I’ve been sticking to my commitment to run around the Tan twice a week. Today I recorded my fastest time since I started finishing in 17 minutes and 32 seconds. By the time I crossed the finish line though, I was hurting. I really went out fast and was watching the clock all the way around. I knew it was going to be my fastest time so I pushed as hard as I could towards the end. About 10 minutes after the run I really started to feel good and I am now enjoying the exercise. My next goal is to be able to consistently run under 18 minutes regardless of how I feel on the day. Once I can do this I will push to get down to the 17 minutes flat mark. I think I’ve still got a fair bit of running before I get there but it is good to have some goals.

I start my next season of Pennant down at MSAC on Wednesday night. It will be the first set of matches I have played since the ban on speed glue came into effect. In fact tonight, I put my new Butterfly Tenergy 05 rubbers onto my bat with FIT chack, a new water based glue. I was surprised how sticky the glue is. It is recommended that you only put the glue on the rubber as if you also put glue on the blade, it might stick too hard to get off without causing some damage! And it also took a lot longer for the glue to dry than I was expecting. I must have waited nearly 15 minutes for it to dry.

The other thing I found interesting about sticking on my new rubbers without speed glue, was that when I cut them, I could cut them neatly right to the edge of the blade which reminded me of when I first started playing. The bat just looks so neat. With speed glue, the rubber was always over hanging a little and needed a bit of trimming here and there and never really looked neat.

The sponge of the Tenergy 05 is completely different to Sriver which I have used now for years. It is a lot harder sponge and by looking at the topsheet, you would think that the rubber has been “glued up”. I’m very interested to see how it plays.