Ouch!

Here I am again after a dreadful week in the office. I won't go into detail, but it was work and no play all week long. Apart from the Belle & Sebastian concert on Thursday, of course.

Which means I have gone from something like 50k per week to 0k. I felt that was a bit drastic (and in light of my half-marathon ambitions suboptimal). Therefore I headed for the forest again this morning to run the red route, that you can see on the chart below, twice and thus have at least 20k on the clock for this week.

The weather has been brilliant all week long, while I was stuck in my office. But come the weekend, the grey skies and drizzle was back. Oh, never mind. We are not made out of sugar, are we?

A killer fungus! It has eaten up this tree and now it's moving over to the next one.

Yesterday was the final day of this football season. It has been certain for a couple of weeks now that my club is relegated to the 2. Bundesliga (Germany's second football league) ... yet again, I have to add. This is the club house, which is located in the forest:

Playing in the 2. Bundesliga means that for one season (and yes, I believe it will be one season only!) we will be playing such exiting clubs as FC Erzgebirge Aue and FC Paderborn 07. I can hardly wait! But until then, the training football ground is closed:

Have you been asking yourself why this post is called "Outch!"? Well, I am coming to that now. I had just started on the second round, when I spotted some nice coloured plants. Actually, I think they are weeds, but I am not entirely sure.

So I knelt down to make a close-up...

... and when I got back up... OUTCH!!! I had twisted my right knee. I am not kidding you, it hurt like hell. But as they say: "nur die Harten kommen in den Garten", a saying which apparently has been included in Spiegel Online's "Enzyklopädie sprachlichen Grauens" (the encylopaedia of linguistic horror of the Spiegel online magazine). And so I hobbled on. Snail pace. (The 20k took 2 h and 25 min.)

I wonder who is living here:

I stopped for a bit to rest my knee and enjoy the view over the lake:

This is the probably the worst part of the route: The bridge across the street. Can you see just how steep it is?

Maybe it's better from this angle:

Right, here is a question that has puzzled me for a while now. How do other runners manage to smell good even after they have run for quite a while? Today... again... I have passed a lot of runners, who looked like they had been out and about for a while, but smelled like they had just stepped out of their bath. Me, I smell a bit like a skunk after 30 minutes max. What exactly is their secret? Do they carry deodorant with them or is their washing powder stronger than mine? Better soap? Hardly possible, since I am using Karen's Lilac Time soap right now. Any ideas, email me at sabine_1969 at gmx dot de. I would like to smell good too! Really, I would.

At the little lake the first ducklings have hatched. They whizz about so fast that it was impossible to take a picture that was properly focused:

And on the meadow the Cologne Crocodiles were playing God knows whom:

Now I am back home listening to Kings of Convenience Riot on an Empty Street:

Markus recommended them (nothing he's ever recommended turned out bad) and when I found the cd on special offer, I took it home with me. They are from Bergen in Norway. On their website you can listen to some of their songs.

I bought new grass for Mr Cat yesterday and he puked his little heart up all day today. No problem, it happens every time he gets new grass. But why can't he do it in the hall on the tiles? So excuse me now, while I go and clean the living room carpet. Next milestone in my project "Home Improvement" - replace carpet with lamination.