England's Next Opening Batsman

Dylan turned 11 months old last week and he celebrated by figuring out that he could walk without holding onto anything. Since discovering this, he's been trundling around the house at pace, big grin on his face and giggling like a madman. At some point midweek he was inspired by the world cup and started kicking a little soccer ball around as he went.

This weekend he discovered cricket. The bat in the photos above is one I got off ebay when Gavin was a baby. It's been used extensively in many hard-fought games of "corridor cricket" between the Gavster and myself, so I was delighted when Dylan took to it this morning.

I guess he'd been watching us, because he got hold of the bat and stood there waiting for us to throw the ball at him. When I did, he swung, connected and laughed. We ended up playing for a good hour, during which he hit everything that came past.

Including my knee and a pot of basil!!!

Nancy went out on Friday night, so after we put Dylan to bed Gavin and I watched "The Wolfman". It was full moon this weekend (and there was a really cool lunar eclipse on Saturday morning), so last night Gavin wanted to go "werewolf hunting" with me. We walked around the neighborhood enjoying a beautiful full moon, looking for werewolves and quoting parts of the movie to each other. Gavin asked me what we would do if we found a werewolf, as we didn't have any silver. I told him I didn't need any because I was an ace werewolf hunter and all the werewolves were afraid of me.

He was suitably impressed.

I also got some good miles in this weekend - 13 on Saturday and another 8 this morning. I was pretty pleased with that, especially as I'd started adding weighted squats and lunges back into my workouts during the week which left my legs a little sore.

Yesterday I felt good until we hit the hike and bike trail for the last few miles. For some reason I seem to have a mental blindspot on that trail and lose all motivation (even when I was in top shape for Rocky Raccoon a few years ago I struggled on it). I chickened out at mile 12, skipped across the Lamar bridge and finished up by running on the North side for the last mile and a bit, which seems to be a lot better (and shaves off about half a mile).

I have the El Scorcho 50k coming up in about 4 weeks time, but at this time of year I'm not looking for a fast time and am using it as a glorified long run. I also have no race plans for this coming winter, so maybe I need to sit down and come up with a few goals to aim for.

Hopefully that will give me some consistency.