Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Pool running session at Ivanhoe. This isn't a favoured venue for me for this because the deep end is small, but the company is good - topics of conversation today included Brent Stanton's junior football career and people famous and infamous who live locally. (I already knew about Mick Gatto, and presume the Energy Watch guy is also a local because his court appearances have been in Heidelberg Magistrates').

I was a bit concerned about the trip to Newcastle, because the Jetstar website gave a rather cryptic error message when I tried to check in online, which I thought could mean one of four things: (a) there was a problem with the website, (b) the flight was going to be cancelled, (c) I was going to get bumped from the flight or (d) I'd been allocated to an exit row. Bruce had the same problem, rang up and found out that the answer was (d). I'm at the airport waiting for the flight now - so far listed as 10 minutes late but as the incoming flight is 40 minutes late I'm guessing that that might be optimistic.

And an e-mail came in today from 12 co-signatories (including one Senator Bernardi) asking for a copy of all data, documentation and computer code relating to the new temperature data set. The fun begins...

C • Is there any evidence 1

A run of two halves, although not the way it usually happens for me - normally this takes the form of a slow first half and a good second half, but today it was the reverse, accentuated by the fact that the run was done in two loops. The first loop was done with Jenny (who stayed with me last night) and was pretty good, heading out through Viewbank while it was still dark and then hitting the singletracks of Banyule Flats (still pretty muddy) at first light. I then went on on my own on a western loop and promptly felt flat and uninspired; thought the long descent to Darebin Creek might get me going again but it didn't. Never as much of a struggle as the last 30 minutes last week, though.

Got home and Jenny was still waiting outside the front door; the spare key I'd given her didn't work. Oops....

Again cramped on the bike coming home, which is a bit of a worry (at least from the viewpoint of 18+ kilometres on Sunday).

A run which had its good patches but mostly nothing to get excited about - route mainly confirmed the non-existence of some long-standing gaps between buildings in the surrounds of La Trobe University. A very warm morning for this time of year (certainly in marked contrast with what's coming up this weekend - as well that we're in Newcastle and not Orange).

Cramped on the bike on the way in, for no obvious reason.

I noted that Canberra Raiders coach David Furner was fined $10,000 by the NRL for criticising referees this week. They do things differently in Spanish football, as this account of last weekend's Granada-Real Madrid match indicates.

Made one of my occasional forays into Wednesday night street-O in winter (as much as anything, to carry out a test of my light, which seems to work pretty well). Going at cruise speed but still thought when we started, given that we weren't going south of the freeway (as is normally the case at Tunstall Junction), that we would get the lot easily - but it was a pretty convoluted course with numerous long in-and-outs, and it wasn't until the last three or four controls that I was sure of making it. Did a rather different route to most people (getting 7 and 8 after 17 and then coming back in for a loop 2-1-18) - will be interested to see how it worked out. Felt smooth, although a bit tired on some of the later hills.

Came across this in the course of today:

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2012/05/08/the-fastest-mi...

It's an account of a court case from 1973 in which a Grenfell man was appealing against a one-month jail sentence for assault, arising out of an incident in which he found his wife in bed with the local milkman. The appeal judge took the view that the milkman deserved everything he got and reduced the penalty to a fine of 20 cents, a trifling sum even by 1973 standards.

The reason this particularly took my attention was that one of the protagonists shares a surname with one of my friends from kinder and Grade 1, whose father (quotation marks possibly required) was the local Aranda milkman, a creature which still existed in 1976-77. Possibly he had a more interesting family history than I'd suspected as an innocent six-year-old.

I wasn't terribly awake this morning. I'm not sure exactly what the right session is for such circumstances, but I'm fairly sure that a set of 400s isn't it. Nevertheless, I persisted in the hope that I might wake up eventually, which I sort of did in the last couple of reps. Not a session I'll be especially proud of though - finally ended up doing 82s.

Warm up/down for the intervals session.

Started the day's proceedings with a swim at Fitzroy - reasonably routine, ahead of a plunge-straight-back-into-it day at work (four meetings scheduled, although two were cancelled).

Also got to digest the Tio-Mila results properly. Good to see Cassie reminding us that when she isn't injured she's a good orienteer (even if the status of her not being injured occurs about as often as 20-degree March days in Oslo).

Monday night from Jasmine's place in Brunswick. Had planned that this would be the place where I would give the first test to the Norway-acquired headlamp, but I forgot one minor detail - the charger has a European plug - so this will need to wait for some other time. Didn't feel great on this run, not having much pace on the occasions when pace was called for.

Some discussion post-run of the state of various European economies, and more on various bands of modern history and whose generation had crushes on which ones - the age spread of this run meant that this extended from Sherbet (Nicola) to Hanson (Ilka and Jas).

C • Nostalgia for teens 1

Victorian Sprint Championships, 6th. At Haileybury College in Keysborough, a reasonably conventional campus-style area with some complex buildings in three sections interspersed with flat open sections across ovals. Thought the area might be a bit small but it was just big enough to contain the course - you really need a school with both a junior and senior campus (as Haileybury has) to get enough area on school grounds.

Put in a decent effort suggesting that things are continuing to improve a bit - haven't been as close as 1.30 to the front of a sprint for a while (although I don't think Bryan had a brilliant run). Only one very slight wobble, on 6, and that was only worth a few seconds. Clearly I was running at the same speed as Eddie - at no point after #5 were we separated by more than 3 seconds (his eventual margin over me). Jim was also very close to us before a late time loss - indeed as of #13 there was a four-way dead-heat featuring the three of us and Matt Schepisi.

After the run (with a brief detour via a well-known Swedish business to get some lunch) it was on to a review session of the Victorian ALP environment policy committee (much of which consisted of replacing statements in policy documents which said that in its fourth term the Brumby Government will do X). I got there just in time to deal with the section on human interactions with stock and domestic animals (not the sort of interactions that certain ACT-based football teams have been known to get involved in).

Course 1 - Splits

My non-night owl tendencies meant that I missed a bit of excitement in Noumea; a few of my colleagues who stayed around longer than I did after dinner had the dubious pleasures of seeing someone apparently deliberately run down (they're still alive as far as we know). We'll have to wait for Monday's local paper for the full story but I'm led to believe that the full story may well give us a chance to find out what the French is for "the victim was well known to police".

Not a great one to finish off in Noumea. Felt as if there was still some hangover from Thursday, particularly early on when quads were still a bit sore. That eased up in the first 10 minutes but the rest of the run was pretty sluggish, too. Seemed to be more humid than on previous days (and the wind direction was northeast rather than east), but that may have been just my imagination.

At the airport now; back in Australia tonight (all being well, although we're going to be late leaving because Noumea doesn't have the world's most efficient airport: 90 minutes of queueing for check-in, immigration and security).