Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

AWOC club championships on the map on the west side of Kangaroo Crossing - this is much more open than Kangaroo Crossing, but also steep and rocky (and the rockiness isn't as well mapped as it is on the other side of the road). Didn't have much energy through this (perhaps I was a bit ambitious yesterday), starting with not running terribly much of the big climb on the first 2 1/2 legs. Started to settle a bit but then had a bad patch, losing time on 9, 10 and 12 (although mapping issues contributed to the first two of these). A bit better to finish off. Tash did 50.

I then swapped my summer gear (and orienteering gear) for winter gear and headed for the airport - once again for Geneva (only a week this time). It will be a rather more sodden Geneva than I'm used to seeing it, with over 250mm rain in the last 2 1/2 weeks.

In northeast Victoria for the weekend (the pretext being the AWOC club championships tomorrow). Today started with my parkrun debut at Yackandandah (yes, I've managed to avoid them until now) - Jenny, who's travelling with me, was keen so I thought I might as well give it a go. Planned to do it at training pace but got dragged along by the field a bit; faster in the second half (as evidenced by a negative split despite it being net uphill). Felt ordinary early on but a faster time than I would have expected at this level of intensity. (One of these days I'll need to race one of these properly; based on what I was doing at the WMOC sprint I suspect 23-24 is probably a realistic target if/when I do so).

This run told me something I already knew, which is that Jenny runs down hills faster than me but I run up hills faster (I caught her with about 1km to go). I didn't quite manage to catch the man running in Essendon pyjamas (not the most oddball bit of club merchandise I've heard of - I once got an e-mail inviting me to purchase a Dyson Heppell garden gnome).

C • 1

Next stop was a training course Rowdy Flat. Rowdy Flat is one of the most technically difficult areas in Australia. It certainly isn't made any easier by the fact that many of the MTB tracks have faded or disappeared altogether (there's also some more green in the western half). It also wasn't made any easier by running on Leigh Privett's original map - things are in the right place, but it's a very different style and hard to simplify. It took me three controls to have much of a clue about what I was doing; from there it wasn't too bad navigationally, but this is very slow terrain to get through and running remotely fast was a rarity. A fun experience, but in its current form this is probably a bit too extreme to be doing competitive races on (I don't think it's been used, except maybe for AWOC club events, for about 10 years?).

Had a nice lunch at Stanley and some local exploring, including Stanley's mountain, and my first visit to Mount Pilot since the snowed-off event of 2000. The area grew back thickly after a 2003 fire and as far as I know hasn't been used since; looking at it now, it's not unrunnable, but parts of still pretty thick and with so many other options around I don't think anyone is going to be in a rush to bring it back.

C • Rowdy Flat map 1

Morning session at Fitzroy. Slightly disconcerted to see on the door of the pool a sign "Caution: Swooping Bird" (it's getting a bit late in the year for these, I thought) but the bird in question was absent this morning.

It's the first time I've ridden in a week: my hand is still not quite 100%, but is no longer significantly painful riding over bumps, so that's a definite plus.

Longish run from home, with Jenny for the first 25 minutes down the Darebin Creek path, then southwards into Kew, with a long climb to the central ridge then some ups and downs before coming back. Felt pretty good once warmed up and was particularly happy with the way I handled the main climb, although again struggle a bit after the big downhill (not as far to go afterwards this time though). A bit slower than I would have expected but generally happy with this.

Turned out that $20 million for the house at control #16 last night was a considerable underestimate.

C • Wrought Iron Gate 1

Street-O at Burnley. I think I've run on this map once before but not for a long time; it was once very familiar territory because the masseur I went to for several years was based there (I got to know Lisa Weightman because for most of that time she had the timeslot before me). It also used to be where Channel 9 was headquartered, a premises I last visited in the early 2010s to do what was supposed to be an interview with Al-Jazeera (I say 'supposed' because I got gazumped, as became apparent when I heard the words come through the headphones 'and now we have our first pictures from the scene of the blast in Beirut').

This is quite a small map but is split in half by the river (the Hawthorn side plays host to some very posh real estate - I'm not sure exactly how much the house that #16 was outside is worth but suspect you wouldn't see much if any change out of $20 million). This can make for some route choice challenges - I felt as if I had a few too many ins and outs but couldn't see many better options (although it looks like Ricky did). Running fairly similar to last Wednesday. #19 wasn't on the described feature which was annoying, although I probably only dropped 30 seconds or so.

A rare-these-days excursion to Ivanhoe because it fitted in better with the logistics for the rest of the morning (it will become rarer soon, with Northcote reopening in a couple of weeks). Nothing to get too excited about and back felt a bit tight at times on the turns, but no great dramas.

The date being what it was, the music for aqua aerobics had a certain theme (it was 'Werewolves of London' as I was leaving). Fairfield seemed to be a particular centre of action this year, or maybe it's just that I'm not usually home as early in the evening as I was today.

South Wharf intervals. A similar time spread to last week but instead of being 68s into the wind and 64s with it, it was 68s at the start and 64s at the end (which is far more typical of an intervals session for me) - there was wind about but it was a southwesterly, which this strip is pretty sheltered from. Felt fairly reasonable by the standards of these.

Warm-up and down. Felt reasonable coming back (a Strava segment PB back across the bridge may be indicative of this).

Got a decent amount of volume under my belt for this month, considering it included a race week and a hospital visit. Probably won't quite match last year, partly because of the amount of travel (which is far from done with for this year).

First full session with the new Pilates routine, so still learning my way around some of the exercises (and taking a bit of time to do so). A bit more demanding than the last set but perhaps not as much so as I'd anticipated with the first try last week. Calves didn't come up too badly this morning, considering how tight they were last night.

Having scared a lot of others off the MFR run with warnings of heavy rain (as it turned out, the heaviest rain slipped just south of Melbourne and the model forecast of 11mm between 4 and 7 turned out to be an order of magnitude too high), I went out at lunchtime instead, targeting the CBD because I thought this was a day when I'd need a run with some breaks (which are inevitable on the CBD run). The run didn't work out too badly as it happened - certainly better than I was expecting. Didn't seem to be as much pedestrian congestion as usual, my GPS only teleported me across tall buildings a couple of times, and I completed the last two of the major east-west streets in the CBD grid (Bourke and Lonsdale) - still a lot of the north-south ones to come, and that's before we start on the laneways.

This route took me past the old (pre-2004) Bureau office and was a chance to look at what's still there and what isn't. Part of the church hall next door is being demolished (presumably they decided the land was too valuable). My strongest memory of that establishment is that it was used as a polling place for the East Timor independence referendum, and thus had long and joyous lines of local East Timorese waiting to (presumably) vote yes. (Voting for foreign elections sometimes happens in some oddball places - the Democrats held voting for their 2008 presidential primary in a Queensberry Street pub, where I suspect the cheap parmas were getting as many votes as Barack or Hillary).