Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Was prompted by the US straight-line thread to think about what is the longest straight line (over land) in Australia which does not cross a paved road. Port Augusta to Port Hedland is 2300km in a straight line and I don't think the straight line would cross any paved roads outside the immediate vicinity of either town, unless it intersects one of the few fragments of bitumen on the Great Central Road.

C • Straight line terrain 16

Not quite what I'd hoped for but still something respectable to get into the book. Had enough confidence to set out on one of the old regulars, the Wilsons Reserve loop (with a lengthy stretch on dirt on the Yarra Flats on the Ivanhoe side). Going along OK for the first 30 minutes but quads somewhat troublesome after that; a short pause at the climb past the Kew overpass seemed to settle them for a while, but I was just about ready to stop around 50 minutes before they came good again in the last 10. Still pleased to meet my objectives of getting five runs in the week (which was consequently my longest since June) and to put together four days in a row - hopefully something to build on.

First bit of orienteering for a while (not counting Monday's short-lived attempt) on my local bit of bush, Darebin Parklands (which scored a feature on Gardening Australia during the week for the work that's been done to bring wildlife back to it). As I was planning to do on Monday, ran the course from the 2017 Victorian Relays, although cut the last bit short as 55-60 was longer than I wanted to be doing today.

Body held up more or less OK, but navigation was a bit rusty on some of the trickier controls (some of which were on features sufficiently obscure that I'm not quite sure how I endorsed them as control sites - maybe they've shrunk in the last three years). Terrain legs also need some practice, although I wasn't quite as hopeless on the steeper slopes in the drier conditions (compared with last Monday).

C • 55-60 min 3

Cruise ships haven't had a great press lately, but I missed the story of the one which came to blows with the Venezuelan navy a couple of weeks ago. The Venezuelan navy lost...

All Nations intervals at lunchtime, having bailed on a morning plan after sleeping a bit late (in turn this was because a malfunctioning smoke alarm went off at 1am and it took ages to get back to sleep). Ended up OK, although getting a bit lactic in the last couple of reps. Not as many people in the park this time, probably because it was cool and breezy.

Warm-up and down. The warm-up was interrupted for a certain amount of orienteering business (Carl was coming the other way); there was a time when I wouldn't want a break like that, but current experience is that a traffic stop (or similar) around the 5-minute mark seems to help with getting my back mobile, and so it proved again today.

One of this week's objectives is to take the step up from four to five days of running a week. The first part of the objective (three of the five weekdays) is achieved, now let's see how the weekend goes.

Lunchtime session up along Darebin Creek after a morning false start (seem to be having a few of these lately). Struggling through the first 15 minutes but eventually got into something of a reasonable mode, and got something respectable in the (virtual) book.

My watch seems to have wiped its memory, so it's started telling me that I'm setting 5k PBs and the like. (My actual 5k PB is something like 12 minutes faster than what was showing up after today's effort).

Given the way I felt running last night I wasn't too surprised not to come up in the morning. Plan B was an extended ride home after a physio session. This wasn't anything to get too excited about either, but was starting to go OK when it came to an abrupt halt due to a flat (whose cause is not immediately obvious). At least (a) it wasn't far from home (although I was planning to go out for a small extra loop to take it up to 45-50) and (b) it's a front flat which is a bit easier to fix.

Spotted en route were someone in an Outkast T-shirt who probably wasn't born in 2002, and someone in a Sex Pistols T-shirt who definitely wasn't born in 1977 (and probably not in 2002 either). The former was part of my limited soundtrack - in the form of a box of eight CDs - for one of my great orienteering road trips, to the Yukon and back before APOC 2002 in Alberta (and Ms. Jackson is still fairly close to the top of my list of 21st century songs). Also spotted were some stickers promoting Brian Sanaghan for mayor (presumably these are new ones for this October's election, and not ones left over from 2016) and saying that he "will cut your rates", which seems somewhat incongruous for someone on the far left. (He managed the considerable feat of getting himself booted from the local ALP for persistently disruptive and abusive behaviour, of which I saw a bit, in branch meetings).

And while I think Farmers for Climate Action do lots of good work, I was still a little surprised to see a sign "I'm a farmer for climate action" on the front fence of a house in Thornbury.

Pilates session in the middle of the day (there are advantages to working from home). Didn't feel as quite as good as last time and I clearly wasn't imagining it because the instructor didn't think I had quite as much range as last time either.

No expectations for this one after a morning false start. I thought I'd do well just to be able to run, so was pleasantly surprised when I tried to do so - back was tight but it didn't seem to be impeding progress (such as it was). Not the most comfortable of runs but got round it, which is more than I've managed with the equivalent session for a while.

First time I've been out in the (sort of) dark this winter - as always, you feel like you're going faster than daylight when you're actually going slower. Also a bit more traffic than I was expecting (that's one area where we have been spoilt).

Thought it might have been my first Easter Tuesday run for a very long time, but a check of the records reveals it last happened in 2015 (Jenny convinced me to come out after getting back from Burra).

And a small silver lining to a very dark cloud: apparently it has been the first March since 2002 in the US in which there have been no school shootings. (Meanwhile, the space on which this week's spin of the 2020 Wheel of Misfortune has landed appears to be "bushfire at Chernobyl").

C • 2020 Apocalypse bingo 7

The plan today was to go orienteering, in a fashion, and do climbing as an incidental part of that - doing the 2017 Victorian Relays course at Darebin Parklands (which I was controller for). Four days in a row, though, was more than the body was up for (hopefully it wouldn't have been like that had we been orienteering - I wouldn't have done as much on Friday, so maybe it wouldn't), and I lasted only last enough to discover that the scarp down to the creek gets pretty overgrown when it's been raining.

My quads weren't really functioning on the bike, either, so I gave the hills a miss and focused just on enough of a session to loosen myself up, down to Yarra Bend and up through Clifton Hill in various circles. Wondered why I was going so slowly until I realised that my watch had spontaneously switched itself to miles.