Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Had a proper crack at a long run this morning. Was hoping for 2 hours but didn't quite get there, mainly because my Achilles flared up about 35 minutes in, on the downhill past my old place, and was intermittently troublesome thereafter. Felt like a decent run from a running perspective, though - seemed to have a bit left in the endurance department when I called it a day. Still not totally confident that I'll be up to something which will probably be close to an hour longer (and have some steep downhills, although not on concrete) in three weeks' time, but I guess we'll find out in due course. Conditions excellent for summer, cool and cloudy.

There's quite a bit happening in my old street; in addition to the railway works which I've mentioned previously, quite a few of the old houses towards the top end of the street are in the process of being replaced by more intensive developments. (I think this is a good thing in general - if you're going to have more intensive development, it makes sense for it to be happening somewhere within easy walking distance of a station and a major employment centre, the Austin hospital).

You often underestimate how much fluid you lose on a cool day, which may be why I felt a bit wiped out later in the afternoon.

I managed to largely avoid shopping malls (and their car parks) in the couple of weeks before Christmas this year (although Northland didn't seem too crazy from what I could see across the creek at 9.15 this morning). The Age ran a piece today which was vox-pops with various people who had been shopping in the city, finishing off with "Alex, 14, had been in the city with his mother since lunchtime. "It's so dumb", he said, "Why didn't she just buy it all online like a normal person?"".

C • Normal 7

A much more enjoyable session down in the Yarra Bend parklands, including a fair quota on the tracks on the far side of the river - actually felt like I had some energy and even handled the hills with some vestige of comfort. Still not quite sure if I'm up to doing twice this amount tomorrow, but at least have some element of hope that it might be a possibility.

Finished across the Chandler Highway bridge, where construction of the new bridge is well advanced (they've done a better job of maintaining pedestrian access through the site than I thought they might). It might be a bit of an optical illusion, but the bridge supports did give a sense of not being quite straight.

I'm making a bit of a habit of seeing Peter whilst he's running - today it was with Pat, heading in the opposite direction, on Thursday I was in the car.

The good news from this run is that I didn't feel any significant impact from injuries. The bad news is that I felt terrible for most of it - one of those days where you feel as if you're running up a big hill the whole way even though it's mostly flat (the few actual hills were even more challenging). Hopefully that's just a passing phase. Started with vague thoughts of trying to stretch it out to 90 if it went well (and sufficient time to do so), but that didn't happen.

Might not be doing this route again for a while: there was a sign saying that the Darebin Creek footbridge between Thornbury and Bellfield is being replaced from February and will be closed for four months. (By way of comparison, a few years back, the Burgundy Street rail bridge was replaced in a single weekend - a seriously impressive bit of engineering and construction).

Think I've done all my necessary shopping now (it helps that others are handling the food side), without venturing into a single shopping mall (or, perhaps worse, its car park) in the last couple of weeks.

There are often sightings at this time of year of the political-correctness-gone-mad crowd jumping at shadows - a highlight this year has been Senator Eric Abetz demanding to see all end-of-year messages sent within government departments, presumably to check that they've made sufficient reference to Christmas with none of this happy-holidays stuff. Today's feature was a news story about "controversial calls" to call "Father Christmas" "Person Christmas". In such stories it's usually worthwhile to try to trace where the "controversial calls" are coming from, and in this case it appears to have been one person (who may well have been taking the piss) tweeting.

C • I’m not a smart person 4

At Fitzroy. Didn't feel that slow but was, for no obvious reason.

I rarely use Flinders Street in the afternoons (it's a decent riding route from east to west in the mornings, but shocking from west to east in the evenings). The northern alternative around the CBD was definitely a good option today.

I might be old and slow, but surely I can still consider myself young if there's still someone playing in the Big Bash who's older than me?

Another Wednesday night of frustration, despite doing a lot of getting up and walking around during the afternoon (perhaps not so much of a surprise because I wasn't feeling great during the morning). Missed a decent running night too - certainly much better running conditions than either last week or last night.

Needed a recovery session after a fairly hard weekend (and a late return home last night), and this fitted the bill pretty well. The clock was broken so I guessed the time, but it turned out to be a bit on the short side compared with what I usually do.

As well that I wasn't trying to do this in the evening - quite a bit of storm action in northern and eastern Melbourne, although Fairfield missed the very worst of it.

Passed up the morning (after a brief start) - not feeling great this morning and instead set myself up near a control and looked at how people attacked it. (Note to some: when the control is just the other side of a flat one-contour spur in granite country, it's usually much faster to attack over the spur than to come around the end of it).

The session that I actually did was the course at Mount Gladstone - an area I haven't been on since 1990. Lots of scrappy rock. A reasonable but not brilliant run for much of the way, but made a 2-minuter on #7, coming in too low and not seeing the control above me. I then ran out of steam with about 10 minutes to go and really struggled on the last bit (the uphill finish was just about as much as I could handle).

This was an excellent camp with a great turnout (maybe 60-70 juniors from all over the country, and a decent number of adults too). In addition to the bits and pieces of coaching that I was involved with, it was a reminder that I'm technically rusty and not really fit enough to handle three days like this. Good training though (and I wasn't quite as wrecked as I thought I'd be on the drive back through Gippsland).

Obviously not a lot was happening in Cooma (a town which does give a sense of its best days being behind it, being a bit too far away to benefit much from the ski business in the way that Jindabyne has); our gathering at the summit of Mount Gladstone was of sufficient interest that the local constabulary paid us a visit to find out what was going on.

Made a slight deviation on the way home in the name of visiting one of the relatively small number of Victorian national parks I haven't yet visited, Coopacambra (driving along its side doesn't count). The aim was to visit Beehive Falls - which I suspect would have been dry or almost dry anyway - but the road in was closed after a couple of kilometres, presumably because of a fire that's been burning for a couple of weeks about 15km away.