Phut...

I still have medal envy... I'm not proud of it, but there we are - envy of Charles' medal from the Bristol 10k. It's a very fine medal, from what I remember... And he made it to the front page of the Bristol Evening Post too!

Bottom right hand photo - obviously he's the green splodge, being a crocodile...

I had physio again on Wednesday and was told to keep doing the ice on the back of my knee and not to run for two more weeks, but it's ok to cycle and swim, as long as it's not breaststroke. So at least that's a great reason to practise my front crawl which looks lovely but usually leads to me swallowing half the pool and running out of air after 35 strokes.

On Wednesday night I did 5k on the exercise bike (bad idea, really sore knees) and half an hour in the pool - using the water jets as massage hydrotherapy, then tried to do my rubbish crawl. Another couple of weeks of this and I really should improve. I'll forget the bike and stick to the swimming and hydrotherapy.

On Thursday the pool went PHUT. Yep, that's the only way to describe it - PHUT. I was letting the water do its stuff, there was a bit of a clank, a PHUT noise, a host of black bits shot into the pool and.... well, nothing really. No power, no current, no nice hydrotherapy.

I phoned the US where the pool came from. Did I want to troubleshoot? Yes please. 'OK, so you take the 4 screws off the front grille cover then locate the propeller inside it should turn but not as easy as a ceiling fan then check the hydraulics you want to drain about a gallon of fluid off but if you get less that may mean you have a kink or a hole in your hose and you'll have to check the system by the way you have drained the pool haven't you?' I asked if I could abandon the troubleshooting and have an engineer instead.

They sent me details of an engineer who I phoned first thing on Friday. He's Scott and he's from Somerset - he sounds lovely. And like he knows what a gallon of fluid might look like. He's visiting on Tuesday and thinks my motor may be dead and the black bits could be what used to be the propeller.

A new motor will have to come from the US, unless the only UK stockist (in Edinburgh) happens to have one. I rang them. They've just had a consignment of 8 motors arrive, and think only 7 were on back-order. I've put my name on number 8, just in case... Wee Gill was in Scotland this weekend so I found myself wondering how she'd take to a 'hello can you bring me back a motor and a propeller please' type phone call...

So I turned my mind to training, bearing in mind that I currently can't run, can't cycle and now have no pool to swim in. What's the only sensible thing to do?

Yep, I entered a triathlon....