Apart from continuing to each raw food for most of the day yesterday I did eat a little cheese on my salad, a granola bar, a cranberry muffin and a half slice of whole grain bread. Well today I finally broke 15 minutes in the 2 mile race for the first time this year. With a blistering time ( for me ) of 14:52, The conditions were cool and sunny, my legs felt strong , breathing a little hard near the end. It is an improvement of 25 seconds on last week.

It's over! After 1 month ( 28 days ) I have finished my raw food diet. In the end I lost a total of 17 lbs but mainly I feel a lot better. I am entered to run in a 24 hour road race on the last weekend of July, so I decided I needed to change my diet and prepare for that.You will hear more about everything in the coming weeks.

Yesterday I wrote that there were rumblings but little rain, well an hour or so later we had the most awesome rain storm. There were swirling very high powered winds, T&L and so much rain there was flooding everywhere. The first 1 1/2 hours was the most intense with hailstones. The storm would stop momentarily and then go on again. The whole thing lasted about 5 hours, by the end of it there were trees and power lines down all over.

As I write this post there are rumbling of thunder outside but very little rain. It was a sticky and hot day, once it does rain it should cool down somewhat. I have been making my own homus from some dried chick peas I soaked and some tahini, I have been adding it to my salads at lunch time
, it's another source of protein. i am almost at the end of my raw food diet.

So I had just woken up from one of my power naps, when the phone rings, I don't have caller ID on my current phone so I wait till someone starts to speak. It was a familiar voice my old mate Carl from school and back home. we haven't talked for about 7 months so we had some catching up to do, however it was late for him and he had been making calls all night. Well it gave me a lot to think about for the rest of the day. The weather here has become hot and sticky again.

Hey it's Wimbledon! starting today the lawn tennis championships is going on in London. I know my sister will be glued to the TV every chance she gets. When I lived in London many years ago I lived at one time in Twickenham which is not far from wimby but I never got to go to the championships.

It was a nice cool morning for my run. Utpal wanted to run a little longer, so when we got to the turnaround he carried on and I came back alone. I still ran 10 miles.

With cool conditions this week I ran the 2 mile race in my second best time this year so far of 15:17, just 1 second slower that 2 weeks ago. After 3 weeks on raw food I have lost 15 lbs and felt very light on my feet. I still need to get some race fitness and we will see how much I can improve as the summer goes on.

I don't know why but I felt that today was almost the perfect day. It didn't get too hot, it was bright and sunny and there was a strong breeze to make it feel cool when in the Sun.I set up my new computer, I now have to load it with all the applications I want. For some reason I had the idea to switch on my old one ( the one that stopped working in Feb') and guess what it works now. Maybe it's jealous of the new one. So now I will probably pass it on to someone else.

I came home from work today and there waiting for me was my new computer. It's a refurbished e machines desktop PC, with a 3 GHZ processor and 160 GB hard drive. I have been wanting to upgrade since my old desktop died in Feb', finally finding the one I wanted at the right price. I will wait until tomorrow to set everything up.

UEFA U 21 European Championships semi-finals, Holland beat England 13-12 on penalties after a 1-1 draw. Serbia beat Belgium 2-0. Now I have to support Serbia in the final.

What becomes of me
at this moment in time

The child is cute
but not sublime

I cannot be serious
do not have the time.


-This is one of my new ones.

After I had recovered from running my half marathon and somehow survived the 90 degree weather. I was happy to see that the England U 21 team won their final group game in the UEFA championship to make it to the semi-final. Today is cooler, a little, I managed a short run in the afternoon, just to loosen things up.

My Marathon turned into a Half marathon, I just didn't have the stamina. It was quite humid and I think my body just doesn't have the reserves due to the raw food diet. I am happy that I did a Half Marathon and now need to adjust my food intake to help me build for future races.

first of all I just realized that I passed 650 posts on this blog 2 days ago. Since I am planning to run the marathon tomorrow I did not run the 2 mile race this morning. I went out and jogged an easy 2 miles earlier. I have never run a long race before when on some kind of diet, so I am interested to see how it goes. The weather has turned a little warmer but should be cool at the start. Sometime tomorrow I'll post what happens.

