Mon 5th - Sunday 11th January

By pushing my body whilst it was less than 100%, I'd lowered my resistance and enabled my bug to take hold allowing a full-blown cold to take over and force me off the road.
Normally it's quite a frustrating couple of days waiting for a cold to pass but this time I knew that my cold was the small price I'd paid for achieving my goal and a top 10 place at the county Champs.

I decided to rest up until Tuesday's track session and to stay well within my limits during the run. We were set 8 x 1000 metre reps, on a cold bleak evening for running. I knew it was going to be a bit of a slog and decided that after the first rep that to complete the full set of 8 would be too much of an ask for my tired, ill body, so I set my sights on completing 6.

Before the session had even begun, I'd unknowingly made my task even harder. I'd sucked on a throat sweet, containing an antiseptic. I'd thought that it would numb my throat, taking away the pain, allowing me to concentrate on my running. What I hadn't considered was the numbing effect it would have on my tongue. I was soon aware that by numbing my mouth I'd created the sensation of running with a big gob-stopper on my tongue. It also stopped me from swallowing properly. I was soon choking and gasping for air, which only got worse the longer the session went on. At least it took my mind away from the fact I was ill, very lethargic and leg weary!

My times were unsurprisingly unspectacular and I found myself getting slower each rep. By my sixth I was nearly 20 seconds down on my first clocking, and if I hadn't already decided to call it a day at six that would surely have been the sign to stop.

I woke up on Wednesday and felt stiff and tired. My coach had set me a single 70 minute run, but I knew I needed to stretch my legs out so I did a little ten minute run to get myself into better shape for my longer evening run. I was glad I did. I felt ten times better by the evening and enjoyed 60 of my 70 minutes. As is the way with me at the moment things didn't quite go to plan and I landed awkwardly on a tree root and twisted my foot. Thankfully I didn't injure myself, but I did manage to re agitate my blister on the sole of my foot. I hobbled home and surveyed the damage. At this stage it wasn't too bad, a quick jab with a pin and the pain was gone. Luckily, Santa had left me a pack of blister plasters at the bottom of my stocking, which came in rather useful. I don't know whether they were left over from his supply, thousands of miles in a pair of old, black boots has got to take its toll!

I set out on my run on Thursday morning with no pain, and begun my tempo session. 15 minutes warm up, 10 minutes tempo, (for which I felt really strong and more like my old self), and then a 15 minute warm down. The blister survived the fast tempo running, but sadly decided to show it's ugly head during my slow warm down. This time things didn't look so good. It had got significantly larger and annoyingly was slightly too big for my plasters to cover.

The only course of action was to stay off it so I cancelled my evening run, which I wasn't unduly worried about with a race on Saturday. It would give me a chance to heal my foot and completely get over my cold. I sat out my Friday pre race run too, hoping another 24 hours off my feet would see me through the race unscathed.

Saturday was the coldest day of the year. As I drove to the race the thermometer read minus four and it was one o'clock in the afternoon! The ground was frozen solid and having lapped the course on my warm up I knew it was going to be a fast race.

The blister was OK. I could feel a dull pain every time my foot struck the floor but it wasn't unbearable by any means, although just to err on the side of caution, I ditched my spikes in favour of flats, which offered me more cushioning.

I decided not to push the pace if I didn't have to. I didn't want to make my foot worse and I knew I would still be feeling the effects of my cold.
As I'd expected, the course was super fast, with short sharp hills and long winding downhill sections. I felt comfortable and found myself at the front at the start of the second of three laps. I refrained from giving my all, hoping that I could win without pushing my body to the limit.

By the start of the last lap it was down to two of us. However, I was aware of a growing discomfort in my shoe although the rest of me still felt OK, so I slowly upped the pace. I just couldn't shift my opponent from my shoulder, so I really started to open up my stride on the final down hill. As I did I was aware of some real pain on the sole of my foot. I tried to ignore it and keep my head down. I'm unsure of whether it had any effect on my pace or not, I know for sure it didn't help matters!

With the finish in sight my opponent eased past. I tried to respond but I couldn't and finished a couple of seconds down. I was gutted. I'd wanted to win all my league cross-countries this season and to make matters worse I'd never seen or heard of my conqueror before.
I knew I'd been ill but I'd actually felt really good during the race and had felt like I was really bombing along. When I took my shoe off I found I'd ripped my blister clean off my foot, to reveal a rather angry looking gash???
But it hadn't felt too bad during the race, the cold temperatures having numbed my pain. A quick chat with some of the younger members of my squad revealed all. He was in fact a former under 20 national 1500 metre Champ, who apparently had been working hard on his endurance over the winter, which explained why he had the edge over me in the sprint finish. I had the answers to the questions I'd had about why I'd not won. Under the circumstances, I'd run quite well and was pleased I'd got over my cold. I just had the small matter, which was fast becoming a larger matter, of my foot to deal with.

On Saturday evening I bathed it, rubbed cream into it, wrapped it up and hoped it would just go away.
I tried to run Sunday morning but I knew it wouldn't survive my long run, so switched to Mondays 30 mins.
I could feel every step but it wasn't overly painful and as long as I didn't stop quickly or go round any sharp turns I knew it would just about survive.
Having done one of Monday's planned two runs without doing any additional damage I decided to cut my losses. I'd done what I'd wanted to achieve, turned my legs over after a hard race, so it was back home to my Florence Nightingale and another afternoon with my feet up! I know I'm in good shape and running well, all I need is to steer clear of all these silly little interruptions to my training, before they become any bigger.