a short break

I've been a bit lazy with the posting for a few days, since I've done very physical activity. A few rides, both on the trainer and on the road, have kept my legs moving without too much stress on my achilles, and I am almost ready to get out there again. Yes, I know the bike is still pushing my achilles hard, but they don't seem to respond to it at all like the running. I haven't yet made it to the pool for swimming or water running.

Today, though, tragedy struck that could've ended everything:

Tthe coffee machine broke down.

A couple of hours disassembling and diagnosing the problem with the weirdest pump I've ever seen will have me back on the brown stuff tomorrow.  Phew! That was close.

I made another round of energy bullets - recipe again courtesy of the good folks at (never at) homemaker. This batch used agave nectar, which seems to be just about the same taste and consistency of golden syrup, cocoa and cranberries. Here's their link: nut-butter-energy-chunks

And here is a pic of my attempt. These are not as much to my taste as the original peanut butter ones - leaving some aftertaste of the agave nectar, but they're still darn good!

I've also been looking at a superb blog by Pete Larson at Runblogger, who has a lot of great insights about biomechanics (he's an anatomy teacher), barefooting and basically being a runner with a life. One cool thing he has done is analyse some slowmo video of his running style as he has "found his forefoot". This prompted me to look back at a video I took in the first month or so of running in the fingens. At the time, I remember thinking yahoo! Got it right, but now, with sore ankles, I can see that's it's all toes with very little heel touchdown at all.

This week I'll take a new video in shoes and barefoot and put the three side by side. Hopefully, they'll show some improvement.