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Went for an awesome run today. I have been running every Monday afternoon with a bunch of others for the last 3 or 4 months now. Today I had Drew and Lydia along with me. I am coaching both for their upcoming athletics convention. Today we ran down to the local school (about 1 KM) and planned to use the running track there. I didn’t realise that it was half normal size, being only 200 metres around. However all the lanes were marked and they did have a full 100 metre straight sprint set of lanes.

First of we ran a 1500 metres. Drew finished when Lydia and I were still at the 1000 metre mark. I pushed Lydia on and she ended up beating me by about 10 metres.

After a short break we ran a 100 metre sprint. I was able to hold Lydia off by about 2 metres but Drew beat me by around 5 metres.

Finally I got them to run a 200 metres race. Then we walked and jogged home – alternating short sprints with jogging.

Now I feel really refreshed and ready for the next 5 hours work! Monday is a work night for me and Amanda.

Day and night, wake and sleep - they are starting to blur - I am not sure which state I am in at the moment.

This started Thursday night. After I got home from volleyball coaching, I looked in on my developer who was supposed to be doing some remediation work for me on a website - due to be completed by the following day at midday (my time). He assured me it would be done. I knew I had some work to do for this which had to be completed by Saturday my time but I had been waiting for him. I made a start anyway. Here's how the last 3 days have gone for me. This site is going live on Monday morning.

Friday 3:45 AM - went to bed

Friday 7:45 AM - woke up

I have started to realise that being 40 <> being 24 or even 34.

Yesterday I was up at 7:30 and off to an activity day for the kids. I was coaching discus for 4 hours to a bunch of kids aged 8 to 18. After that I went to the PE coaching class I run for 2 hours that involved a fair amount of running around. We drove home and basically the minute I got home I got changed and went straight back out to AFL football training. By the time I got home from that I was wrecked!. A long hot shower and a foot massage by Judith helped, but this morning I have some muscle soreness! Today is my rest day. Tomorrow I have basketball coaching and Friday I will be running long jump all day for a sports day - 126 kids to supervise!

I need to get a bionic body!

I am really enjoying coaching the kids. I have been coaching them now since February this year. We had been playing together on and off since December, and they asked me to be their coach.

It has been great researching the coaching skills for the drills and the skills I have been using for 20 years, and even more fun putting it together in a package for these kids.

I have between 10 and 15 kids turn up once a week for a full training session in a gym, and 5-6 of them come running with me on Monday night and then to a local half court for skills drills and some 3 on 3.

The really exhilarating thing is seeing them start to pick up skills. They are all nearly shooting correctly now (when none of them did before) and they can all attempt a layup with most of them making it around 30% of the time. Their field shooting is increasing slightly, to close to 20%. I want to get it closer to 40% if I can.

Tomorrow I head off to my first training night with an AFL Masters team - for 40's and over. The good news is they only play once a fortnight to allow time for injuries to heal!

I have upped the intensity of my exercise to get me tuned up. I am pushing harder in my running - yesterday I ran up the hill I normally cycle up (as my bike chain is broken) and then back down again. Was a good hard session and I lost 1.6Kgs doing it.

I have also stepped up the intensity with the Thursday night basketball crew, now running more and more fitness and skills drills before we have a half court scrimmage. The net result they have asked me to coach the basketball and volleyball teams for their school tournament in October. Today I met with school guy to get official approval for this - pending discussions should be a done deal. After that I went straight to the library and checked out some coaching youth basketball and volleyball books. Drills will be getting tougher!

I'll check in after tomorrow night's training with a report on how I am fairing there. On and a long overdue update on my thyroid - it has almost come back to normal. It appears that maybe the radioactive iodine dose I was hit with 2 years ago is finally starting to work.

Over and Out.