Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Plan A was to get out early in the morning before going out to check matters sprint-related. Plan A was a fairly immediate failure, plan B (try again in the afternoon) was a bit closer to success but still not quite there, so plan C was to get on the bike instead, for the Yarra Boulevard session. Didn't feel crash-hot early on the bike either (quad was uncomfortable on the climbs), but was going at a reasonable pace (by my standards) and improved as it went on. Reasonably hot (low 30s) which is a bit easier to handle on a bike than running, too.

The sprint has the perennial headache of construction sites which may or may not stay stable, but is otherwise looking good. Paid close attention to the minimum size of mapped features, something which has not been the subject of any controversy at any event in which I've been involved in the recent past.

Fairly similar to yesterday - felt pretty tight when I woke up, managed to get running, but never really got flowing on the run. Probably didn't feel quite as fatigued as I did yesterday but body still threw a wobbly as soon as it hit a climb of any size. Nice morning to be out.

Spent some of the rest of the day at the OV strategy day, a reasonably worthwhile discussion even if there wasn't much specific decided. One interesting insight came from a round-the-table at the start where we each said how we started orienteering - almost everyone was introduced to it by someone they knew (either family or friend).

Given how tight my back was when I got up I wasn't confident of being able to do anything, but walking a few minutes was enough to get it loose enough to function, so getting something on the board was a bonus. The run itself, though, could best be described as marginally functioning - really struggling for fitness at the moment even when injuries aren't getting in the way, which isn't surprising given the training I haven't been doing.

Getting set up for a new program. Seems like harder work than the old program, but I guess it always does the first time.

At Fitzroy - in the evening which is somewhat unusual (definitely not hot-day crowds today in what's become a rather cool February). Never really felt as if I was getting going.

My historical wanderings today took me to January 1941 floods in South Australia. There was a certain amount of distraction on offer from accounts of Adelaide's petty offenders - no offence was too petty for the Advertiser, which is how I know that one Harold Frederick Brown of King William Street was fined five shillings for "exceeding parking time limit". (It wasn't as if there was a shortage of news, either - the Allies had just taken Tobruk, something which attracted a certain amount of gloating from the headline-writers). I did, however, enjoy the account heard by the Port Adelaide Magistrates' Court of a high-speed bicycle chase:

"Constable Ryan said he chased Parsons "at racing pace" until the chain came off Parsons' bicycle. Then defendant ran 25 yards into a vacant block, threw the bicycle down, and hid behind a bush another 25 yards away before Ryan found him".

He was fined 15 shillings for riding without lights, and another 15 for failing to stop when directed. I also feel sorry for the partner of the woman who, given a bond for obtaining goods under false pretences, was ordered to "abstain from entering any shops in the city for 12 months, unless accompanied by her husband".

Naturally there was some non-farsighted punditry, the highlight being a column by the Asian correspondent of Australian Associated Press, who published a column opining that the Japanese really wanted to be friends and, being bogged down as they were in China, definitely wouldn't be interested in starting any more wars.

And people were still complaining about the trains...

C • Cool 1

Another attempt at street-O, much as the last few weeks, although I didn't walk quite as many hills as last time (but perhaps didn't feel as free running on the non-hills either). Thought I'd made a reasonable job of the route - the fiddly nature of the streets on the north side of the Koonung pedestrian bridge was familiar to me from the tail end of plenty of long runs in Heidelberg days - but others did better. Decent running conditions at least.

Probably as well that Heyington's next week and not this week - we might have tripped over all the TV cameras outside St. Kevin's.

Stiff when getting up this morning, too; tried walking around for a while before attempting to start running but didn't do enough of that to be successful.

Found myself on occasional historical wanderings today, looking at papers from 1909. Clearly not a lot has changed in 111 years because amongst the things I encountered was a letter to the editor from someone complaining about overcrowding on suburban railway lines.

Rather more recent media news was the word that the Press Council has found that a story in Woman's Day about the alleged split of Harry and Meghan had misled readers and breached accuracy standards. I would have thought it was quite hard to find a front cover of such magazines that did not mislead readers or breach accuracy standards. Something I learned early in my travels in Europe was that, even in countries which had perfectly good royal families of their own, the British royal family had an outsize presence in gossip magazines, although I once arrived in Geneva to see Simone Niggli and then-newborn twins on the front cover of one (whether the magazine in question had reported the pregnancy on 158 different occasions before it actually happened is unknown).

Pilates session. Back quite stiff this morning; I think I would have struggled to run today, but eventually loosened up through this workout.

Found myself today looking through data sets to examine the frequency of days with average temperatures below -10 in Tabriz, Iran. (In case you're wondering, the context was reports of extreme cold and snow in refugee camps in places like northern Iraq and Syria, and Iran has decent data, which the aforementioned countries don't, so I thought Tabriz would be a good place to use to assess how unusual the last week has been - the answer being that it's probably an event you'd expect to see once every 2-3 years on average).

Moved on to the Fitzroy pool. Didn't expect a lot of this session but it actually turned out to be reasonably good. Would have been a bit more crowded in the afternoon.

The speed limit on part of La Trobe Street has been lowered to 30 km/h. I wonder if cyclists will have to watch their speed? (it's downhill going west, although anyone going flat out in that section is asking for trouble - it's prone to pedestrians paying more attention to their phones than to their surroundings).

C • 30kph 5