Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Was sufficiently tired that I managed to sleep nine more or less unbroken hours despite a stuffy room and bands playing in the street outside until 1am (so others tell me). This run was a short jaunt at sunrise, mainly to see if my body worked better than it did yesterday, and took in probably the flattest 2km of the entire GR10 (a 700km trans-Pyrenees route that Hanny Allston ran a few weeks back). My body does still work, so that was good news.

That was really only the prelude to the main activity of the day - a walk in the Pyrenees which was probably the most ambitious mountain walk I've done since Zermatt back in 2010, climbing from the car park at 1380m to a highest point of 2475. Spectacularly scenic as you'd expect (although it was a bit sobering to think, as one might when in the company of two fellow scientists, that the Pic d'Aneto glacier we were looking at from the top of one of the passes probably won't be there in 2050). What comes up must go down, and I suspect some of my muscles might not appreciate 1100m of descending, but we'll find out tomorrow. Probably closer to 18km than the guidebook 13.5, too (it took us 6 1/2 hours).

Was lucky enough to get an upgrade on the Abu Dhabi-Brussels leg, but still a very long haul, especially with a couple of hours driving at the end (and then I couldn't get into my hotel until 4pm). It turns out that Luchon, the town where we're staying tonight, is having its annual festival this weekend - good for local colour, maybe not so good for sleeping (although I'm sufficiently tired that I may be able to manage regardless).

Unsurprisingly an attempt at running didn't work out (hips the main issue, although I expect jumping into 30 degrees would have been challenging too), but the hotel had a gym of sorts so I spent a bit of time on the stationary bike - had I thought of this earlier I might have gone for a proper ride (Luchon is the sort of place where you see a lot of people on mountain bikes, and numerous places hiring them out). Just really turning the legs over at low intensity as I couldn't work out how to change the resistance.

C • change the resistance 2

Couldn't go through a week without one dud day, and this was it (hopefully it's the only one). Perhaps my body was trying to tell me something after the longest OA Board meeting I can remember last night (nothing particularly controversial, just a lot of things to get through).

I managed to get through a month without setting foot in an airport, but it's time to head off again: this time it's an IPCC meeting in Toulouse. The first leg (to Abu Dhabi) was essentially fine, a little less so in the last three or four hours. (Advantages of having a five-year-old next to you on a plane: they don't take up much space and they're not going to get drunk. Disadvantages: they tend to get grumpy when they get over-tired instead of just slumping into a haze like the rest of us).

Points to Etihad for the scenic exit route from Australia: the northern Flinders Ranges, Lake Eyre and the West Macdonnells (and the light held out long enough to see them all). Also got to see the sharp western boundary of green vegetation just west of the Mildura-Ouyen highway; the drought in the cropping areas west of there (which includes Tash's family farm) has been in the news this week.

C • Scenic exit route 1

Session at Fitzroy - first time I've been here for a while (and first time since the water-main builders have stopped occupying the park across the road). A fairly standard session on a morning when showers were threatening to shower but never quite did.

The traffic riding home from work this morning would have been good practice for a trip to China, but I'm actually going to France.

Down to the Darebin Bridge - probably to become a regular loop for runs of this length. A bit of hip soreness again, although better than yesterday. The run was a bit sluggish but mostly coped OK, though the climb out of the river was a bit of a test for the back. Looking forward to something like this becoming routine again.

Science acronym of the day: the Frequent Rainfall Observations on Grids (FROGs) database.

Almost called it quits in the first minute with the hips quite sore to start (more so on my left side, which I guess reflects being slightly unbalanced over recent weeks with my left foot issues), but it was tolerable and nothing else gave me too much trouble - in the end felt stronger than I have so far on other runs on this comeback, although it was a flat course. The hip twinges did deter me from going too far past the half-hour, pending an evening session with the physio (one which probably just about warranted Attack of the Killer Physio status).

Having read in this morning's paper before the session that an alleged murderer on the run had been living in a tent in Fitzroy before being arrested yesterday, it was somewhat spooky to see an apparently abandoned tent by the side of the Merri Creek bike path in North Fitzroy. (I can't remember seeing either the tent or an occupant before, but then it's not something I necessarily would have noticed - and in any case if it really was his I would have expected it to be festooned with crime-scene tape by now).

Last of these for a while - partly because I'm away next week but also because the gym is closing for a couple of weeks for renovations. Seemed to go OK and loosened up reasonably well once under way. Not as tough for the ride in as I thought it might have been from the forecast, either (and the showers all came through during the way). No longer dark at the start of the session, either.

In a good mood coming home, too, partly because I'd discovered something and it's always a good day as a scientist when you discover something. (The "something", in case you're wondering, is an initial set of results from a comparison of extreme and average temperature trends, indicating that the hottest days are warming faster than averages in most of southeastern Australia, but not in most of the north or west).

Definitely not experiencing extreme heat at the moment is the Yukon, where I was this time last year; it snowed down to 500 metres in places in the territory's south, although not in Whitehorse itself (very unusual for summer, although in that part of the world summer is just about over by the third week of August). No doubt we will now hear about summer snow in the Yukon ad nauseum when August gets announced as one of the world's warmest on record, just like we heard about Moscow ad nauseum when July was.