Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Morning run in Portland. Had hoped for more but was feeling rather flat this morning and knew early on that I'd do well to get to an hour, which I eventually managed, rather unconvincingly. Started out around the Fawthorp Lagoon (which I wasn't surprised to see is Portland's parkrun venue), then headed north through town as far as the water tower (next to a very exposed football ground which must have some interesting scorelines on windy days). Probably a bit better in the second half but still fairly hard work, especially into the wind. Blister OK during run but a bit sore later in the day.

Made my way home via a slightly circuitous route, taking in the likely-to-be-early-casualties-of-sea-level-rise strip of Dutton Way (the houses have already lost their water views to the two-metre piles of rocks put up to try to stop their houses from washing away, although some optimistic souls are still trying to sell "absolute ocean frontage" which is likely to become absolute ocean in the not too distant future). Also went through the Cobboboonee forest, various coastal viewpoints as far east as Port Campbell on a rather wild day on the coast, and the inevitable-if-in-the-area detour to the Timboon Ice Creamery.

A tour of the ocean side of Robe, which I don't think I've been to previously on earlier fleeting visits - the sort of low cliff country that you get a bit of on the SA coastline, nice to look at in its own way. That phase was a tourist run with quite a few stops to look at things on a morning where it felt as if I needed quite a few stops to look at things, but after a very unpromising first half it was quite a good second half. A bit of toe soreness at the end which turned out to be a blister (I've been breaking new shoes in this week and it shows).

A shorter travel distance today, making my way around the coast as far as Portland, via a few coastal spots and lunch in Mount Gambier. (I've not previously spent any more time in either Mount Gambier or Portland than what it takes to buy petrol, and because my previous passages through the former have been in winter it's the first time that I've seen the Blue Lake blue). Also took in the lower Glenelg River and its cliffs (the caves are supposed to be impressive but were closed), and the lighthouse at Cape Nelson. Lots of pine forest in this part of the world, too (some of which is fed into one piece of critical infrastructure I went past, the mill near Millicent that makes most of Australia's toilet paper), but all looks very bland from an orienteering perspective, even the sand dunes between Portland and Nelson (unless there's something hiding closer to the coast?).

C • Nelson 4

C • Millicent sand dunes 1

Robe isn't an especially big council area and doesn't have a lot of roads outside the town itself, so even though I wasn't specifically chasing streets today (except at the end when I was trying to add a bit of extra distance), today's effort still leaves me with more than 5% of the LGA complete - something I've only managed so far for five Melbourne areas.

Taking an extended weekend but switched my plans west rather than east after seeing the Gippsland forecast for this weekend. This meant I'd headed up to Ararat yesterday evening and did a session in the outdoor pool there.

Ararat is a reasonable-sized town, but this pool had features of being properly country - on the one hand I had to track the lifeguard down to find someone to give my money to, on the other hand one of the locals let it be known that they considered my arrival made the pool unacceptably crowded (I was the fourth person there) - at the time I wasn't sure whether this was Covid paranoia or just someone who doesn't like outsiders on their turf but a post-session conversation with the lifeguard pointed to the latter.

The session itself was decent. The pool is showing its age a bit, although not as much as the "children's pool" in the lake in the adjacent Alexandra Gardens, which the sign says was built with the prizemoney from Ararat winning the 1931 Ideal Town contest (presumably a Tidy Towns predecessor). I think the council, who's been putting a bit of money into recreation facilities after the civic embarrassment of being named Australia's fattest town a few years back, puts most of its money into the indoor pool.

Doubled up again but this time running after the pool session (partly because it closed at 9). Not too bad as these things go - back was functioning OK and didn't freak out with a steady uphill over the first kilometre. Lacking a bit in energy, not totally surprising after a hard day yesterday.

Quite a long day on the road today - Ararat to Robe via the Grampians (the strategy here was to cover distance while it was raining and get myself on the west side of the rainband for the rest of the weekend). Got to a few Grampians viewpoints before the rain started, but perhaps the feature of the day was Wannon Falls (west of Hamilton) - I hadn't known this existed until seeing it mentioned on an information sign outside the public toilets in Cavendish. It's undoubtedly more spectacular at high flows in winter and early spring but was still worth a look today.

A hard morning's work. Struggled through the first 20 minutes (with a stop to do something about a toenail that was cutting into an adjacent toe), picked up a bit in the middle, but back was set off by long downhills out of Kew and needed a couple of stops to get it functional again. Probably at its best in the last few minutes. Another humid morning.

I did clear another section of Kew, and have now done everything within the 3km radius on the west side of Princess Street (there's a bit still to be done in that block on the south side outside the 3km mark). Noticed on the memorial next to Kew Junction that it's somewhat optimistically labelled "Raoul Wallenberg 1912-".

This time it only took one day.

Street O at Canterbury. Not a good night - definitely struggling with the back tonight and not able to do much on the hills. Kept looking forward to where the downhill was going to happen but it turned out that most of the downhill was in the last couple of legs. Made a poor job of the route too - someone got a route more than 1km shorter (Maprun exposes this for all to see).

There were lots of signs around expressing local non-enthusiasm at a proposal for a new station car park, the local manifestation of the federal program for funding station car parks (a.k.a. "pork and ride"). Apart from anything else, Canterbury Station has a perfectly good car park already.

C • Car park 2

Had the intention of intervals this morning but was too sleepy, and probably too tight too. I knew that was setting myself up for a difficult evening with 6 1/2 hours of meetings today, so I wasn't surprised that this was a major struggle. Made a token attempt to run fast, quickly decided that wasn't happening, hoped a break might work as it did on Sunday (it didn't) and pressed on, sort of. A bit less difficult in the last 10 minutes but nowhere near the later stages of, say, last Wednesday. Very humid.

Monday morning Pilates. Woke up pretty stiff and tight this morning (especially in the calves) but OK once I was exercising. Not getting any lighter.

I suspected it would be a busy day at work (albeit a truncated one because I was committed to checking sprint weekend venues in the afternoon), once I saw on getting up that some sites 'rain since 9am' was in the 600s. Makes for an interesting backdrop for the release of the latest IPCC report (on impacts and adaptation) tonight, although I suspect the head of the Russian delegation condemning the war during the final approval meeting will get more coverage than anything in the report will.

On to the pool. Not quite as slow as recent morning swims, although felt as if I was fading a bit in the second half.

Another pretty solid month in February - comfortably over 25 hours despite being a shortened month.