Code Orange

Our old friend Coronavirus has been visiting campus this week. We've been steadily progressing through the colour - coded responses - first from green to blue, then to yellow and - as of five minutes ago - onto orange. We've got about 50 confirmed cases on campus, which is about 1 tenth of the campus population. The colours after this are red, then grey. Presumably grey is where we lock ourselves in the nuclear bunker. Orange status means that all of my in - person classes will be suspended, and most likely the athletes will stop meeting in large groups as well. 

At the Red Devil Meet - Finally a decent picture of me running!
Check out those tan lines!

I'm hoping to run well at this meet (if it happens that is). The last three weeks of training have been really intense. I've been running around 90 kilometres a week, which is quite a lot but still manageable. It's the intensity which has taken some getting used to - the sessions on Tuesday and Thursday are always very tough. I've been doing longer reps than I'm used to - it's unusual for a track session to not include reps of a kilometre or more. Coach particularly enjoys mile efforts, which are as hellish as they sound. Thankfully, I've got some great lads around me. The commitment from the team has been incredible, and it's really started to show. We started to season ranked tenth in our conference, and we've recently been ranked in fifth. We're definitely defying expectations and we're hoping to carry on with that; we think that we could get 4th, or maybe even 3rd in our conference by the end of the season. 

Start of the Race. 

We put a really solid performance in at the Red Devil's meet last weekend. It was probably my best race of the season, even though it wasn't the fastest time I've run. The conditions and the course were really tough; our race was after 12am so things had started to heat up before we'd even started, and race was a really high standard. I was hoping to replicate that form in the race on Friday, which is a much faster course. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the meet is going to happen, owing to the amount of cases that we've had on campus. It may end up being a good thing actually. They were predicting temperatures on Friday too be somewhere between 80 - 85 degrees Fahrenheit, which will be nearly 30 degrees centigrade. I don't think I will ever quite get used to running in such incredible temperatures, but I'll just have to get on with it I guess. At least I get a great tan! 

A golf cart set itself on fire at the end of the race!

There's nothing much to report, though my studies are going pretty well. I'm currently on A's in all of my classes, which are harder to get in America because they don't have an A* grade above it. I'm swiftly converting Isaiah to my English ways - he's started to use certain British words quite a lot. I think I've been able to dispel some of the myths surrounding the English that exist in the American mind, especially in Isaiah's case. He started to say 'lad' quite a lot when addressing me and, when describing his post - workout condition, he'll say 'I'm done in'. Unfortunately there are some who still think that it's all tea and fox hunting. If only they could take a walk through Birkenhead, then they'd know. 

Biggg Road in Central Kansas. 

There is some good news however, which is that it looks like I'm going to be coming home a little bit early. Almost all American Colleges, Bethel included, have decided to cut short term by about two weeks after Thanksgiving break. Term will effectively now end on the 30th November, though it looks like I'm going to be competing in my first indoor meet on the 5th. I'll be travelling home around the same time as Emily, around the 7th December. This was pretty good news for me - as much as I'm enjoying myself in America, I do find myself missing my little Peninsula pretty often. Still, I suppose that is too be expected. I've even started missing the weather a tad - I would welcome a cold snap right about now! It looks as though you've been getting quite a bit more than that though; the pictures and videos of the horrific conditions in the endurance programmes recent training have been extremely useful visual aids for when I've been trying to explain just how bad English cross country can be. The Americans were aghast - they really have no idea! 

Just a cool old car.