So 2 interesting things happened to me this morning, well at least I think they are interesting. While walking to work I came upon a large brown rooster, just walking happily around on the grass in front of an apartment building. When I got to work there was the cat waiting for me with a small rat, it was dead this time, she made a point of showing it to me. I threw it away and after some extensive petting gave her some Tuna and Shrimp cat food.

I arrived at work this morning to find our cat sitting, just outside one of the doors with a mouse in her mouth. When she dropped it the mouse started to run around, with her patting it from side to side like she was playing with a ball. Then she would catch it and hold it in her mouth again. This was repeated several times. Eventually we got the mouse away from her took it outside and let it go. She seems to like to show us how she can catch and control the movements of the mice.

The last few days have reminded me of one spring when I was at good old P C H ( Pershore College of Horticulture ). It used to rain every night and then during the day it would be hot, sunny and humid. Great for growing things and indeed that is what seems to be happening here now in New York. Today there is a change, this morning was raining and the day is quite cool.

The fragrances of Linden and Ligustrum ( privet ) have joined the fragrance of Honeysuckle in the air of my daily walk. There is truly a cavalcade of wonderful smells to enjoy in Queens at the moment. The UEFA U 21 Championships are going on at the moment in Holland England drew their first game 0-0 after missing a penalty in the 88 minute against Czech Republic. Serbia beat Italy 1-0.

There is a strong smell of honeysuckle everywhere in queens, well almost everywhere. It makes the air smell so sweet when I am walking to and from work, or out running in the neighbourhood. I guess it is one of the benefits of the fairly wet, fairly cool spring that we are having. It's a beautiful day out there and I am enjoying it.

Overcast cool morning when we started our run. I was feeling a little tired from my race yesterday but knew that the pace would be easy. So we ended up running 10 miles and would you believe it when we got back, there was a smell of French toast in the air.

This week was a different story with regard to my 2 mile race. I am of course about 7 lbs lighter and I am managing to eat more protein this time around. I did feel some tiredness in my upper legs, not sure if that was a result of the diet or the 90% humidity. Anyway I ran 15:16 this week, which is my best time so far, with a marathon coming up in 8 days I think I am getting into shape.

Yesterday I had honeysuckle. today it was French toast wafting from someones breakfast table. It was quite cool but humid on my walk to work this morning, with the prospect of a hot day ahead. The forecast said 90 f but it barely managed to break 70 f, also the wind makes it feel cool when you are not in the Sun.

This morning there was a really strong smell of honeysuckle in the air, which made my walk to work even more pleasant. It is much cooler than earlier in the week and there are quite strong wind gusts. It has been just about a week since I started my raw food diet and I am really happy with the way things are going.

England won their European qualifier against Estonia 3-0 today with a fine performance from David Beckham, maybe now the England coach will realize he needs him in the team. I blended my lunch time salad today and it was so delicious and so filling that it took me 2 hours to eat it all, next time I'll only use half as much ingredients.

The grass around here in particular the lawns on peoples houses, had started to turn a little brown in a few places. Due to the hot dry weather we have been having. Well yesterdays rain brought 1.5 inches with it and soon everything will be green again.i am taking a little longer to walk home from work these days since I do some of my raw food shopping after work.Though I discovered that a mouse was eating some of my fruits in the place where I was storing them, so I had to find a new place. Maybe he's on a fruit diet.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had not posted yet today. Well it started with me walking to work in a light rain. By the time I was leaving to come home it was pouring. Of course I got wet, but it is washing day so everything went into the wash. I managed to put some of my house plants outside to reap the benefit of all that rain. When the rain finally stopped it became so peaceful, as though the world were taking a rest before beginning to grow again.

After a few hot days it has turned much cooler. I have a bit of a sore quad' muscle this morning and Utpal is happy to run slowly. We do however run about 6 miles and I don't feel the tiredness form the past week so much.Diet is continuing to go well.

After a tough week, starting with the 50k race and then the lumber delivery and starting my raw food diet. I wasn't expecting too much from my 2 mile race today. My legs were tired but I was quite happy to run 16:24, my splits were fairly even at 8:11 and 8:13. The detox this time has been mild, probably due to the fact that I have stopped drinking coffee since last year.I have dropped 3 lbs since yesterday.

Well it's June 1st and the first day of my raw food diet. At this point it has only been about 17 hours. I am much better organized than I was last year and have lots of different things to eat, I am sure I will come up with a few new creative items as the days go on.