Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Did seem to have improved somewhat today but no point in pushing things too hard in a race week - Ezy (who had what appears to have been a similar injury) noted significant improvement around the 10-day mark so I'm hoping the same is the case with mine.

A lot of today was devoted to keeping track of all the September temperature records broken in Australia this month (haven't counted them all up yet, but 700 will do as a first guess). In between I went to the Schools and Capital-O opening ceremony, which had an impressively high-powered turnout, once we'd actually found it (I've been to the outside of the Girls Grammar campus plenty of times on dropping-off-little-sister duties but don't think I've ever actually been inside). Guest of honour was ACT minister Shane Rattenbury (Canberra is a small town moment #3981: Shane was a year below me at school), much better known outside the ACT for altercating with a kangaroo while running a few months back than for any of his political activities - he's certainly the only member of the ACT Legislative Assembly ever to get coverage in the Washington Post.

At times when my mind was wandering in school geography classes it would sometimes turn to the ACT 1:100000 topographic map on the classroom wall. The shape of the ACT is such that a rectangular sheet which incorporates all of the ACT also incorporates a fair bit of country outside the ACT, especially to the south-east, and I'd always been fascinated by the south-eastern corner of it, remote country well off the beaten track which we only ever went to once (exiting the 1987 Australian Relays through Jerangle, on the way to Cooma and Jindabyne where we were next headed) - contours with four-digit numbers on them, and stretches of bush in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not sure if Slap Up Creek quite makes it onto the ACT 1:100000 - Jerangle certainly does - but it's at the very least close to it. It promised to be, and was, a nice area, and one that I was very much looking forward to prior to last weekend. By midweek I knew the best I could hope for might be to jog around the course, and yesterday suggested that even that was going to be a struggle, especially as I suspected the ribs would give me more grief with the extra jolting in terrain. Nevertheless, I thought I'd at least start, trying to tell myself that if Dermott Brereton could play two hours of a Grand Final with broken ribs then I could orienteer for a similar length of time with bruised ones. (Perhaps a crucial difference is that orienteering has no equivalent of resting in the forward pocket).

For the first four controls, in country which was either open or relatively flat or both, I was functioning sort of OK, although not able to stretch out, and with a feeling somewhat like a permanent stitch. Started to struggle much more on the steeper slope across to 5. The configuration of the course made 5 a bit of a decision point, but I thought I'd at least see if there was some improvement on the flatter first half of 5-6. There wasn't, and I decided that that was going to be that. 20-25 was a logical set of controls to get on the way home (and one consolation was that I did spike all of the controls I did get), but it was very slow going by then - as demonstrated by the various people (mostly considerably older than me) who blew me away downhill in the open. Crossing fences was also a major problem as I couldn't bend properly.

This year I've been drifting towards the decision that this will be my last year running elite at championship level as I've become uncompetitive at that level, but this is not the note I want to go out on (and the M40 field next year in WA probably won't have many other than the locals), so maybe I'll give it one last shot? Depends a lot on what sort of summer I can put together.

Definitely a well-run event on a nice area, and the Jerangle Public School produced the second-best food item I've eaten at post-event catering (behind only the time I ran a course in Italy which finished outside a mountain restaurant).

C • Food review detail please? 3

C • WA Locals 1

C • Commentary 3

LONG Course 1 - Splits

Event: Australian Sprint/Long Distance Championships
 

Jogged round turning sprint controls on before the start of the event. Didn't feel particularly comfortable - I'll start tomorrow, but in the absence of any improvement, 15km is going to be a long way...

Everything was in the right place (just a couple of bits of additional taping of out-of-bounds areas which needed doing), which set the stage for an event which seemed to go pretty well. If the spectator control (which I'd thought beforehand was pretty straightforward) was anything to go by, there was a lot of interesting decision-making going on out there - we tried to make it as intense as we could. Biggest problems were that the finish banner collapsed in high winds, and that the last control-to-finish leg was too short (the newest generation of SI sticks can't cope with legs under 5 seconds, and some people were doing it in 4). Hit the target pretty nicely with the winning times too.

Definitely enjoyed the day - very much felt as if I was on familiar territory, whether it was doing some of the commentary from our regular lunch hang-out spot in Years 10 to 12, the line-up of unclaimed pencil cases in the window of the front office (some of them might well have been there for 25 years), or there being a control at the spot where many of my early training runs started from (the one at the top of the stairs just before the spectator was next to where my locker was for my last few years). Dragged out my rather-the-worse-for-wear Burgess House 1988 T-shirt for the occasion (somewhat to my surprise I could still get into it, more or less).

(And the previous map of the area on display on the noticeboard was my 1984 Year 8 project. Definitely not ISSOM).

Improving in very small increments. Probably would have tried to go out if there had been a race today, but there wasn't so I didn't. Quite a busy day, with bits of work in between a meeting with the Sports Commission, an ASADA-hosted lunch (with lots of scary figures - relating to the percentage of them which contain undeclared banned substances - for anyone who's thinking about taking any supplements) and going out to check the state of progress at Grammar in the late afternoon.

More very gradual progress, although did manage to cope with running a couple of hundred metres for a bus - enough to give me some confidence that I'll start on the weekend (although not enough to give me confidence that it will be an especially pleasant experience).

I may or may not have mentioned here that one of the complications in event planning for Saturday is that Friday is the last day for Year 12s. Competitors should note that any teachers' cars which have been temporarily relocated to the middle of courtyards have not been mapped.

(Stop press: I've just heard that among the casualties of today's storm was a mapped distinctive tree in reasonably close proximity to a control site).

Started to feel a bit better during the course of today after a couple of days of not much apparent progress, which makes me a little more optimistic about being able to front on the weekend than I was this time yesterday. Still plenty of anti-photogenic areas of yellow on my chest....

In sprint news, it looks like we've managed to acquire a couch for the "hot seat" on Saturday, which may or may not be something to look forward to if you're in front.

C • 1

Headed up to Canberra tonight - I'm doing a talk up there on Thursday, and it was good to be up a bit early anyway so I can do things like check Saturday's maps.

I've sometimes mused as to whether iTunes shuffle mode has a selector for geographically appropriate songs - if so it was certainly working last night, pulling out Killing Heidi's 'Weir" as I went past Violet Town and Boom Crash Opera's "Great Wall" on the way into Albury (the great wall in question is the Hume Weir). I have recently been contemplating a possible soundtrack to my 112 temperature sites and have tentative thoughts for about half of them. Some are pretty obvious ("Blue Sky Mining" for Wittenoom), some are linked to how I came to be there ("Many Rivers To Cross" for Kalumburu), and some will make no sense whatsoever unless you were there (you had to be on the 1996 Victorian Schools trip to understand the connection between "One Night in Bangkok" and Eddystone Point). If anyone feels like making suggestions the site list is here.

C • Snowtown - Roll Out The Barrel 5