Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

WA Middle Championships at Jumbuck Hill, an area relatively close to the city which had less than rave reviews from the locals. It's steep; a lot of it is open or semi-open, but there's a lot of small rocks and even on the downhill bits there wasn't much opportunity to stretch out. Definitely felt like I was managing rather than racing - although I did manage to run most of the big climb to 1 - and struggling a bit with my quads towards the end (hopefully they'll come up OK tomorrow). Managed to avoid navigational disaster, though, on an area with a lot of scrappy rock; dropped about 45 seconds apiece at 6 and 10. That was enough to give me the points in the day's closest result, by 9 seconds over Tooms (who was a little faster but lost a bit more time).

The temperature overshot the forecast 24 considerably, and everyone was feeling the heat (myself included). The nearest site reached a maximum of 28.7 at 2.06pm, more or less the precise moment of my biggest climb of the course....

C • Tomorrow 2

C • Thanks... 1

Course 2 - Splits

In a bit of a rush this morning after my alarm didn't work properly (it's a clock radio which seems to be having more trouble than it once did in holding a frequency - woke up to faint static). A bit stiff and suspect I wouldn't have appreciated a run, but not too bad in the water after the first few minutes.

Perth's the next stop on the agenda - I'm trying to meet with all of the states during the course of this year (although it looks like Tasmania is going to end up having to be done by phone), and WA Championships weekend was a good opportunity. (It's also the first time for ages that WA hasn't clashed with something else). Having booked months ago, I think I can reasonably assume that a lot of other people on the plane will (a) be wearing red and blue and (b) will have paid at least three times as much for their flight as I did for mine.

And I saw it posted last night (possibly not entirely accurately) that pies have been withdrawn from sale by Coles and Woolworths after some were suspected of containing a foreign substance, possibly believed to be meat.

C • Pies 7

Not the easiest of trips. Ended up being 2 hours late (the last 20 minutes of it on the ground in Perth because the aerobridge broke down), then the luggage took ages because they were trying to put four flights onto the same carousel with the others empty, then had a taxi driver who was well deserving of a one-star rating had he been with a certain other company - he spent almost the entire trip in a foul-mouthed rant against the airport traffic controllers (mostly) and/or other drivers. At one point he said "some people shouldn't have a licence" (one of the few sentences which failed to contain an obscenity); given that he'd just driven into a 60 zone at 100 and had been bragging about how he sometimes overtook slow traffic on the freeway through the emergency lane, I was inclined to agree (but had to resist the temptation to say so).

A decent morning's work and the longest I've done since May. (Once upon a time, I used to do 90 minutes on Wednesday mornings before street-O in the evening - and covered about 4km more in those 90 minutes, too). A bit of a sore left hip but never got beyond nuisance level. Some good patches, particularly once on the other side of the river out around Hays Paddock and through the Kew hills (first time for a while I've been on that side of the freeway); various body parts fatiguing a bit in the later stages but still felt good enough to do an extra loop to bring it up to 90. Would certainly have taken this when I got up this morning.

Second attempt at doing intervals since I got back and the second failure - hamstring (left side this time) was sore as soon as I pushed off on it. Knew I was tempting fate by posting yesterday about how things were going well. Don't think it's too serious so hopefully it will settle down by tomorrow.

Jumped out of the blocks a bit faster than I sometimes do these days. Didn't quite live up to that early promise, but still a nice one across the Darebin bridge and across the river; seem to be in a reasonable patch at the moment. Somewhat unusually for me these days, was slower in the second half than the first, but that probably had something to do with the first half having tailwinds and the second half not.

I was having a casual look around the Swedish election results and noticed that the Gula Party ("yellow party") got one vote in all of Sweden, presumably its candidate's own. This sets something of a benchmark for spectacular electoral failure - the lowest I can remember in Australia (apart from lower-ranked candidates on Senate group tickets) is seven. Three other Swedish parties failed to make double figures. Sadly, Google has failed to enlighten me about what policies (if any) the Gula Party proposed to enact if elected.

C • Gula Partiet 14

What's starting to become a regular Monday morning session. Seem to be making some progress (and seem to be getting better at not getting slack on some of the exercises which you can let yourself get lazy on).

This was followed by a very smooth ride into work, only for the bubble to be burst when I arrived (in the form of a failure of the building security system which means we couldn't get into the bike parking area). At least I didn't have my work clothes in there too - there were quite a few people in bike gear around the office today.

C • Bike gear 3

Northcote in the evening. Feeling as if I was pushing it a bit harder than I have on the last couple of swims, and the clock agrees with that, in a session which had a sense of an evening's work solidly done. Feeling reasonably energetic in general - hopefully it lasts (at least until the morning).

Victorian Long Championships, 2nd M45, 6 minutes behind Fredrik and 2 minutes ahead of Dion (the round-number gaps indicating that we finished together). Not in the top bracket physically - struggled with the hills - but a steady run with almost no navigational issues, perhaps just a slightly suboptimal route on 8, the first long leg on a course with some technical mining early and late and longer legs in the middle. Saw Dion when I was coming into 9 (concluding, correctly, that we were about level at that stage), and Fredrik coming out. He caught the remainder of the gap to me at 10 and ran away from me after that, but then lost time at 12 (by which time Dion was also in sight), and we diced for the remaining short legs to the finish. We're the relay team in two weeks' time, so good to see everyone's in reasonable form.

One of the more challenging car park entries I've encountered - I suspect I wasn't the only person to leave a bit of paint on the post. Just as well I wasn't driving a hire car this week.