Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

I'm not really sure why I did this; perhaps it was because my Achilles wasn't particularly tight and I thought it would warm up, which it didn't really. Perhaps it was to get a bit of exercise into a day that would otherwise be spent sitting in a car.

The run itself was a not-particularly-fast circuit of inner Bathurst, taking in a Labor sacred site - Ben Chifley's (unsurprisingly humble) house. (Much to my disappointment, on this trip I was unable to locate the 'VOTE 1 CHIFLEY' on a Portland railway underpass that was still there on my previous visit in 1991). Nice morning for it; doubt I'll see 1 degree again for another six or seven months (unless there's a trip to the Northern Hemisphere happening that I don't know about yet).

Spent the rest of the day on the way home, in the process seeing the Hume roadworks for probably the last time (they look like they'll be well and truly finished by Christmas). After spending so much time on the road in the last few months it will be nice to be able to settle down for a few weeks at least.

Part of my WMOC-week reading has been a book on 1970-2000 Ireland (picked up from the bargain bin of a Darwin bookshop). I had thought that Silvio Berlusconi was the greatest rogue to hold a position of power in any Western democracy, but based on what I've been reading Charles Haughey would have to give him a run for his money (estimates vary on exactly how much he trousered during his career, but even the more conservative estimates appear to have eight digits - and that's before we start on any of the bits that didn't involve financial corruption).

Might give it a break tomorrow unless I feel better in the morning.

C • I'd have thought a run 1

C • Mount Ainslie... no visit! 5

C • rogues, crooks and gombeen men 7

WMOC Long Distance final. Gave it everything but in the end wasn't quite good enough, losing to three very good people in Carsten, Grant and Nick. I feel better about this than the equivalent result last year, because I was closer and the opposition was better. It's still a bit frustrating to miss a medal (although I've had plenty of practice at this - I've come 4th or 5th seven times in national long distance championships), but it's hard to see where the 1.30 I needed to bridge the gap to bronze would have come from.

Started reasonably smoothly and caught Joaquim Sousa at 2, a slightly strange feature I hesitated briefly on. I thought this might be the beginnings of a train and it was. Grant's strategy was clearly going to be to catch me if he could, and he managed this by 6. From there we settled into the race through the faster gully-spur sections. I got a little bit of a break, but only 10 seconds or so, with a route choice on 8, but lost that quickly, and we all wobbled slightly on 10, though only 10 seconds or so. 11 was the big route-choice leg of the race; I was hoping that Grant hadn't seen the right option, but he had.

Grant and Joaquim got a bit of a break on me going through 11 (steep-enough-to-be-scary downhills are not amongst my stronger points). I wasn't totally upset about this as the only way I was going to beat Grant was a mistake and the chances of that happening were greater if I wasn't around, but was a bit concerned that Joaquim might get the two minutes back. That concern was gone by 14 and from there it was a case of finishing off as best I could, slightly relieved that the course was short as my Achilles was starting to give trouble (interestingly, it hasn't tightened post-race as it did on Thursday).

This was just about as good a run as I could have managed, with only two 10-second mistakes, and pretty solid physically as well - certainly better than the two qualifiers (or the two sprints). It might be 40 years before I get another medal chance as good as this, though :-).

So ends my season. It's been a fairly similar year to the last two, with lots of solid performances but a lack of real standout results - the curse of the late 30s elite orienteer. I'll have a couple of fairly quiet weeks now and then into base training in earnest.

A casual swim in the Bathurst aquatic centre, which is new since the last time I was here (it's not the one that Tooms will remember). Both indoor and outdoor options but I wasn't hard-core enough for outdoor this morning (still cold enough for snow flurries near Oberon again last night). Water was cooler than I'm used to finding at an indoor pool, which is no bad thing. Felt OK, but intermittent goggles problems were annoying.

Finished just in time for the influx of kids (it's still school holidays in NSW).

Left Achilles is less sore than yesterday evening and I could certainly run on it if necessary, but it would still be nice if it improved a bit more between now and tomorrow morning.

Also did a trip up to Hill End today. Naturally in an old mining area I was at least as interested in potential terrain as I was in historic buildings and mine installations. There's a bit around, though whether National Parks would let us use it is another question (and it's a pretty remote location).

Today's weather report for New York: low 7, high 7, 13mm rain. Brings back a few memories of the approximately equivalent day in 1993.

