Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: Marginata (Australian Middle Distance Champs)
 

Australian Middle Championships at Marginata, the day 2 area from Easter 2003, which means I haven't run on it because I didn't do the long day at Easter 2003 (being in the early stages of a comeback). A bit slow to 1 but hit it well, and also nailed the potentially dangerous 2 before drifting a bit en route to 3, without a lot of time loss. Caught sight of Grant there but he suffered from this week's curse whereby the big guns make mistakes as soon as they catch sight of me (Rob at the prologue, Bruce yesterday); he blasted past me a couple of controls later. Continued to run fairly steadily through the spectator, a bit unsure of myself on 11 but picked it up without major trouble, and then made an annoying 45-seconder at 13, the last technical control. Still a decent run, and my fifth successive top-10 in this event.

My running wasn't too bad, but the front of my right ankle got worse rather than better through the run, unusual for this injury. Not sure I would have finished had it been a long race. Hopefully it sorts itself out reasonably quickly.

And I had a once-a-decade experience afterwards: a drug test. Just as well I didn't have an early plane to catch. (Predictably, as soon as I'd managed to produce enough for a sample, I then produced a lot more as the 2.4 litres I'd drunk made its way through).

Course 1 - Splits

Event: NavDash 5 - Mandurah (Australian Sprint Championships)
 

Australian Sprint Championships, 14th in M21E, 27th combined. A fairly standard sprint run for me. Lacking sharpness early on and lost a few seconds on 1 when I ran to the women's control instead, but gradually built as it went on. I thought I might get caught by one or more of those behind me; Eric was more or less on me by 12 and was just ahead of me at the spectator control. I would have done better had the race started there; the last part was much more technical with an intensity not too far short of southern Europe. I got back ahead of Eric at 20, and then got a jump on Bruce out of 25 - I thought it was a route choice but it turned out that he hadn't been to 24 and had to go back for it (which may explain why he caught me so quickly in the first place).

The juniors showed all of us up today.

Later in the day, I was to witness a violation of the clause in the WA Constitution which requires Dennis Lillee to appear at least once in every commercial break screened within the state. It probably wouldn't have come as too much of a surprise in 1981 to learn that he would still be a marketable commodity 30 years later; it would have come as a surprise that he is now president of the WACA.

Course 1 - Splits

Bridgetown was my starting point this morning, suddenly cool, damp and foggy after an arid week. A fairly ordinary run despite the nice setting, with the showgrounds as my main target (you will be shocked to guess what I went there to look at...). Handled the climb around the middle OK - on a run much less hilly than some here would be - but a bit of front-of-ankle soreness coming back, a driving-overuse injury I'm used to when going long distances without cruise control which normally disappears quite quickly. (The other injury I'm not concerned about is the spectacular-looking but painless shoulder scar, which looks like I attempted to slice my arm off, courtesy of a branch on Saturday).

Local events I've missed out on during my travels: "Jimbo - Australia's Crudest Comedian" (Jurien Bay, next Wednesday), the lizard races near Lake Grace (last Tuesday) and the WA Burnout Championships near Hyden (Queens Birthday weekend). Presumably the qualifying rounds for the last of these take place every Friday and Saturday night in sundry outer suburbs of Perth.

C • We're a classy mob in WA 1

Spent yesterday making my way through the backblocks of the northern wheatbelt, passing through endless dry paddocks (albeit not quite as desperate-looking as around York) and sleepy very small towns, before landing up in Merredin. I had thought that, as the regional centre, it would have a feel of a place larger than its size; instead, it had the feel of a place smaller, much smaller after dark on a Wednesday evening. At the place I ate on Wednesday night (having bypassed the motel restaurant, which evidently thought it was in Karratha and priced accordingly), I was the last customer of the night at 6.45 as the staff were packing up around me. The other options were the pub, and a Chinese place which looked like it hadn't changed since the days when Merredin was the halfway point for the diggers on their way to Kalgoorlie.

This was a decent run, out past Merredin Rock which is one of the region's numerous low bare rock domes, no Achilles issues this morning and got going nicely after the first 10 minutes. Tailed off a little bit at the end but still pretty reasonable.

I didn't remember anything of the place as I was last here in 1977 (I do remember fragments of that trip, in which my parents decided that the completion of the bitumen road across the Nullarbor meant it was a good idea to drive across it with three young kids - and we didn't have in-car DVD players or even tape decks then). It follows that this meant that it was my first training run here, although I did set a potential target for Tooms Two to chase by doing my first long run at the age of 20 months or thereabouts (turning up on the other side of the suburb without any clothes on).

The rest of the day swapped the southern wheatbelt with the northern wheatbelt, swinging past Wave Rock en route (perhaps I should make an entry in the 'you know you're an orienteer when' thread because I was starting to think about the sprint course you could set there). Also might have got an idea for a paper (second time in three Easters) after looking at the Katanning sites, for reasons too complicated to explain here.

C • Wave Rock 2

A circuit of Jurien Bay, where I stayed last night (from the vast numbers of vehicles heading south as I was going north, the population of this area on Monday night was rather greater than it was on Tuesday night) - half of it on the foreshore path, which happened to go past the local weather station (not one of the ones on my list of 112). A windy morning and still quite humid.

My Achilles wasn't any better today than it was yesterday which made the first few minutes hard going, although it warmed up reasonably. (On another injury front, the knee discomfort I had leading into Easter was largely absent during Easter, and has been since). Once settled down it was a standard recovery run which never sparkled.

Now turning inland; I've just whittled my list of remaining sites down to 23 (this log entry is coming to you from the Morawa Telecentre). Not going to Meekatharra though, at least not this time.

A recovery session at the Tooms pool on the way out of town northwards, a little bit later than I'd planned on because the hire car company took 45 minutes to get round to finding a car for me after I turned up.

There's something very pleasant about swimming in an outdoor pool on a warm sunny day (even if sunglare was a minor nuisance - I tried switching sides for breathing but very quickly learned something about the weakness of my left arm and its unsuitability for a leadoff stroke). Not many people there which surprised me a bit for a holiday Tuesday - perhaps late April is too late for people to be in swimming mode. The swim itself was fairly relaxed which was the idea. Achilles quite tight today.

In my early years of elites I used to have a reputation for coming through the field on the last day of Easter (most notably in 1991, when I gained ten places as the field crumbled around me). In recent years I've gained an appreciation of why it was that the opposition found it hard to come up on the last day (although some of the 1991 opposition were fairly enthusiastic day 2.5 participants too).

Warming up was hard initially but in the end this wasn't a bad run physically. Technically, though, was a different story. The first part of the course was in a green area made greener by lots of fallen timber from a January thunderstorm. I was very hesitant on 1 and then missed 2 badly, overestimating how far it was from the gully and wasting a couple of minutes in heavy rock to the south. Didn't quite nail 3 either, and by then I was three or four minutes down and behind the eight-ball. It got better from there with only a couple of very minor technical wobbles; probably at its best through the second green section from 7 to 10, around the time that Simon was going through me. Had to battle a bit through the final uphill sector but I've had worse.

13th was a bit disappointing in the end; I'd hoped for top-10, and might have got close to it without Sunday's no-race, but the first couple of days have given me something to build on. Perhaps I'm turning into a middle-distance specialist in my old age? We'll find out more about that on Sunday.

C • Middle Distance training regime as well? 1

C1 Day 4 - Splits