False alarm

45 mins, 9km @ 5:15 mins/km

I wasn't happy with how my shins felt last night and again this morning so I made a last minute decision not to go to speedwork with the Pat Carrollers for my only non-tready session of the fortnight. Fortunately, it turned out to be something of a false alarm as I got through my equal longest session on the tready with only a few seconds of discomfort early in the run. After two weeks, its still far too early to say whether the conversion to treadmill running has helped me. I expect that I'll be in a position to say more in a months time, especially as I've slowly increased my speed on the tready each session and am now up to 11.6 km/h. By next week, I'll be running at my usual 12-12.5 km/hr for all easy runs and 14-18km/hr for speedwork. I haven't done any speedwork on the tready yet, but naturally, I'll be introducing it slowly.

Some may recall that I put on my home handyman cap a few weeks ago to fix a leaky toilet. I can report that my work was partially successful as the leak stopped when the cistern outlet piece is in the right place, but too often, it starts up again after a flush because cistern outlet settles into a different position. Don't worry - when I get a new cistern outlet, it'll be fixed for good. Anyway, the home handyman cap was back on again today to fix a worrying problem - When I get torrential rain, water pours through the ceiling of my balcony and sometimes into the frames between the brick wall of the balcony and the study. I went up onto the roof last year and was unable to work out where the leak was coming from. With the storm season just upon us, it was time to address the problem once and for all. "Call a roofer!" I hear you say. "Naaah - I'll be able to fix it." And so it was. I got up onto the roof again today and after removing some mesh netting that keeps leaves out of the gutter, I realised that there was a lot of grout missing from the row of tiles next to one of the main grooves that channels water down the roof into the gutter. 8kg of grout and 90 minutes later, the gaps had been sealed after some nifty work with the trowel. I can't wait till the next storm comes around to see how the job stands up!!

And what about those Socceroos? Despite playing soccer at school, I can't stand watching it as there is far too much diving and play acting for a hard bitten league man like me to take. But, I am a patriot first, so last night I was at Rooboy's place watching my second game of soccer in four years, expecting yet another choke. So it was a pleasant surprise to see our boys victorious. The only problem is that, I'll be forced to watch at least three games of soccer next year when I watch them at the World Cup!!