Calf Muscles? More like Aged Cow Muscles

Well it's been several days since the Master put fingers to keyboard and a lot has happened in his running world since then. A long 13.5 training run was executed successfully at point of delivery. Two days later the calf muscles felt they'd been gripped by Mike Tyson and squeezed with his animal ferocity. Unable to walk properly without considerable pain, the likelihood of running anywhere with him was almost non-existent. I think it was probably a little exaggerated, as he did manage to play a squash game a day later, but he claimed it uses different msucles. I think he just didn't want to take me out again. I have to admit I was a bit of a bad boy on the long run. There was one of my enemies (i.e. a dog I don't know) virtually every 30 metres or so and whilst my behaviour doesn't allow me to be off the lead, I can still make it quite awkward for the Master. I think I actually make him faster though - he seems to speed up when we approach another dog. So I am doing him a service really.
Anyway, he didn't take me out all week so I guess I was in the dog house. Then to cap it all he disappeared on Sunday for over three hours without a bye or a leave to me. Apparently he did a half-marathon - whatever one of those is, in a local town. I have to say, he didn't look very happy when he came back, so I guess he must have missed me. Apparently he was "well outside" his PB, whatever a PB is, and he could hardly walk. I guess he doesn't train enough and of course he was missing one vital ingredient, Me. When is someone going to organise a race for dogs and their owners? I am sure we'd be pretty good as a combination. I certainly can pull him along at a fair old clip and I am sure he'd have a chance to beat his PB.

Are you going? Are you going to the Boston Tea Party?

Yesterday's run was pretty standard and uneventful - a plodding 5 miles - but the backdrop was pretty interesting. Listening to The Sensational Alex Harvey Band one was reminded of that party piece anthem The Boston tea Party which is obviously about the infamous dumping of British tea into Boston harbour in protest about the taxation that George III's government was placing on the US colony in 1773. Of course this was a contributory factor in the eventual independence of the US from British rule and makes an excellent story. It was instigated by Samuel Adams, he of the constitution and excellent beer fame. many great accounts of the Tea Party can be found on the internet. Here's a good one. One thing that you may not be aware of is that actually the amount of tax that HM Government was demanding on tea from the colonists was actually less than the tax paid by Londoners for the same goods. The protest and eventually destruction of 342 chests of tea, was not really aimed at tea but at the British Government's desire to punitively tax the colonists at every opportunity. As Alex Harvey's lyrics go

"The King has said he's gonna put a tax on tea,
and that's the reason you all Americans drink coffee"