Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

NSW Middle at Snow's Hill - one of the most challenging gully-spur areas in Australia, with lots of branching vague spurs and little gullies and relatively low visibility. The course was fitting for the occasion, a technical one which spent much of its time in green and near-green - starting off in a flattish area (comparing with the old map, some of it an overgrown clearing) with vegetation the main detail, then into the main gully-spur area.

Had a decent run technically, with only two glitches - a bit high crossing to 10 (maybe 45 seconds or so), then started down the wrong spur at one point on the way to 11 (a classic error here) but picked myself up in time and got out of it with 30 seconds or so lost. Running continued to feel not quite right, and today didn't give me a lot of confidence about the 12k tomorrow, but we'll worry about that when we come to it.

As with the ACT Middle in a technical area, I claimed a few unexpected scalps today - this time Eric and Greg, both of whom beat me comfortably at Easter (although Theo put our times into perspective, much as Leon did at Honeysuckle). 4th in 21A when I left although I'd expect to drop a couple more from the late starters.

Hard 1 - Splits

Early session around a traditional haunt when I'm in town, initially around the lower section of the Aranda bushland, onto the northern part of Black Mountain Reserve, and then back around the northern side of Aranda. Achilles, which has been pretty good in the last week, rather sore when I started but quickly settled down; OK by the end. A certain amount of autumnal mist in evidence.

First excursion into the National Arboretum (since it's been that) on a classic Canberra early autumn morning. Took me a while to get going with a fairly ordinary first 20 minutes, but got into it more on the climb into the Arboretum, and ended up with a decent last 3km climbing back into Aranda. Pretty slow early on and on the singletracks. The Arboretum itself is going to be nice in about 30 years' time, but I suspect I won't be doing runs like this by then. In the meantime, the view from the higher parts is nice.

The competition is tough, but I think this will take some beating for the most bizarre Australian political news story of 2016.

Didn't sleep that well but reasonable (if slow) once I started running, getting out into some old haunts - through the upper part of Cook and up to the Pinnacle, back through Weetangera. Encountered David Hogg (walking the dog) en route, which provided the opportunity to do some OA business (relating to Easter results) in mid-run (although not while actually running). With that break and a work deadline, ended up a slightly shorter run than I was planning but this week that doesn't really matter.

Saw a few holes in the suburbs where victims of Mr. Fluffy are disappearing (I wish the person trying to rent out a house in between two Mr. Fluffy sites the best of luck). Also noticed that Constable Kenny Koala is still alive and well and now has his own car, although after (at least) 40 years in the force you'd expect that he would have been promoted to Senior Constable by now.

C • Care to enlighten your readers 8

Recovery session at CISAC, not my favourite pool - would much rather be doing this in the open air as it is at Fitzroy (although an outdoor pool in mid-winter in Canberra would be interesting). Major distraction was working out which bits of the old-style digital timer on the wall were stuck on/off and therefore which patterns on the display corresponded to which numbers.

Quite a bit of peeling skin on the soles of my feet after the weekend. Not sure if this was a consequence or a cause of the soreness there whilst competing, which I'd attributed to newish shoes which don't seem to have enough cushioning for rocky ground.

Easter brought quite a few people out of the woodwork for the first time in anything between 10 and 30-plus years (some of whom, like Mounty, did very well indeed) - on Sunday I was in a scrap for a while with Finn Marsland, whom I think I last encountered in about 16s. Four of the top five in M45 ran M16 at Easter in Wagga in 1985 (Steve 1st, Scott 6th, Eric 9th and me 10th, consisting of two wins and a massive day-2 blowout).

Easter terrain was somewhat slower on the other side of the Tasman - M21E in the NZ Long Championships was won in 95 for 8.2k. The map makes me tired just looking at it.

Day 3 of Easter at Foxlow Flats. My chances of a good run disappeared at 2, a cliff in a green gully, where a good initial line tempted me to cross the main gully - not a great idea - and then I dropped back in at the wrong place and wasn't quite sure where I was. Dropped 2-2.5 minutes there; Ruhi went through me there, and for the rest of the course I was playing catch-up. We often diverged in route choice but converged at controls, and it wasn't until the second-last before I was finally able to break away - far too late to make meaningful progress towards getting back the two minutes. I suspected that the initial time loss would be enough to cost me fourth against Scott if he had a decent run, and so it proved; he finished just over a minute ahead overall. Once again very underpowered on hills, although at least I didn't walk any of them today (except in medium green). Very impressed with Steve's three days; he would clearly still be competitive, not with the very best Australian elites probably, but definitely with the next tier.

Pretty disappointed with my performance this Easter - never got my running together (except on Friday), and I shouldn't be making mistakes like today's either. I'm obviously not going to be competitive at elite level again, but have some work to do to at least be competitive in my (new) age group (or to have a decent crack at WMOC next year). Very good event on the whole though, and an excellent turnout, reflecting our continued growth in participation (we found out a few days ago that we cracked 100,000 for the first time in 2015).

One benefit of not running elites at Easter: I didn't get a massive cramp in the middle of the presentation ceremony this year.

Day 2 of Easter at Primrose Valley (at least as I know it), a place which I last ventured to in 1986. (In the latest instalment of crazy things I did when I was fourteen*, on that occasion, naturally since I'd run my first M21 course the previous week and did OK, I did that class again that week - so what if it was a 21k Long-O?). The forest was a bit greener than I remembered it (less grazing?), but otherwise pleasant gully-spur.

A better run than yesterday - still didn't feel terribly strong on any sort of gradient, but there weren't as many areas of small rocks for me to feel awkward in, and only a couple of minor hesitations coming in to 1 and 6. Certainly not too upset I didn't have to go out for another lap at the end of this (whilst remembering that this will only be a quarter of the way through in four weeks' time). 3 minutes or so better relative to the field than yesterday, which means I've edged in front of Scott (although the top three are out of reach unless they make a mistake).

(* - actually, I think it might have been a week or two after my fifteenth birthday (it was July 1986, but I forget the exact date)).

C • Funny 2