Melbourne IV

I’m back into full training and zooming around Melbourne running red lights on my e-bike. I’m also on my annual apology tour where I beg my way back into my friends’ lives after being away for half the year.

This transitional period is amazing but also surprisingly exhausting. Running should be starting to return to the top of my priority list, knocking back all my off-season projects and commitments. Except I forget and continue trying to do both. For example, last weekend I spent several hours on Saturday afternoon sanding the timber frame of the mid-century couch I’ve been restoring, which ruined my lower back for my training session the following morning.

This is all to say that I’ve paused payments until my racing season resumes to acknowledge this low-key time and take the pressure off myself of regularly delivering Exclusive Professional Athlete Insights.

Remember, you can always dig into the archived issues, which are available for everyone to read thanks to the support of my paid subscribers. Anyway, for now, please just enjoy a couple bonus silly pictures and captions.

The Victorian Institute of Sport is my training hub, which track and field athletes share with all the other scholarship-funded athletes in the state. Like most workplaces, there’s always some mental health initiative going on, like this one where you basically shared a page of your gratitude diary in the kitchen. This was my favourite entry. It’s faultless: honest and relatable. Although it also reminds me of what Dan Rath says about gratitude journaling, that it’s just gaslighting yourself into thinking you live a fun life (and how it often just turns into your grocery list).

We’ve had Plum for eight years now and she is a gorgeous, docile, and sweet dog. When she’s lying down it always looks like someone has snuck up behind her and bonked her on the head and she’s just fallen like that. Here she is “playing” with my nephew where he places toys gently around her limp body.

Recently, Nathan made a temporary planter box. I walked out of the house to see that he had in fact accidentally made a grave, so I told him to get in.

My very stylish and cool orange hat has arrived via a sneaky photo of a stranger, ChatGPT, AliExpress, and my friend Kevin.

This is my nainai’s side table next to the TV. It’s got everything you need: grapes, bananas, other miscellaneous fruits, the fancy nuts we brought as a gift before we realised she can’t chew hard foods, a heavily airbrushed family photo, some of Nainai’s calligraphy, and a tiny photo of me and my sister at the beach when we were in primary school.

Thanks all for following my adventures this year!

xoxo Trina