Animals VII - is you da fox?

It was never really part of the plan to run less than 40 miles in October and November but it happened.October was the foot problem. November saw what I suspect was swine 'flu plus pneumonia. Thanks to my truly appaling GPs, very little got done until relatively recently and it took until three days ago before I finally ended up with the right antibiotic for the pneumonia, a full three weeks after I originally fell ill. At this point I should thank my sister Jane and friend Refik for their recent medical advice, which was infinitely more helpful than that of what were supposedly "my" doctors. The latter will be receiving a bollocking, assuming the post still works these days.

My mate Al is a great believer that runners shouldn't get too obsessed with illness and injury. I can see his point to a certain extent - these are a natural part of running and you can't wait until everything is perfect before you tie up your trainers. Niggles etc are there to be run through rather than whinged about, although obviously serious injury or illnesses are something a bit different. Anyway, now that I've had three days of feeling normal again, I thought it was time to test my body out. Three weeks is quite a while to go with no exercise, notwithstanding the close-to-half a stone that I've lost (I'm now below 12st and am technically a "normal weight" for the first time since god knows when).

Turns out I'm OK - clearly the short run I did was tough, but I think I'll be somewhere close to normal relatively quickly. It's a measure of how far behind I am versus my expectations that I was hoping to be competing in a cross-country marathon on the Gower peninsula. Hopefully I'll be in a position to start running proper distances by the end of the month.