Alas no track

My legs felt much better today. No sore hamstrings. No sore achilles. So, it's all good in running land but - there's always a but - I couldn't go to the track on account of being fifty miles away and covered in sh#$. Yes, the sewer sump pump is at it again. This time I've taken no prisoners. I've bought a new pump. More powerful than the last and with a state of the art - OK, they may be going a tad far - titanium cutting grinder on the feed to the rotor. That bad boy isn't going to take any sh#$ from no one, that's for damn sure.

Me and Andy, my next door neighbour, set about raising titanic from the pit - that's the old pump in case you where wondering. With the tank full to bursting I tried one final attempt to fire her into life to clear the tank down before we got down and dirty. With her capacitor shot, she struggled. She hummed. She buzzed and just when I thought it was time to reach into the murky, nasty, nastiness - and I can't emphasise how nasty - she spluttered into life and emptied the tank for us just one final time.

Then it was out with the old and in with the new as we fended off torrential ran to finish the install. Finally, with the finish line in sight, pump in the sump, cables connected to the control circuit, me shivering in my wet overalls, we crossed our fingers and fired her up and, to our relief, she started up first time. With a gentle ramp, she revved up to full throttle with effortless ease. Grinder grinding. Cutter cutting - well, what else would it be doing? She made light work of the newly deposited substances. With our work complete we retired to the dry of our respective houses. Now it's time to blank the entire episode out of our collective memories - forever...

Finally, on a note of actual running, the results from last night's race are in. I was 55th in a poor time of 36:57 - 2 minutes and 52 down on my previous run in 2007 when I was 13th - ho hum. The rest of my Bristol Water team placed 31st (Daniel Massey) - and yes, I was well beaten - 78th (Martin Bailey) and 87th (Danny Ball) from a field of 352. We hold our heads up high! As a team we were 15th of 52, so again we hold our heads high. Well done lads.