NEXT...

They say God only gives you as much as you can handle. Well, I believe God has a lot more faith in me than I do! Just when I was getting ready to ramp up my running to prepare for the Pittsburgh Marathon and the Buckeye Trail 50K, a minor disaster hits at home.

We had horrible downpours yesterday leading to a flooded basement. No big deal, we know the water backs up when it rains exceptionally hard, it happens very infrequent, so we have everything in a flood safe place. But the water wasn't going down. Could there be something in the pipes?

I spent 2 hours working a snake last night and decided to call in the pro. For $275 they were going to fix the problem. I had no choice; see, our house was built in the early 60's and all the gray water is tied together somewhere under the basement floor--so every drop of water that goes down the drains upstairs, comes back up the floor drain downstairs! After 2 hours of power snaking the drain, the plumber said he'd knock off $75 and give me an estimate to dig up all the pipes in the morning. Um, I need a second opinion!

Changing one of my vacation days from the Christmas Holiday to today, i had Roto-Rooter come in. He snaked every possible entry and exit into and out of the house... no clog. So he ran a camera and low and behold he found the problem. The pipes have come apart under a portion of my paved driveway causing the water in the basement to not drain.

Changing yet another vacation day to tomorrow, I will watch as the $3000 excavation crew digs up and fixes the problem!

Maybe I'll run tonight and take an quick shower. It's been a 3 day lay off and I'm ready to burn some stress!

Stay safe, keep your soles to the ground, and keep moving forward.

PS... please cross your fingers or say a prayer that this will fix the problem!!!