Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

You don't know where your limits are if you don't test them. Got closer to managing six proper days in a row than my previous attempts, without doing what I wanted to (if I had managed to do it it would have been my biggest week in four years). Joined Jenny, Steve and Zara for the Bridgewater run, but knew within a few minutes that my back was in a state where at best I'd have to stop to loosen it every few minutes, so let them go and went back to do my own thing. Felt more up to it after a few minutes of walking and headed in the opposite direction, but this was still hard going - one of those days when you stop to have a look at every information board - and 40 minutes was plenty (I doubt I would have got anywhere near the 85-90 that the others did). Will count this as progress even if it didn't quite feel like it at the time (and the preceding days were definitely worth doing).

Headed home tonight after a good few days. The flight back went smoothly, the same cannot be said for the trip home from the airport which took two hours (thanks in part to the City Loop being closed for works) - taking a taxi seems a bit risky at the moment.

Rocky Paddock, doing courses from an old SA relays (two loops). For those who don't know this map, the area close to the start/finish is open mature pine forest with no ground cover/thinnings, and lots of rock. It's not all as nice as that - in particular there's a block in the southwest which has been felled and replanted, and is every bit as pleasant as you'd expect for a recently felled area in a good season for long grass-growing - but still a good place for a hitout. Not such a good day for my running, though - back was intermittently troublesome and ended up having to walk a lot of the hills, although it didn't blow up as I thought it might (and my post-IOF meeting sleepiness didn't manifest until after lunch). Quite warm by the end.

Short course at Cantara after camping there overnight - redoing a bush sprint course from 2008 (which I think was probably the last time I finished within a minute of Simon). Naturally the changes in the vegetation were the only reason I took nearly twice as long this morning as I did then :-). (They did, however, account for some of it - more gaps have closed up over time and part of the fun here is accepting that you're going to run into dead ends every so often). Not always easy to pinpoint the control sites either. Didn't feel too bad.

Adelaide Friday evening street-O at Burnside (after a morning making our way back from Cantara with the odd side trip). This was a bit of a culture shock for those of us who have got used to Melbourne events (and not just because the maps are in colour) - you actually have to find and punch controls, not just run within 10 metres and get a beep. Some of those features weren't totally easy to find either, notably an oddly mapped track near a reedy creek at #11 where I think I probably dropped a couple of minutes. A nice sprint section within the Burnside Primary grounds, even if it did once again demonstrate that life's three great certainties are death, taxes, and unmapped construction on a sprint map.

Back felt a bit tight in the afternoon; can't say I was completely comfortable running, but it was definitely better than my recent attempts at Melbourne evening events (or my vaguely recent attempts to run twice in a day). Perhaps putting the washing out before leaving for the event helped.

My streets run tally since February 2020 ticked past 1500 tonight (with the first SA entries).

First step of the road trip, doing a course from a March Bendigo event at Mount Korong. Definitely didn't feel like I was flowing in the terrain and not totally convinced that I pinpointed a couple of controls, but reasonably happy with the way I was running (and handled the gentler climbs OK). Didn't even feel excessively sleepy after a 1.15am finish last night. Humid again.

Spent the rest of the day making our way across to Cantara, via Naracoorte Caves (which I haven't previously been to) and a few other stops of assorted degrees of randomness. Does feel a bit strange to be casually crossing a state border again. (The quirkiness of this particular crossing is that the road takes a big S-bend at the border - I would speculate because the Victorian and South Australian surveyors came out in different places). The flurry of phone notifications every time we passed within range of a tower was an indication that Australian meteorological history was being made (slightly unexpectedly) while I was on the road. (One of my colleagues commented that watching places race each other to 50 degrees was like watching horse racing - it's exciting to watch but they felt sorry for the participants).

C • Naracoorte 1

When I cut my losses last night it was with the objective of being in a position to do something proper this morning, so was happy to get this one under my belt. Thought I might have pushed it out to a set of 8 if things went well but was starting to tighten a bit in the hip flexors so left it at 6 this week. A little faster than last week (58-64). Warm morning - definitely glad for the areas of shade.

Warm-up and down. Not the most sparkling I'll ever be but achieved the necessary.

Now off for a bit of a trip - got the train up to Castlemaine tonight to link up with Jenny, who's been across running on some of the notable local maps. We'll run on a couple more in the next two days on the way to ending up in Adelaide over the weekend.

Part of a street-O at Brunswick. Got myself too absorbed in what I was working on this afternoon (and therefore not getting up and walking around enough) and paid for it. Also remembered that I have plans for the rest of this week and I don't want to derail them by pushing through like I did when feeling similarly last week...

Did accomplish something useful today in the rat-finding department, at least.

Back to the early Monday timeslot. Obviously not everyone's back to that, since there was only one other person there (which at least meant not having to reshuffle the order of my program according to what equipment was available at any given time). Went reasonably well.

Onwards to Fitzroy on a bright summer morning which was better in the water than on land (although sunglare was an issue when facing east). Got going nicely, though, and loosened up a lot of the stiffness which was there when I woke up, which was the objective (a recovery session now that there was actually something worthwhile to recover from).