Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

I'll be doing a bit of acquainting myself with running routes in my new neighbourhood soon enough, but this morning was about acquainting myself with someone else's new neighbourhood - a morning session with Jenny from their new place in Clarence Gardens, up to Brown Hill Creek, then down more or less parallel to it (including a certain amount of posh real estate). Also took in a complex rail/road/footpath underpass of the sort that makes for interesting sprint challenges (if mapped properly). Predictably slow early on but certainly not as hard work as is often the case on Easter Tuesday.

Also on this route was Orphanage Park, the feature after which it's named having long since ceased to exist. The 1937 map of Adelaide (if I'm not mistaken, one originally salvaged from a Bureau of Meteorology scrapheap; maybe moving will be my impetus to sort the other several hundred maps I still have from the same source) that's framed and hanging up in their house entrance contains a number of other features that you won't find these days, including a Consumptives Hospital and a Reformatory.

Plan for the rest of the day was to drop into our Adelaide office in the morning and then drive home in the afternoon/evening - had tentative plans of going for a swim in Horsham but spent more time at the office than planned (thanks in part to the discovery of 30 years of 19th century temperature data for Adelaide which I'd previously thought had been lost) and didn't get home until 11.30 as it was. Long drive but not terribly hard until the last hour. One for the "what will they think of next" department - a pub in Horsham does drive-thru parmas.

C • Goodwood Orphanage 2

Last day of Easter - certainly feeling a lot better for not having done 16km the day before. Still a bit slow out of the start as evidenced by the fact that Ellen Currie (W14) was outrunning me to the start triangle and to her first control which was on my straight line (perhaps this got her a bit too excited because she lost 8 minutes on her second). Not 100% smooth on the first couple but got them more or less OK, and then settled reasonably well, apart from 7 where I thought I wasn't quite far enough along but decided to check the flag I saw anyway just to be sure (not much time lost there). Ran the long 10th fairly straight, went round the top on 11 which was a good move, and reasonably strong for the last big climb on 15, but wobbled a bit in the erosion stuff in the big gully from there to the finish - lost a bit of time on both 16 and 17 (16 through drifting wide, 17 through not noticing the control was above the cliff part of the gully) - not huge amounts though.

Did the necessary, finishing 3.30 ahead of Dion on the day, and 8 minutes ahead overall (first time for 17 years I've taken part in an Easter presentation, other than in the capacity of giving speeches or announcing JWOC teams). Would have been good to have had a bit more opposition and I presume I will in October; Bruce would certainly have beaten me comfortably (his elite results might encourage him to run that in the long after all), and I think the likes of Jase and Andy would have given me a strong run for my money at the very least. Kilometre rates suggest Ecmo would also have been some distance ahead; we're in the same age group next year so will find out more then.

The events generally went off very well; it's not the most technical of terrain but was generally enjoyable (today, with lots of moderately subtle gully-spur but no really vague flat stuff, was the pick of the three), and the organisation went off without obvious hitches - not bad considering that two of the three areas were a plan B after the Wirrabara fire in early 2014.

Day 3 Course 5 - Splits

Spoilt an otherwise good run with a mistake on the third-last in the vague stuff - drifted down the hill and came in underneath a creek junction, which then meant that I found myself too far over. Dropped about 2.5-3 minutes there, which was enough to cost me the win on the day as Dion had an excellent run (although we were close most of the way - indeed we were tied at controls 12 and 13).

I actually thought I might have had a bit more in hand than that because otherwise I felt quite a bit better than yesterday, and when taking the no-guts-no-glory option on the hilly 8, felt as strong as I've felt up a big hill for a long time. Still have what should be a reasonably comfortable lead (4.44) going into the last day, as long as I don't do anything stupid. Dion starts 4 minutes after me, but I don't intend to try the strategy of waiting for him and staying on his back for the rest of the course.

It's actually an unusual experience for me to be leading into the last day of an Easter. I've won four, all in juniors, but three of them were coming from behind after two days (two by seconds, one by 9 minutes). One of them was M20 here in 1990, when Ant Burnett was about 15 seconds ahead of me after two days, and was none too impressed that the start draw had me two minutes behind him. On that day you ran some distance from the 6-minute pre-start to where the maps were, and he took the opportunity to swap his top over so I wouldn't know what I was chasing. As it turned out, I never saw him, but gained enough ground (a minute or so) to take the win anyway. (No splits in those days - I suspect a lot of ground might have been made up at the end). Pity Ant isn't here to renew the contest, although he's a year older than me so would have been in M45 in any case.

Day 2 Course 5 - Splits

It's a quarter of a century since I last fronted up on Easter Saturday to run anything other than M21E (coincidentally, last time was at exactly the same venue). It was a bit of a culture shock not to have a middle-distance day today (that part wasn't quite a quarter-century ago - my first couple of 21E Easters had three days of similar distance), and to have to check what course number I was running - although last year's WMOC debacle made me careful of that at least (Tara was today's victim in the wrong-course-number department).

