Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Victorian Spring Series at Eppalock, an area where I once hoped to get kilometre rates starting with a 4. Those days are long behind me now but my target today was to get one starting with a 7. I didn't quite manage that, because this run was a bit below par both physically and technically. Made a classic parallel error on #7 but got out of it with probably only 1-1.5 minutes lost (and bizarrely this was my equal-best split place of the day, although the way today's split places worked was that I was 7th most of the time and 6th when Callum made a mistake); smaller misses at #13 (ran to the wrong control on the next spur, but this was almost aiming off) and a bit of a wobble on the last too. Not terribly strong up the hills either. Simon Rouse won with 52, but there were quite a few I'd have expected to be faster who either weren't there or (in Bruce's case) got injured en route.

At least my performance in the morning wasn't as bad as that of my football team in the afternoon.

1 - Splits

Randomness seems to be sending me to the corners of my chosen area of late; after a couple of weeks in the outer east, this time it was as far southwest as you can get, map 53 (Laverton and Altona Meadows). Not quite completely untrodden territory for me but close to it; my last outing here was a Tuesday night street-O in early 2012.

The first mission was to pick up a couple of streets in the tiny corner of the City of Wyndham that comes on to the southwest corner of this map (there's more in the northwest but that's an industrial area with appealing street names like Demolition Court). Once that was done, and I'd passed through an area which has changed a fair bit as a result of a level crossing removal, I ran some controls from the 2012 event before returning to my starting point. This was quite a decent run, not as good as Sunshine three weeks ago, but flowing reasonably well from 2k onwards. Sunnier and warmer morning than expected (ahead of a spectacular hailstorm back home in the afternoon).

(There are now only 5047 streets remaining to collect in Wyndham, a number which will probably have increased by a few hundred at least by the time I'm next out here. The only two greater Melbourne local government areas I haven't yet registered streets in are Hume, which is only a matter of time, and Cardinia, which will need a specific trip because it doesn't get onto the first 100 maps - in fact I think the only time I've run on its territory at all was the end of the Puffing Billy race the year I did it).

Laverton's taken a bit of a step up in the decade since I was last here; there are still plenty of rundown fibro places, but also a reasonable number of new builds (and more on the way), particularly in places which are within 10 minutes' walk of a station and not next to the freeway. Got a bit of a surprise with my chosen start/finish spot, which turned out to be outside a church with a sign bearing the name of the vicar, someone I went to school with (I knew his parish was out this way but not exactly where). Lots of rugby league being played on the nearby ovals, which I suspect means that there are a lot of Pacific Islanders living in these parts.

Didn't go home the same way I did last time (which may have something to do with home not being where it was last time), but I presume the billboard juxtaposition I noted last time is no longer there - if only because the strip club in question burned down a few months back, shortly after the business ceased trading. For reasons I can't quite fathom the police seem sceptical that the fire was accidental.

Run from near the Fitzroy pool filling out some more space at the north end of Collingwood (if the MFR Monday nights manage to restart this session will soon be disappearing from my schedule, so good to make use of the opportunity while I can). Hard going in the first 10 minutes but improved somewhat after that. Achilles sorer than it has been before the run but warmed up to acceptable levels.

Second part of the (current) Friday morning sequence. Went smoothly enough and loosened me up a bit (I think).

One activity this evening was the opening of the local Labor campaign office (the office itself, as these things often are, being a very humble affair occupying whatever premises they can find, usually somewhere where the previous tenant has gone under and the landlord is happy to get some income for a few months). The speeches were interrupted by a loud bang from a car crash outside; I think it took at least half a second before someone in the gathering made a reference to Tim Smith.

Had a bit of a scare tonight when the front of my right ankle started to become painful to the point it was difficult to walk on, which seemed strange when it had been fine only a couple of hours earlier. Pulling up my trousers for a closer look revealed the cause - the top of my sock had become rolled up to the point that it was cutting off circulation to the lower leg. If only all "injuries" were that easy to fix...

Had something on in the evening in Brunswick so took advantage of the opportunity to fill in some spaces on the map. Not a brilliant run (though better than the last couple of days), but every time it threatened to fall apart a traffic stop was enough to reinvigorate it, and the last 25 minutes were probably the best. Degree of difficulty was a bit lower than last week though - barely a hill to be seen.

This run completed the last of the area east of Lygon Street (and north of Alexandra/Princes), and was also a significant step in finishing map 30 (just a small strip on the north side of Bell Street now). I thought finishing east of Lygon Street meant I'd also added another suburb (Brunswick East) to my completed list but it turns out there's a random small dead-end on the west side of Lygon which is in Brunswick East rather than Brunswick so I'll need to go back at some point for that one.

To/from lunchtime intervals session. Had a really bad patch with the back about 6-7 minutes in - on another day I might well have pulled the pin at that point, but a wait at a road crossing (where I may not have exactly been going out of my way to look for small gaps in the traffic) was enough to settle it down enough to press on. Wasn't brilliant coming back either.

Didn't expect much after the warm-up - in fact I fully expected it to go the same way as last week, a non-starter at the first attempt - but the intervals part of the operation went OK. Felt slow on the first rep but it was actually relatively fast (for a certain definition of "fast"). Started to feel it at the end of the last couple but no back issues during this. 59-61 down, 64-65 up.

An early one on a crisp morning which won't be at the top of my list of career highlights (or even 2022 highlights). Started out more or less all right but didn't really get going, and back troublesome in the last 15-20 minutes - certainly the climbs (such as they were) were pretty hard work. Did manage to clear most of the remaining block around Victoria Park so some progress on that front at least.

Moved on to Pilates. Still getting the hang of the new program and once again didn't finish it all in 45 minutes - suspect this might be challenging even when I do have the hang of it. Should have been well warmed-up (in a muscular sense at least) but still took a while to get into the swing of it.

This was a very full day, featuring among other things squeezed in, another vaccination, and an IOF working group meeting (which I abruptly exited from when my battery ran out) done from a park bench outside Rushall Station in between work and an ALP meeting. Most interesting feature of the latter of these is that in the process of going through old branch records during a reorganisation, among the things that turned up was the 1932-35 minutes book of the Thornbury branch, featuring such gems as a resolution calling on the Australian government to follow the lead of the President of the USA and his policies on dealing with the Depression (spoiler: they didn't) - the President being Franklin Roosevelt and the policies the New Deal. (Plenty of ALP branches over the years will have passed resolutions condemning American Presidents for a multitude of perceived sins, but supportive ones are rarer).

A repeat of my session from a couple of weeks ago - a session at Coburg on the way to the airport for a day trip to Canberra. Today had a particularly early start - was thinking in terms of a 5.20 wake-up, then saw the Commonwealth Games athletics schedule and thought I might as well make it an hour earlier (and then, as it turned out, didn't sleep much after 3). Felt like I was moving pretty well in the water, and thought it might have been a bit faster than it turned out to be when I stopped and looked at the clock.

The trip itself went very smoothly by the standards of modern Australian travel (I even got a parking spot at the terminal end of the long-term car park), with both flights within 10 minutes of schedule (I didn't take any luggage to go astray). The only mishap was the discovery that Canberra public transport cards expire if they aren't used for two years but the bus driver to the airport let me on anyway. Took on a fair bit at the presentation as I had to fill in for a sick colleague as well as giving my own talk.