Oh Dear...

 Not much has been happening over here, apart from this whole election thing. I’ve come to appreciate the British electoral system far more in these past days – at the very least you can say its decisive. As of right now, two days after the Presidential election, no one has any idea what’s going on. Initially, on election night, I thought that Trump might clinch it – then the morning after I thought it was going to be Biden. Now, like the rest of the country, I haven’t got a flipping clue. There seem to be ballots coming out of nowhere, and some States are saying that its going to take days to tally everything. Worse than this, some of the races are so close (I think Georgia – Emily’s former state - is currently separated by about 3000 votes or something) that there are likely to be automatic recounts. Trump seems determined to contest the results, which I can’t really blame him for because this election is insanely close. The legal battles could drag this thing on for weeks. Unless there’s a decisive decision soon, I’m beginning to suspect that this thing could go all the way to the Supreme Court. Hopefully that won’t happen – it looks like Biden will pull through. There’s my expert analysis anyway, who needs the BBC?

We’re closing in on my final race of the season now – Conference is just over a week away. I’m not nervous, yet, though I’m sure I will be. I’m very happy with how my training’s been going, so I’m pretty confident for the race. I’ve ran the course before, in the pre-conference meet, which seems like it was years ago, and it’s pretty challenging. There’s plenty of hills, and they go up and down constantly. I’m not getting my hopes up, but if I can put in another performance like I did at the Mid – States classic two weeks ago, then I’ve got a decent chance at claiming the first freshman spot. There’s a guy from St Mary’s who was just ahead of me last time out, so we’ll just have to see if I can stick with him. I’m also hoping that the weather will be good, because there’s honestly no way of telling with Kansas. We’ve already had snow, but these last few days have been boiling – seriously, like T – shirts off at practice kind of weather. It’s November! Ridiculous.

Got a trim innit. 

I spent Halloween with the Bartels, which was quite an experience. We can expect a maximum of about three trick – or treaters at our house on Halloween – in Wichita we were getting two or three a minute. I’m not sure whether it was just because of where the Bartels live, but there was just an endless stream of kids – we literally ran out of candy. A lot of families had clearly got tired of answering the door every 10 seconds, so just set up in their driveways with braziers and bonfires. You couldn’t drive down the street, because it was just full of people. Some parents had found a way to work around this – they’d drive from house to house in golf carts with their kids on the back. That’s some serious candy – collecting efficiency right there. I wish I’d taken some pictures, but honestly, I just completely forgot.

I was extremely disheartened to learn about the Prime Ministers new lockdown measures – and I’m sceptical about the 2^nd of December cut of date. It seems as though we’re set to repeat what we did in March of this year. I’m certain that the Wirral Endurance Programme will pull through the whole thing pretty well – we did for about four months earlier in the year after all. I hope that you all stay focused on your training (coaches especially😉) and look forward to the better days to come. I’ve been out here for very nearly three months, and I’m definitely looking forward to coming home for Christmas. One more month to go!