Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Good to get down to the Peninsula for the day (first time I've been out of town in a couple of months). The run itself wasn't so good; the back was OK but the left quad didn't cope too well with the dunes. A brief stop (partly to get a picture of the sign of Rye's creatively named snake catcher) failed to settle things down much and I pulled up at 40 minutes, somewhat short of what I'd hoped for.

I'm clearly not the only person who's noticed that on a clear day, Bridgewater Bay is a good place to watch a sunset. (It's also a good place to watch one of the more impressive swells I've seen in these parts, going right up past the rockpool; today was sunny and calm here but clearly it's windy somewhere else).

A significant number of people have clearly got out of driving practice in the last two months.

A bit of a change of scene today, using Woodlands Park and a course from a Melbourne Bush-O a few years ago. Definitely good to get out into some forest again, and to actually be doing some navigating (although it was a little disconcerting that some of the features named on the descriptions weren't on the map, possibly because the feature that was on the map had a limited existence on the ground). Back was a bit iffy, and got worse on the long gradual climbs through the open, so I decided to cut off the final loop and ended up 15 minutes short of what I'd hoped for. Still glad I did this, though (and may look to go a bit further afield next week).

Life's little mysteries: the long-term car park at Melbourne Airport is, as you'd expect, near-deserted, so why are there a few cars parked in its outer reaches? (surely they haven't been there since March?).

One plane flying overhead is definitely well short of the usual quota for a Woodlands run.

C • If you were overseas in Mar... 4

Almost but not quite right to run this morning (might have been tempted to try to push through it, but don't want to jeopardise my chance of doing something tomorrow). Headed out instead on the bike in the late afternoon, on an afternoon which was as clear as (although not as cold as) the morning.

This was the La Trobe loop again. It wasn't exactly an afternoon peak hour but definitely more traffic than I've been used to lately. Left it a bit late; was getting to the stage in the last few minutes when I was thinking whether I should stop and turn the lights on. Certainly no headwinds today, in any direction, and not as much sunglare heading west as I expected either.

As with Sunday (post-crash), the bike was making some odd noises but seems to be functioning reasonably normally.

All Nations intervals. Had a late night last night with what I think is the longest OA Board meeting since I've been involved, but felt OK in the morning. Didn't feel as if I was going that fast on the reps, but times similar to recent weeks and didn't go lactic to quite the same extent as the last few attempts; maybe a sign of being ready to take on a longer session?

Warm-up and down. Felt a bit more routine than morning sessions usually have this year.

The Stating The Bleeding Obvious Award for the day goes to the ABC for the last sentence of this:

"An earthquake has been felt widely across parts of SA, with Geoscience Australia estimating the magnitude-4.2 quake occurred near Burra, in the state's Mid North, just before 3.30pm (ACST). There is no threat of a tsunami."

C • Bleeding obvious 5

Midweek pilates session. Felt reasonable doing this once warmed up (more reasonable than when trying to run in the morning, at any rate). There's talk that classes might be back next week but I'll believe that when it happens (as with orienteering, a lot of this is about trying to get a clear interpretation of rules which may be less than clear).

One of those go-figure days - the way I was feeling yesterday I thought there was no chance of being able to get out before a physio session today, but woke up feeling OK and decided I'd at least give it a go. It turned out to be one of my best runs in weeks (and certainly my best morning run in weeks); settled down through the first 10 minutes and no significant difficulties thereafter. Might have felt better still had I known before the start that my lifetime tally of interviews with Alan Jones was likely to remain at one.

Spent quite a bit of the day crunching numbers on the rain that didn't fall last year, and did fall (except in the far north and southwest) this year, along with doing an interview on past extreme rainfall events with ABC Gold Coast, which gave me a good excuse to mention my experiences of 10 May 1987 (all 353 millimetres of them).

A real back flare-up today - not totally comfortable even walking. Not sure what the trigger was (don't think it was the crash yesterday, although you never know). Probably could have ridden with it - water would have been ideal, but that's not an available option yet - but thought it best not to until the physio has a chance to have a go at it tomorrow.

It's pretty sad that NSW Health found it necessary to tweet today: "Viruses do not spread via mobile networks - preventing Covid-19 is not as easy as turning off your wifi". On the evidence of yesterday's gathering in Melbourne (which was essentially an equivalent of those in various US states, minus the arsenal), we seem to be approaching a Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory - I think the way it's supposed to work is that Covid-19 was invented to provide a pretext for a mass program to inject nanobots into everyone that Bill Gates can use 5G to activate and control the world (or something like that).