This is Sandy Barwick an old friend from New Zealand, she used to run ultra's infact she holds the womens record for 1000 miles still. She is now the manager for the New Zealand team. The guy on the right is a yorkshireman originally, he gave me a lot of encouragement during the early stages of the 24 hour race.

Got back from Canada around 12:30 am, got about 6 hours of sleep . I had such a great time at the 24 Hour World Championships and will probably spend the rest of this week telling you about it. When we got there, the place was full of athletes from all over world. I met a few old friends and discovered some new ones. I ran 117.9 km ( 73 miles ) which is not great but I am happy with it. The photo is of a sign that was just off the highway exit for Drummondville, of course they speak French in that part of Canada.

I just got a call from my friend Ray K who is driving up from South Carolina. We will hook up tomorrow morning and be on the road to Canada by early afternoon. I am pretty excited about the trip and of course the race to come this weekend. I may get a chance to write something tomorrow before we leave, otherwise it probably will be Monday before I post anything else. That will be to tell you what happened. Wish me luck.

Did I mention that it seems as though we have another raccoon at work, well at least the evidence would seem to support this, though no actual sighting has been made.The cat however does not appear to be very happy that someone is eating her dry food and washing in her water dish. We will have to set the trap again but at the moment it is broken and in need of some repair.

This morning I awoke to a blinking green light telling me that Victor ( the electronic mousetrap ) had received a new visitor. I expected it would be the on that I had been seeing for the last couple of days. I was surprised to see it was a young mouse, maybe the offspring of the 2 original mice. So it looks like there are more to come. It was a cold and rainy day, I took a light and easy run in between breaks in the rain.

Well I did my 2 runs today, although I felt some tightness in my right calf I was quite happy. The tightness probably come from the race yesterday. I have been running the same 10k loop for the last few weeks and today I think was the strongest run of all. Now I have to just run some easy training runs during the week and hope I'm in good shape the 24 hour race.

Ran my 2 mile race this morning. The conditions were great, 65 F sunny with a cool breeze. My time was 15:02 which I was happy with. I felt as though I was in control of my running and everything was pretty smooth. This is my last weekend of heavy training, then I run easy for a few days before going to Quebec. My weight is still good so we'll see how things go.

Just when it seemed to be over, I have another mouse. Well at least a visitor, a mouse came into my room and then left while I was sitting relaxing this afternoon.If it decides to stay "Victor" is waiting for it.I have just bought a small video camera I don't know how good it is, it was quite cheap $ 57.50, it shoots onto flash cards I will try it out and plan to take it with me to Canada next week.

I don't know if the events of yesterday had something to do with it, but today after work I was really tired, so I took a nap instead of going for a run. I am sure I will feel much better for it at the end of the week. I am maintaining the gain of 4 lbs after the raw food diet, it is now 3 weeks since I changed. I will be leaving for Canada this time next week.

1 1/2 hours after arriving at work we had a powerful thunderstorm that dumped a lot of rain in a short period of time. This overloaded the storm drains in the street outside. The water decided to come into the basement, which created a flash flood. There was water everywhere and it took half of the day to clean it up, fortunately the damage was minimal but not a lot of work could get done.It is rare for this to happen, but when it does it is a bit of a disaster.

I may have mentioned before that I have a mouse in my room. I have a new kind of mouse trap that gives the mouse a small electric shock when it tries to get the food inside. On Sunday after sitting there for almost 2 weeks I got a mouse. I thought that was it but then I heard another one moving around yesterday. Then last night when I was sleeping, I heard to sharp buzzing sounds about 5 seconds apart and this morning there was another mouse. The poor mice look quite peaceful just laying there. My room now seems safe.

It seems that over the weekend the 3rd Raccoon was caught and today there was no evidence of any new activity. This morning I felt good after my 2 x10 k runs yesterday. The weather was quite warm today but comfortable I ran an easy 5 k this afternoon. I still have 12 days to go to the race and will be happy if everything stays as it is now.

This morning I went out with Utpal for our Sunday run, he running his long one, me running the first of 2. It was quite humid but I ran my 10 k quite comfortably. After a nice break and a chance to follow the Tour De France, I went out for my second run which this week was another 10 k, it was drier but hotter, but I ran easily and was happy with my run.

This is the mother raccoon climbing out of the area where we pack our goods. Yesterday we caught another young one. Momma should be next.
This morning I ran 15:18 in the 2 mile race, this has become my average time now. I felt strong but had to work hard, I think the training is showing. Have to run again this afternoon.

