Update

Found some pearl tapioca today so am looking forward to doing a baked tapioca in the next few days.

The vege garden is going well -- I've planted quite a few more herbs.

Susan & I are looking forward to three weeks in Sydney looking after our 1 yr old grandson. They've just purchased a new house so we're looking forward to seeing that too.

Found a whole new exciting area to study--brain plasticity--there are some great videos around explaining how it works--basically, any learning, no matter what your age, increases your neural networks--as we've always known, "use it or lose it" & "no pain no gain" there's no short cut, lots and lots of repetition is necessary to form new & lasting networks in our brain.

I built this stereo amplifier for my Mum & Dad about 30yrs ago. It stopped working recently. The fault turned out to be simple. It just needed a new set of loudspeaker output sockets. It's now working as well as ever.

This is a Sansui stereo amplifier I purchased in New Guinea before I was married. That makes it 36+ years old.

A few days ago it started making a lot of noise in the left channel. The volume control had no effect on the noise, however, the treble control did affect the noise. This meant the offending component had to be between the volume control circuitry and the treble control circuitry. It turned out to be the 3.3 mf electrolytic coupling capacitor between these two stages. I replaced the capacitor and now it too is working as good as new.

Programming

Well I've been working around the clock for the past week developing an online version of AVI's relationship development report. It was needed for a workshop in Dubai conducted by Jim Warner of OnCourse International.

Sprint training suffered as a result, however, I kept up my regular jogging. In fact Stephanie and I managed our longest and best jog (despite a lingering calf muscle strain from the last sprint training session -- the physio was right, you do need to keep the blood flowing through strains to heal them quickly) this year last Monday.

I've also been updating my main website adding links to some videos at the the presentations page.

Races

Last Saturday, I wore my new spikes for the first time in a sprint race since injuring my hamstring a few weeks ago in training. However, the spikes made no difference to my time, 11:25 sec -- exactly the same as the previous week.

I was really pleased with how I felt & went in the 800m -- best time this year: 3:29 min -- I'll keep working to get below 3 min.

Training

This morning training involved:

• 6 x practice starts
• 6 x 80m sprints with a 80%, slow, 100% pattern
• 1 x 300m sprint

I used my running spikes during the 60m sessions for the first time since straining my hamstring. No repeat of the previous problem.

Bingles, sunnies, & races

It was an interesting week last week. On Monday night I managed to have a bingle in my car on the way to run at QE II Stadium. Fortunately my card was still drivable (just a dent in the bonnet).

As I continued on to the Stadium I realised I'd left my prescription sunglasses on the top of my car when I got out to survey the damage. There was no time to go back and look for them as would have missed my race.

Ran the 800m in 3min 30sec! That was 20sec better than a week before -- very pleased.

On the was back home I stopped where I'd had the bingle & went looking, with a flashlight, for my glasses. Found the lenses first then the frame. Bit hard to see with the flashlight, but the lenses looked OK -- which was astounding given the number of vehicles which must have run over them -- it's a very busy highway. No so lucky with fame. It really did look like many vehicles had run over it.

Next day, off to the optometrist with the frame and lenses. They were as surprised as I was that the lenses were intact. They had them fitted to a new frame within an hour. I now have a set of sunnies better than before as the lenses kept falling out of the old frame.

Next to get the car fixed. My insurance company advised me I will have to fork out $400 as that is the basic excess on my policy. My son rings around and tells me a new bonnet costs $135 and that there are plenty in stock. So I give the insurance company the flick and Jason and I have the new bonnet fitted before the end of the day (about 30 mins work).

On Saturday I had three races at QE II: 3000m, 60m and 300m. The picture below shows me running the 3000m race. I completed it in 16 min 44 sec -- 4 mins faster than a couple of weeks ago.

The picture below is the start of the 60m. My time was 11:25 sec. It was the first time I've ever run this distance in a race so have nothing to compare it with.

The last race of the day was 300m. I finished that in 60:26 sec. Again, I've never run in a race of this distance before so have nothing to compare the result with.

Value Descriptors

I was up until midnight last night updating the Value Descriptors in the online database so I decided to skip sprint training which started at 7am this morning. I'll do an 8k jog thisarvo instead.

I've spent the morning re-organizing the Blogs page at www.minessence.net -- time for breakfast!!