C • I remember 1

I'm still not especially happy with the way I'm running but the results are encouraging. Held my 5th place after the second qualifier, on a day when two minutes covered positions 2-7. Carsten is a warm favourite but everyone down to 10th is, I think, a possibility of a medal in what's turned out to be a decent field at the front end (although it drops away quickly after that).

Today's course was in quite steep country early on; essentially gully-spur but with some broken sandstone-type rock. Once through that we were into vague, flattish country; the long 5th was scary with heaps of parallel error potential (I thought there might be some European blowouts here, but from the splits this doesn't seem to have been the case). Missed 9, a small rock on a slope, to the tune of 45 seconds or so, but otherwise reasonably clean.

Achilles was a bit sore before the start and more so after cooling down, but fine during the race itself.

It gets serious from this point. Saturday is a wide open race, and should be more technical which I think is to my advantage.

C • why 2 qualifiers? 6

WMOC, first long qualifier at Long Swamp. This course started in the heavy rock, but after the first six controls only touched on the rock intermittently (and we got into it more than most courses did). Didn't feel particularly aggressive in the terrain early on and encountered a few traffic jams (I was nicer to little old ladies today than may be the case on Saturday); also made a bit of a mistake on 5 but got out of it with 30 seconds or so lost. Once in the more open terrain, I still didn't really feel as if I was hitting my stride but got the course under my belt without too much more drama, with only one 15-seconder at 21. Still don't seem to be quite at a physical peak.

Ended up 5th, 3 1/2 minutes down on Carsten. It's quite a good and close bunch at the front end. Always hard to tell how hard everyone is trying in a race like this, but the result was quite encouraging and suggests there might be a possibility of a medal on Saturday if things went well.

I thought the course-setting was a bit disappointing today - I can understand why the courses only spent a limited amount of time in the rock (getting to the rock here involves a fair bit of climbing), but the gully-spur sections of the map had a lot of potential for long-route choice legs that wasn't realised, and the last section in the paddock was a total waste of time.

C • are the maps posted anywhere? 4

C • M50 Day 2 5

Stayed in Katoomba overnight and did what was essentially an out-and-back along the Narrow Neck fire trail (with camera in hand). For the first time since Thursday this felt like a reasonably normal run, which suggests I'm getting back to something close to normal. A nice track to run too; quite hilly but not outrageously so, and often spectacularly scenic. I suspect this is a regular long-run haunt for local runners.

Quite a few campervans were parked in out-of-the-way places along the track; it was early in the morning.

Spent a bit more time during the run thinking about the Torres Strait and the vulnerability of its lower-lying islands. The risk of cyclones is lower there than it is further south, but not zero, and some of the islands are so low-lying that a two-metre storm surge at high tide would be enough to obliterate the island and everyone on it, and I haven't seen a lot of evidence that there are plans in place to do something about this (in my view the most practical solution is probably elevated storm shelters of the type used in the delta regions of Bangladesh, which probably saved several tens of thousands of lives the last time they had a serious cyclone in 2006).

Finished the day at the WMOC opening march in Lithgow, which the locals turned out in pleasing numbers for. (The town doesn't look quite as desperate as it did on my last visit in 2005, and the number of local eating places appears to have increased fivefold, albeit from a very low base - in 2005 we found ourselves in a dodgy pizza joint that appeared to have been the inspiration for Fat Pizza). Unfortunately the one significant shower on the Sydney radar found us, which made for a rather wet choir - most of them could have taken shelter as 29 out of 30 appeared to be as surplus to requirements as the other guy in Wham.

The Lithgow visit also reminded me of a great line on the local news during a previous visit, about the questionable prospects of the railway workshops: "the future of the Lithgow loco depot is in limbo".

Along with quite a few others, I'm staying in Bathurst.

C • The same groups of people h... 3

C • Emergency Shelters 1

A casual morning session from Macquarie, down into the Lane Cove valley then up the Great North Walk track for a bit. There's some great running to be had along the sandstone valleys of Sydney but I wasn't really in the mood for it this morning; feeling a bit light-headed much of the time (perhaps an indicator that I'm still not quite 100%). Did handle the hills getting there, and getting out of the valley, OK. A very nice morning for running.

C • Lane cove 3

WMOC Sprint Final. Improved a little on yesterday, although not as much as I might have hoped for, and scraped into the top ten.

