was the 2006 Commonwealth Games village. Very sleepy through the first 10 minutes but settled into quite a decent run after that. Toe OK on the run although a little on the sore side afterwards.

The conference finished today, with a certain level of distraction during the afternoon - the live-streaming of the CSIRO CEO at Senate Estimates this afternoon drew a bigger crowd than any of the actual conference sessions.

A testing-things-out run to see if everything still worked. The toe was fine once warmed up a bit. The rest couldn't necessarily be said for the rest of my body - a couple of days' rest didn't seem to make me feel any more lively than I had on Saturday - but gradually got more into things as it went on.

Noticed for the first time a set of stepping stones across the creek just north of the Darebin Road bridge, which gives a few more options for runs on the (wilder) eastern side of the creek to check out later on.

Toe improved further overnight and I was just about ready to go out on it - would have given it a go if this had been a competition day, but there was just enough residual soreness that I thought it better to leave it one more day.

By the time I decided this, I'd left it too late to do something else in the morning and still get in in time to catch the 9am keynote talk by somebody called Andrew Hogg. (I had assumed that the last person to call him that was his mum when he was naughty, but in fact he does use that name on his papers). As is often the way with Andy's talks, I got lost in amongst some of the detail (no reflection on either of us - just that we operate at opposite ends of a broad scientific field), but it was well-received and drew a decent crowd.

Ended up going for a swim on my way home from work. It's definitely a different crowd at 7pm to what it is at 7am (although it would be a different crowd still had it been 10 or 15 degrees hotter). A slightly erratic session but not too bad; lots of people in my lane initially but thinned out as closing time got closer.

First part of a new injury is working out what you can and can't do. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to run today - in fact without shoes on I could barely walk this morning (which made getting to and from the pool edge a bit interesting) - but it was OK when not bearing weight (riding was OK too). A fairly decent session once in the pool.

The toe seemed to improve somewhat during the day, and I'm cautiously optimistic that I might be up to running again by Wednesday or so.

This week is the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society annual conference. As one might expect, most of the conversation today had very little to do with the science being presented during the sessions (interesting as much of it was).