Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

It was a sunny day in the late autumn of 1991, at a map just to the south-east of Bungendore, ostensibly the ACT Long-O, with mass start, but no-one expected the winning time for a 16km course to be anywhere near two hours. In the blue corner: the dominant Australian orienteer of the time, who was coming off winning Easter by 15 minutes. In the red: a final-year junior who'd had a go at making the WOC team but hadn't quite got there in the Easter trials. The pace was fast and the pack quickly thinned out; by late in the first of two loops, the last remaining competitors had fallen off the back and it was down to two. The first move was made when the younger of the two didn't stop for a drink at the map change, but the 50-metre gap thus obtained was swallowed by the next control, and from there surges were traded to the last control, still with a kilometre run-in to the finish. They hit that control together, but the one big disparity between them was in finishing speed, and that settled it. The 16km had been run in 76; the last 6 in 26, the last kilometre in 3.15 (at least by the winner).

It took me another year to claim Jock's scalp for the first time (bizarrely, at an ACT badge event the morning after my 21st), but Turallo Creek 1991 will always rank high on my list of career highlights - and certainly the best head-to-head duel.

22 years later and a couple of kilometres to the north-east, we once again went out together on the second leg of the relays. Turallo 1991 this wasn't - our kilometre rates were roughly double this time (and only half of that could be attributed to the terrain). This time round Jock was significantly faster and the only reason it stayed a contest for two-thirds of the course was that he lost more time at 2 than I did at 1.

I took the straight-over-the-top route on the long first leg, taking my cue from Simon Uppill's post-race interview where he said it was clearly the fastest option, but I'm not sure that that was the case for my control, which was six contours lower than the other split; I would, I think, have been better off minimising climb, if only for the sake of not throwing my back at such a challenge first up. (In any case I lost a minute on the control, once again having trouble telling the difference between big and small rock). That was my last navigational time loss of any consequence - although I was pretty unsure going into 7 and was saved by seeing the flag and others punching it - but was plodding throughout, and didn't run anywhere near as much of the hill into 9 as I would have liked. Went out thinking I didn't have a hope of getting us through inside the mass start, and I didn't, but the 15-minute delay to it meant I wasn't far away. Simon Rouse had a decent run to bring us home in 10th. Ribs a non-issue today, at least outwardly, although there was still some intuitive tentativeness, I'm sure.

RELAY M21E - Splits

Event: Australian Middle Distance/Relay Championships
 

Australian Middle Championships. Was vaguely encouraged by yesterday's run but only to the point that I was reasonably confident I would get around the course, which is not the same as expecting to do it with any great speed or strength. As it turned out I was sort-of-reasonable in the rough stuff, but the ribs hurt whenever it came time to go faster (i.e. downhill, and going around the bottom from 18 to 19).

Dropped about 45 seconds going wide and a little low on 2, a control which seemed to give a lot of people trouble. Briefly caught David Brownridge there but Nick Hann caught us, and David could make use of that and I couldn't - never saw him again. Settled down after that, although never quite got the hang of which rocks were mapped as big rocks and which ones weren't. Some hesitations going around the big slopes, and wasn't sure of myself climbing into 19, but not really something I'd describe as a mistake. Spent a few legs with Nic Cherry, who'd obviously lost a lot of time early (he did 80) but was moving all right while I could see him, and was also with Tracy for a bit.

Ended up a bit below halfway, which I can live with (though a long way from the points - it's nice to see a field of 76, counting the juniors), and in the middle of the old men's bunch also featuring Liggo and Hoggster. (Greg Barbour was a bit further back despite his pre-start sledging - I threatened to start mentioning the America's Cup if he kept at it).

Oz Middle Course 1 - Splits

Headed out around the bottom of Aranda Hill and Black Mountain with Bruce and GrantM after the OA high performance workshop. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have considered this a great run - having to work fairly hard on the hills even with the short distance - but the good news was that the ribs have eased to minor-irritation level (still remains to be seen whether this will still be the case in the terrain tomorrow, but I feel more confident than I would have yesterday).

The workshop (which involved an AIS facilitator taking us through an athlete pathway "health check") was something of an eye-opener - we have a lot of areas where we have considerable room for improvement, but we also have a lot of good ideas for doing something about it. (As always, finding the people and the money to implement all of those good ideas will be part of the challenge).

Thought it was about time that I got a second opinion on my back and associated issues, so took advantage of the opportunity to see Cathy while I was in Canberra. She thinks that the real underlying issue is instability in my pelvis on the right side (which makes sense) and that everything else is a flow-on consequence of that. We'll see over the next couple of months whether the plan to do something about that works. (She was also of the view that my ribs were merely badly bruised and there wasn't torn cartilage, but it's still taking its time recovering).

I wasn't sure what things would be like in the pool (for that matter I wasn't sure how the belt would work as the place where it goes still has lots of very visible, if not especially painful, bruising). As it turned out it was basically OK, suggesting that it's mainly the impact on the ground that is generating pain in the ribs. That's probably not going to help me much this weekend, though.

And, of course, a pool in Canberra is an obvious place for someone from Melbourne to run into their cousin from Perth....

A short jog around Aranda late in the day, squeezed in between work and the Schools dinner, to see if my body was functioning again. The answer is that it's a bit better than the weekend but still pretty ordinary - still feels like I have a permanent stitch.

The Schools relays again went well (and as a Victorian by adoption, I was pleased to see them win for the first time since 2004). The weather wasn't quite as wild today as it had been on Tuesday but it was still pretty breezy. I wasn't responsible for the greatest commentary innovation of the day - Brodie (who was our equivalent of football's boundary rider) interviewed Victorian reserve Sam Hasell while he was running the spectator leg for a composite team.

I also had the pleasure of doing the sort-of-after-dinner speech at the Schools presentation dinner. In between some serious stuff, I thought this audience was a good opportunity to pass on some of the (not involving misbehaviour) tales of Schools trips past, so they got to hear of episodes such as the spectacularly unreliable SA bus (1989), some of the epic pizza-eating feats of 1990s juniors, the 2001 post-Ansett WA bus trip and the Kiandra snowball fight with SA, and the 2004 lightning-blasted cow.

It's been a pretty hectic couple of days - at events in the mornings and working in the afternoons (and deep into the evenings). Somewhat to my frustration, the report I've been working on hasn't seen the light of day yet, but hopefully it will soon.

Schools individual day today. In a normal training week I'd probably just about have thought about going out today but thought I'd give it one more day - would have struggled to find a timeslot in any case in a day where I was juggling Schools commentary and lots of work balls in the air - the final September number came in even higher than I was anticipating. Finally drew stumps sometime around 11pm (as I did last night).

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.