Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Dropped back to act my age today (the days of long WOC trials are behind me now, even if this one was soft compared to 2005 at the same venue - for a start, the climb had three digits instead of four), but it still didn't work out - first time this season my back has been bad in a forest race. Suppose it had to happen eventually, but persisted for five controls (quite long ones) before deciding it wasn't going to warm up. I'd already made a bit of a mess of the course, too - Tipperary has quite enough necessary hills without going up any unnecessary ones, but that's what I did thanks to a parallel error coming out of the creek on the way to 2. Probably dropped 3-4 minutes on that one.

Briohny gets quote of the day before the start: "Mummy's going to be out for a long time". (As it turned out, like me, she wasn't out for quite as long as she'd planned on).

And result of the day definitely goes to the dead heat (for fourth in W20) between the George twins.

C • Mummy 1

NOL middle at Yorkshire Hill. Thought I might have turned the corner a bit last week but this one was a bit disappointing; felt flat most of the way with just a few fragments of something better. Also a bit scrappier than I would have hoped, losing 45 seconds or so on each of 9 and 14 on what was otherwise not an especially difficult course.

Ended up with an unwanted milestone - a last place in an NOL race (perhaps indicating that it might be time for me to get out of the shorter NOL races, too). I thought I might have avoided this late when Simon Rouse came in with a slower time but he'd punched the wrong second-last control.

First time for a while we've seen the drug-testers.

C • Visitors? 6

At Fitzroy. Drizzly before I started but nice once in (even a bit of blue sky emerging towards the end). Felt fairly routine once I actually got there - the traffic was uglier than usual, although considerably less ugly than it would be in the CBD this evening (glad I was on a bike for that bit and not in a car).

The authorities are currently trying to trace the ownership of a couple of slivers of land next to Melbourne Airport which are required for an airport expansion; the land concerned was last recorded as being owned by John Pascoe Fawkner, one of Melbourne's founders, who died in 1869 without descendants. (Someone suggested the Department of Infrastructure should try asking the Kerrigans of Bonnie Doon). Those combing their family tree for a possible connection might have their ardour dampened by the possibility of being up for 149 years' worth of unpaid rates.

A caller to the ABC while I was on the way to the pool suggested appointing Prince Harry as Governor-General. This would probably be a positive to the ACT nightclub industry, but I'm struggling to see any other good reason to do it.

Had hopes for something big today (was aiming for 100-105) but it wasn't to be - had the sort of low-level back tightness in the first couple of kilometres that normally disappears eventually, but today it never did - not bad enough to stop me but bad enough to make it a struggle all the way (as indicated by the pace, which I don't think I can completely blame on 30 minutes of darkness).

Slept extremely well last night - so well that I didn't wake up until at least 8. This is a problem when your run starts at 7.20. Quite often for this session, I shake myself out of drowsiness/sluggishness with the first couple of reps, but it didn't really happen today. Still, I got through my first faster session for a while without doing myself any damage, so that's one plus.

There was a very attractive rainbow for the first couple of reps. Pity the run wasn't equally attractive.

Not one of my better starts, and not one of my better finishes either. Surprisingly little traffic around (all of it turned out to be in a jam I rode past on the way to work).

Six days turned out to be as many as I could put together; set out today along the Merri Creek but the back wasn't cooperating today. The flow of water along the creek seemed unusually strong (and muddy) considering it hasn't rained significantly for three days; wondering if water is being discharged from a site or sites upstream?

Started this one close to Northcote High, which was in the news last week over the latest Herald-Sun mega-splash on youth crime (unusually for a big Herald-Sun splash on youth crime, it featured an incident in which the alleged offenders were not black.).

One of the 1954 news stories I didn't mention yesterday was that of a brawl involving female MPs in the Japanese parliament. There is definitely no possibility that there would have been any such brawls in 1954 involving female members of the Australian House of Representatives (which was all-male as recently as 1980).

Having a fixed schedule is a bit of a motivator; not sure I would have responded to the 6am alarm this morning had I not needed to be somewhere at 7. Was reasonably awake by 7, and a decent session once I was there. Progress is incremental but noticeable.

Those who've been following the Albuquerque thread may be wondering why the US Navy has a presence in Albuquerque (which is an awfully long way from the ocean). I'm assuming it has something to do with pilot training, the standards of which have hopefully improved since 1954. (I spent a week in Albuquerque for a conference in 2001, a week I remember chiefly for almost getting frostbite after going for a long run, wearing not as much as I should have, on a morning which I thought was -8 but was actually -16).

Another attempt at a lunchtime run, and this time a successful one (for a certain value of "successful"). A bit tight in the first 10 minutes but managed to keep myself moving, not always entirely convincingly, but well enough. Nice lunchtime to be out, and a nice route once clear of the central city, down the linear park through Port Melbourne next to the light rail line.

Apart from the abovementioned inattentive pilots, discoveries in my trawling of historical newspapers today included the founding of Eurovision (the TV networks' consortium, not the song contest they organised, which came two years later), and the more-optimistic-than-warranted headline "UN Hopes For End To Refugee Camps By 1960". The approach to crime in Western Australia was also a bit different in those days; a couple of miscreants who appeared before a Perth magistrate on a charge of disorderly conduct were bailed on the condition they left the state within seven days and didn't come back.