Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Easter middle distance day. Drifted a bit on the first leg - had a bit of trouble picking the course up on the map initially - but settled down after that and was running OK, so was a little surprised that Eric caught me 2 minutes by 8. Was sort of holding on to him for a while after that but dropping a few seconds per control; got that back when he lost time at 17, but then we diverged on route choice at 20 (I went to the left side of the creek for clearer running) and then I missed the control a bit, losing 30 seconds or so. Hit the scary 22 OK, but seemed to run out of pace over the last few controls (something borne out in the splits) - possibly not a great sign for tomorrow, although it will be a different sort of race.

Once again failed to trouble the National League scorers; it's a deep field and I ended up 27th, a bit below halfway, and 10 minutes down was a couple more than I would have been satisfied with. 12 people within three minutes of the lead.

We're staying very close to the action in the centre of town - perhaps a bit too close, because the street in front was blocked off this afternoon (and will be again tomorrow) and the closest parking spot I could get was the best part of a kilometre away.

Day 1 Course 1 - Splits

Event: Easter 2013
 

Easter prologue at La Trobe Uni campus in Bendigo, with more bush than I think most people expected - I knew there was a bit around the student residences but didn't really think there would be full frontal assaults on areas of light green.

Started with Hanny. I expected to be 20 metres down by the start triangle but in fact we were pretty close through the first few controls (the women had an extra first control, which I went close to, then had our next four). Settled pretty well in the running department and had almost got onto the back of Geoff Stacey and Rob Jessop by the time we got back into the buildings at 10, but Warren was about to go through me at about the same stage (and Geoff ran away). Looks like I drifted a little off the pace in the second half, and had a brief few-steps-up-a-dead-end wobble on the route choice leg back out of the spectator control, but on the whole this was a decent run at the better end of expectations.

Prologue Course 1 - Splits

Morning session at Ivanhoe, on a morning with steady rain at the start which cleared out later. A fairly standard session. Decided to come home after work before heading to Bendigo - not a good route choice because it took more than an hour just to get to the other end of Bell Street.

I'm obviously not in the shape I'd like to be for Easter, but am hoping for the best. It would be a major surprise if I were able to repeat last year's top-10 result (if only because the long day doesn't look as carnage-inducing as last year's was). One thing this year will definitely have fewer of - grass seeds.

Starting to wind back for Easter; this will be the last run I do before then. It wasn't exactly a stellar effort, always feeling a bit sluggish. Hopefully the last 20+ degree night of the season (although there were some notably distinct cool air pockets in a couple of the valleys); had today happened five days later it would have set April records for five different states.

There was a rather amusing incident on the ride in: two drivers next to each other at a set of traffic lights were so busy abusing each other that they didn't notice that the lights had turned green. I couldn't tell what the basis of the grievance was because at least half the words in the conversation on both sides started with F.

I made one of my occasional visits to a quiz night last night (our team won for the first time in a while). The answer to one question revealed that the Gaelic word for November literally means "end of summer". As someone who has been to Ireland in the last week of October (during which I discovered that, no, it is not possible to run into a 140 km/h wind), this seems rather optimistic.

The longest run I'll do in the pre-Easter week, done from Richmond before a massage (itself not at the usual stage of the week). Felt rather flat through the early stages but picked up, as I often do while there, on the section of path hanging under the freeway opposite Scotch (great surface), and hit a good patch whilst going past the expensive real estate in Toorak. (One of the more expensive bits had a Japanese flag and is, I presume, the residence of the Japanese consul, but that real estate wasn't as expensive as the former Australian embassy in Tokyo, which was sold at the top of the 1980s Japanese property boom for something like $650 million). Tailed off a bit at the end.

Not a great swim. Back a bit awkward - didn't like some hard work pumping up bike tyres before I left for the pool.

It was slightly disconcerting to switch on the radio this morning and hear the words "Jackie Chan will have to be desexed and microchipped". It turned out that the story I'd come in halfway through was about a Jackie Chan which was a ram which had attracted the attention of Moorabool Shire Council after allegedly charging the neighbours on a number of occasions on a property near Bacchus Marsh, and not the one who is Dickson College's most famous old boy (with apologies to Rob Walter).

Out around the Tan at lunchtime - as usual, plenty of activity on a fine day, both the usual and the slightly unusual (lots of people and Australian and Greek flags at a monument near the Shrine, which I'm assuming marked a significant anniversary connected to Australian military activities in Crete in World War 2). Grinding the gears in the first few minutes but became pretty good towards the end, and didn't have any back issues despite the awkwardness of the morning.

Extending the boundaries a bit further; I wanted to have the confidence boost that getting past the 2-hour mark at least once before Easter will (hopefully) provide, even if I would have preferred it to happen a few weeks earlier than it actually did. Never as smooth as the first half of last Sunday was, but also not as easy - didn't go out of my way for hills but plenty of the consistent rolling ups and downs that come with a run in the eastern suburbs (East Camberwell being as far south as I got). Tired somewhat in the last half-hour, and spent rather too much of this run thinking about what might happen after September 14 when there's an Institute of Public Affairs hit list out there with your name (in effect) on it.

Injury report: back OK, achilles occasionally troublesome in the later stages, calf a couple of sharp twinges in mid-run (sharp enough that I started to do the mental calculations 'if I have to bail, who do I know who lives closest to here and is likely to be at home') but no issues after that.

One of the things for which today was a test was whether I felt I was up to coping with the M21E ultra-long in two weeks' time. I'm still not sure about this but I've entered it anyway.

C • Enter M35? 1