Its all beer & kettles!

Wed pm: 14 kilometers of aerobic running and intervals
Fri am: 15.6 kilometers of hard aerobic running
Sat pm: 25.3 kilometers of slowish long run
Sun am: 21 liters of steam beer brewed
Week: 71 km & 21 L
Month: 301 km & 21 L
Year: 820 km & 66 L

Well, gee, life has been really busy and it has been hard to find the time, energy, and motivation to keep the blog up to date. I have, however, been doing a reasonable job of keeping up the kilometers, though I took Thursday off and ran a long, hard aerobic run Friday morning before work (as opposed to running home from work Thursday night and back again Friday as I've been doing in recent weeks).

Because Sunday was scheduled for home brewing, I decided to do the long run Saturday, but again, the general busy-ness of life meant I had to wait until 6:00 pm before I could get started. Finishing 25 km of graft at 8:30 at night is NOT a familiar feeling, and I'm not sure I liked it. Ne'er the less, I got it done and feel I've done about as much as life and niggles have allowed in preparation for the Ome 30 km trail run next week. Getting the run out of the way meant I could get stuck into the brewing at my friend Bryan's today without any guilt--well a 5-km recovery would have been nice , but just couldn't be squeezed in. Stiff.

A brewing related horn-toot is in order. I had been hunting around for a large stock pot for boiling...around 35 or 36 liters capacity (because to make batches of 22 L you have to allow for evaporation during the boil, and some free-board to stave off boil-overs is handy too). Stainless steel is a much nicer and more durable material than aluminium, but is significantly more expensive. A new aluminium pot would be 12,000 yen and a new stainless steel one, 18,000 to 20,000. I had been watching the Yahoo (Japan) Auctions without much luck, but suddenly on Thursday night I scored a second hand stainless steel pot for 9,000 (about A$100)! It has volume graduations marked on the side (very helpful). And the guy managed to get it delivered last night, and today it was pressed into action to make its first brew, a nice California steam beer with plenty of Northern Brewer, Amarillo, and Cascade hops. It was a bugger riding my bicycle the 5 km to Bryan's with it balanced on the front shopping basket :-). Just for the hell of it, and because I'm such a proud new daddy, I've included a photo of the pot. That nasty looking dark spot rubbed right off, by the way!