T minus one month

With little over a month until April 13 to go I am well behind on my training, and my blogging. Firstly apologies for the lack of entries. I'll try and bring you up to speed ...

After running pretty well in January (eased by the fulfillment of my New Year's resolution to abstain from alcohol for a month) and February (alcohol-charged!), I have fallen behind after a week of nightly over-indulgence in St Moritz at the end of last month.

My slow loops of Regents Park (circa six miles, when you add the distance to and from home) have tightened my quadriceps, though they are far from the finished granite-like article needed to complete a race five times longer than I have been running.

Before flying to Switzerland I had managed only one run longer than six miles. It was, er, a whole nine miles. (Incidentally, mapped out thanks to a very helpful website: www.mapmyrun.com - like Google Earth for joggers.)

Then St Moritz and all of it's Epicurean delights grabbed a hold of my cojones. Pardon my Spanish, but a rich, week-long diet of eggs Benedict, steak tartar and veal, swilled down with finest velvetly rouge left an expensive, and bitter taste in my mouth. That, and my cuddly paunch was back.

I tried to compensate by skiing daily (I convinced myself that the high-altitude would work wonders for my training), but only succeeded in catching a cold after bending-ze-knees with only a t-shirt on. Clever, I know. As a result I was off games (ie running) for most of last week, upon my return to London.

As soon as I felt nearly better, I daubed my chest and nose with Vic, wrapped up warm and ventured out, slowly, and trotted round my trusted Regents Park loop. And my goodness it was slow. Seldom one to be out-competed voluntarily, I found men and women thrice my age overtaking me. And I, with a paucity of fuel in the proverbial tank, simply allowed them to jog on and, cartoon-like, vanish into the horizon line. Oh dear.

Three forced runs later (of - you guessed it - six miles) I decided that I ought to try a 12 miler. So after procrastinating most of Sunday and a huge Sunday Roast I set off. And it felt good, easy. I wasn't breaking records, but 12 miles in 90 mins was encouraging.

Until this morning, that is. I woke and felt a gamut of pain in my left hamstring that I have never experienced before. A (when the leg is in use) sharp and (when not in use) a dull, grumpy, hard-to-shift pain. Fifteen hours later it is still aching. Today I have been hobbling like a octogenarian who has had a double hip replacement, when both operations went wrong. I had planned to run tomorrow, but I will have to see. At the moment it feels as though I will never be able to walk gracefully again.

Fund-rasing-wise things are going a little better. After a five-a-side football tournament and a pub quiz at the Prince of Wales in Putney, I managed to bag £900. And with the help of kind friends I am now up to around £1,300. Only another £1,700 to go. Ah.

The problem is this: the more people sponsor me, the more I realise that I don't want to let anyone down (and I know it shouldn't be about that, but I seem a long way away from that comforting metal foil and hot soup they give out at the conclusion of the marathon).

The booze has been shelved again. And this as work finally dip their fingers into their pockets to fund an all-expenses night out in Amsterdam next week. Typical. Still this is what it was all about - a point of focus. Now all I need to do is slim down enough to fit into my XL training top the RNLI have sent me.