A pretty quiet week, really. Slowly recovering from covid, which is mostly taking the form of the lingering cough I end up with every time I get a cold, plus a runny nose, headaches and general tiredness (the latter probably thanks to the cough stopping me from sleeping for more than an hour at a time).
I’ve probably been drinking too much coffee too (which won’t have helped with the headaches), but my brain seems determined to try to help by sabotaging the production process.
First I managed to grind the beans, fill the portafilter, tamp it down and lock the portafilter into the machine, then put hot water in a mug for an americano, remove the portafilter, knock out the grinds, start the machine, and wonder why the water level in the mug was rising but remaining strangely not coffee-coloured, and with no pressure at the grouphead. Fortunately I’d also mistimed my coffee order again and run out of proper beans, so only wasted some unpleasant stale emergency supermarket beans.
Then on a separate occasion I briefly wondered why coffee was pouring over my scales, before realising that I’d forgotten to put a cup under the machine.
TimeHop also reminded me that a year ago I tried to add beans to the grinder without taking the lid off, and for completeness I should also mention the incident a few weeks ago when I decided it would be a good idea to clean the cup that goes under the grinder while I was grinding the beans, instead of – you know – leaving it in place to catch the grinds and stop them from just falling on the grinder and the worktop.
Another very low mileage running week, for obvious reasons. I still went along to Run for Beer on Wednesday, and did parkrun (very slowly) on Saturday before finishing the week with the Saxons 5 mile race on Sunday. I don’t know what it is about that race that makes me suddenly become weirdly consistent, but in 2018 I ran it in 35:47, then in 2019 just failed to beat that, with a 35:48. After a couple of years when the race didn’t happen I absolutely smashed those times today with … 35:46.