It's Friday the 13th, but the date means something more to me. Twelve years ago today I had my last conversation with my mother. e talked for quite a while on the phone, not knowing that 36 days later she would be gone forever. I still feel her with me, but I also miss her every day. Cherish the time you spend with your mother, you will miss them dearly when they are gone.

Well there he is out first capture, it turns out that there are 3 of them, The other 2 were nearby when I came in and found this one. He is the smallest of the lot. Hopefully we will get one of the others tonight. We baited him with dry cat food which is what they have been eating for that last 3 days.

The saga continues. The Racoon completely ignored the trap and just broke into the container full of the cats food. I do believe that there is now more than one of them. The one I saw this morning was bigger than the previous days and there were lots of different paw prints. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

The Racoon had made a huge mess of the cats food and water when I arrived this morning. it has been decided that we have to catch it. One of the building management guys has built a trap which has been successful before. we will catch him and set him free on a piece of open land and hopefully he will not return to our basement. The trap is set and we will see if he is in it when I get to work in the morning.

I am usually the first to arrive at work in the morning, I get there about 1 1/2 hours before anyone else. This morning I was confronted with 2 things when I arrived. First we had a flood, the hot water heater had sprung a leak and there was about 1/2" of water all over the kitchen, office and part of the shop. Second we had a visitor in the shipping area where the cat usually hangs out, there was a young Racoon running about and the cat was not happy. After shooing off the racoon, and feeding the cat. I set about cleaning up the water with a shop vac'. What a morning!

I had quite a full morning. First I went for a 10k run, when I got back the Tour de France was happening, then the British grand Prix, followed by the Men's Final at Wimbledon.. Then it was time for lunch a short nap and back out for my second run. This was 5k but by now the temperature had risen to 90 F so it was a hard run. I can definitely see how I have improved since last week and hope that this will continue.

I woke up this morning with a sore right calf, so I quickly decided that I would not run the 2 mile race, which I feel would have made it worse. I did however run an easy 5k run instead. By the afternoon it was feeling a little better and I ran another 5k in keeping with my 2 a day philosophy on weekends.The weather is much warmer with temp's in the 80's F which helps to keep the muscles warm.

I am quite happy with how my first week of training has gone since I stopped the raw food. I have gained back between 4 and 5 lbs, I am feeling stronger and we will see tomorrow how my 2 mile race goes. I also bought a new pair of running shoes that I may take with me to Canada in 3 weeks time. It ha been nice to have a few days off from work and run in the mornings.

Just as the fireworks were getting going last night the rain came and sort of quietened everything down. I slept a little longer than I usually. When I went out for my run it was nice and fresh, though I felt a little sluggish I had a good run. I have an idea to but some new running shoes today so we will see what happens.

It's 4 th of July America's Birthday! Of course there is no work today, in fact I'm off the rest of the week. So this morning a went out for an early run, the weather was nice low 60's and overcast. I did a comfortable 5 K and now I am just relaxing today, though my friend is trying to set up a router to allow me to share my high speed internet and nothing seems to be working at the moment. Hopefully it will get resolved soon.

In the US I use a Kyocera cell phone which I have had for about 3 years or so, but when I am in Europe I use a Nokia 3510i which I like better. So now I just bought a Nokia 2115i it is also called the shorty. I fell in love with it the moment I took it out of the box.

Today I worked just a half day. When I got home I decided to go for my run almost right away. Because I ran twice yesterday my legs were really tired for the first mile but then loosened up a little. On the way back home I found a laptop computer that some one had put out for garbage collection tomorrow. Needless to say I picked it up and took it home, it needed a power supply and the one from my own laptop worked when I plugged it in and turned it on. It is a Compaq Presario 1200 with a 533 mhz processor and 4.5 gig hard drive but it works.

First of all I just realized that yesterday was my 666 Th post so I had to get today's in, not that I am superstitious . Since I decided to run the 24 hr race I have a new training plan and it involves run 2 a days on the weekends. So this morning I ran 6 miles at about a 75% to 80% effort, my legs were a little tired from the race yesterday. Then I went out again in the afternoon and ran another 4 miles. The idea is to give me a chance to get used to running with tired legs, which I will inevitably have to do in the 24 hr race.The day was great, with cool temp's and low humidity.