I definitely felt better than yesterday and got into the mood by the time I hit the start boxes (although surely I wasn't the only person who was doing laps of the -3 minute box out of nervous energy?). Before today most of us were expecting a fairly straightforward sprint between big buildings, but had heard on the grapevine from the early starters that it was quite technical, and so it proved - first some complex sections in garden beds, then at the end another tricky section involving multiple levels in the Showgrounds arena. It was mainly about speed of execution although there were a few decent route choice legs too; excellent use of what I thought might have been an unpromising area.

I made one annoying mistake, a 10-seconder on the third-last through not reading my description properly, plus a couple of hesitations (one where a marquee blocked my planned line). Probably ninth was the absolute best I could have done. Looking at the splits, I unsurprisingly lost a fair bit of ground on the longer 'transport' legs between sectors.

Nick Barrable won from Carsten - no surprise there. Bruce was a slightly more unexpected bronze medallist (on a day when MFR, were it an independent country, would stand fourth in the medal table). I didn't really expect to be competitive in this but still think a medal in the long might be within reach with a good run next weekend.

The start was next to a cafe which was pumping out not-very-good 80s music. Those who've done road trips with me will know that I'm definitely a child of the 80s, but this was rubbish and I was worried it was going to be stuck in my head all race. It wasn't. (On the subject of misguided choices of music, it was difficult to argue with the people I got the train home with that having Australian Idol people playing at the opening ceremony didn't quite fit the demographic).

Event: 2009 World Masters Orienteering Championships
 

WMOC Sprint Qualification. My objective today was simple - to get through. I'm feeling better than I was yesterday but still some way from 100%.

There was no possibility of transport dramas for me today - the place I'd booked on Wotif turned out to be 200 metres in a straight line from the finish (although more like 1k by the route we used to go to the start). I was mistaken, though, if I thought that that meant all would go smoothly - I opened my bag to discover that my long-serving SI stick had lost its head after nine years of loyal service. (Funeral arrangements will be advised in due course). This was replaced impressively quickly and I made it to the start on schedule (although caused some trouble for start officials damnedlies and M.J. by engaging them in conversation when they were apparently under instructions not to).

The run was about doing the necessary. I didn't miss anything and think I got the critical route choices right; didn't feel as bad as I thought I might have, but was definitely below par (and was weak enough on the few hills to indicate that anything longer would have been a problem). Matt Scott had almost caught me a minute at 9, but made a mistake there and ended up catching me at 16. From there he was running faster but making more mistakes and we finished together.

I wasn't feeling entirely secure when I finished - 9th on the board, with 14 to qualify, and I knew that Matt and Grant had also got me. I've had enough qualification near-misses at senior level not to take anything for granted there, but as it turned out they were the last two to get me.

Nick Barrable was a clear winner today and will be hard to beat tomorrow. I'm not surprised by his time but thought Carsten and Grant might have been closer. As for me, with another 24 hours behind me (and a proper meal for the first time since Thursday), I'll hope to be in better shape for tomorrow. A place is out of the question (the long distance next Saturday will be the opportunity for that), but if I can pick off a few of the group in the minute ahead of me today and finish somewhere around 7-9 I'll be pleased.

C • and starts tomorrow 2

C • silent starts 6

Things didn't end up too smoothly on Thursday Island - I'm blaming it on having eaten Australia's northernmost dodgy chook. Seem to be through the worst of it now but glad I don't have a race today. Last night I couldn't do so much as look at food ads on the television without feeling nauseous.

Originally I was thinking of trying to squeeze in a swim at Cairns (where I am now) in my three hours between flights, but that is definitely off the agenda now.

Something which I'm a bit puzzled about is the spectacular price of real estate on Thursday Island - rents here are at Port Hedland levels without the mining/oil/gas money to pay for it. Seems to be a supply/demand issue (most of the long-term locals have public housing so the private market is small and very tight). It flows through into hotel prices too - $185 a night for something that would have cost half that in a normal town. Unfortunately our expenses system treats it as a normal town so I end up stuck with more than half the bill myself (but as it would have cost me vastly more to get here of my own volition I'm not complaining too much).

The World Masters Games are on a larger scale than we're used to and the accreditation queue was an indicator of that. I thought the 50 minutes that it took me was bad enough, until hearing the stories of those who had been there for three or four hours earlier in the day. By the time I got there they'd given up on putting photos on accreditation passes which removed the major roadblock - but surely it should have occurred to somebody somewhere to check how long it look to process each person, divide that into the number of participants and staff the process accordingly?