I started last of the four M40s. It's also a bit of a culture shock to go into a race as a warm favourite (the last time I can think of this happening was probably the NT Championships in 2009). The other three, Greg, Dion and Tate, are all good enough to be competitive but I'd expect to beat them on a good day. Fairly steep on the first few and didn't feel that fast, and drifted a little of 4 (no real time lost though), but settled down quite well after catching Dion at 5. For the next few we had a nice scrap - he was running a bit faster but didn't have quite the same flow, especially at controls - until an elegantly-executed drop manouevre at 11 (a while since I've done one of those) as he missed it to the left. Caught sight of both Tate and Greg on the long 14, but then lost time there in my only significant miss of the day, hitting the creek a bit high and thinking I'd hit low, dropping 90 seconds or so. Clean the rest of the way and got Tate at the end, though just behind Greg (on the ground). Between 4.15 and 6 minutes ahead of the rest of the field which is probably close to a par result.

Today will be remembered, apart from the orienteering, for the copious quantities of dust - I will need to ask my colleagues in remote sensing when I get back whether the dust cloud along the road was visible from outer space. Late in the day I assisted in providing some muscle power to help extricate a car which was stuck in its parking spot. We got it out and then noticed that the rear wheels weren't moving; it turned out that the driver (who shall remain nameless) had forgotten to disengage the handbrake.

C • Dust cloud 2

Day 1 Course 5 - Splits

Event: 2015 Australian Three Days
 

Easter prologue at Jamestown. It was a bit of a battle just to get a run in this race (a long story that I'll let others tell if they want to), so I didn't want to embarrass myself by coming last or close to it - something I thought was a real risk in a sprint I expected to be a running race. (Jenny and I explored for sprint areas here two years ago on the way back from the outback and didn't find a lot we thought promising).

Didn't feel super-sharp at the beginning, but got into it as the race went on. Gradually pulled in the Hong Kong runner a minute in front of me and had caught him by 8 (whereupon he was one of, I suspect, many to infringe on a poorly defined OOB area), then settled into a nice pace and generally didn't do anything silly until the school section - a reasonably technical finish to the run. Had my only time loss there, aiming to exit 21 through a southern gap which didn't exist (maybe 10 seconds?), but generally contented with the way it went - although the gap to the big guns is a bit scary. A virtually identical result to UNSW in terms of time behind the winners, ending up about 2/3 of the way down the field.

The course made the most of an unpromising area, and putting us into the most technical bits at the end caught a few people out.

And I knew Clive Palmer's mineral businesses were struggling a bit with low commodity prices, but perhaps he's fallen further than I thought, because Clive Palmer Photography and Framing is to be found on Jamestown's main street - not exactly a bustling place on Good Friday. (The bakery, missing a massive opportunity, is closed all weekend, but at least the supermarket was open, which provided a banana-acquisition opportunity).

C • Bakery 2

Elite Prologue Course 1 - Splits

Got this under my belt before an earlyish start at work (with the plan of an early getaway to SA - albeit not quite as early as I'd planned as the Etihad Stadium car park now doesn't give you the early bird rate if you leave before 1.30pm, so going at 12.30 as per my original plan would have cost an extra $22). Started well and truly in the dark, and not many other people around. Seemed to be working pretty well.

Oddity of the week: during school holidays, the morning traffic is much lighter than usual in the suburbs, but as bad as ever near the central city.

Broke up the road trip with a quick stretch-the-legs out jaunt up Mt. Wycheproof, advertised as the "world's smallest mountain" (43 metres above the town). The mountain will be known to those of you who've been around for a while as being the place where Jim won the annual race up it several times - the degree of difficulty being increased considerably by the fact that you had to do it carrying a 60-odd kilo bag of wheat on your shoulders. (Judging by my conversations in the shops afterwards, Jim's exploits are still remembered in these parts). Perhaps not surprisingly, the race became a casualty of insurance issues in the early 2000s.

I didn't have any bags of wheat to carry (although I guess I could have hauled my pack up if I'd really wanted to). Back was a bit tight which was expected given I'd been sitting in a car for three hours, but definitely better for having done this (thanks Hanny for the tip).

Despite the story which appeared on the Age website to that effect on April 1, there was no sign of any work to erect a giant statue of Peta Credlin (a local girl) on the top of the mountain.

The trip up was a bit slower than I'd hoped (including three stops in 800 metres in Charlton - one to buy a chair, one for a phone call and one for a random breath test). Some of the things spotted en route included a sign advertising a Thai restaurant in Korong Vale (prominent, alongside Licola and Lima South, in a discusson on my log a few years back on the subject of the biggest backwater in Victoria), and another sign noting that a certain street was the Leading Garden Street in Nullawil, an honour not contested by an especially large field as Nullawil only has about four streets. (I also suspect the 16-room motel for sale in Sea Lake probably costs less than the house I've just bought in Fairfield).

In Renmark tonight.

C • Lima South 5

Not terribly awake this morning, for a jaunt which initially took me along the Yarra in the approaching dawn (this featured the sighting of a wombat), then up into Macleod (no wombats there). Haven't been getting enough sleep lately but will hopefully be able to do something about that tomorrow night (not while I'm on the road).