Injured! Stricken!

Okay, it’s not that bad. But I thought I’d give it an Enid Blyton-esque type title just to inject a little drama into this blog. In actual fact, it’s less drama, and more a right tale of woe. It started when I went for my weekly swim training in Bakewell swimming pool and, whilst in the course of dodging the teenagers doing handstands in the very shallow, shallow end and the man with the hairy back doing backstroke and trying to complete my mile, I somehow managed to injure the muscle in my chest. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. How is it even possible to strain your chest muscle? I didn’t even feel it until I got out of the pool and suddenly realised that I had a feeling across my chest like I was having a heart attack. In fact, I might even have been having a heart attack, but it’s just too embarrassing to go to the doctors with this after I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen for the past few months how very healthy and how very fit I am to run the greats. Anyway, it went off after a bit, and I didn’t feel ill or anything, so it must be okay (right?)

Well my embarrassing chest muscle strain continued all week – striking me at the most inconvenient of moments (whilst out for a meal with my friend, whilst lifting the shopping bags, whilst exhaling during a telephone call – and this is bad considering I work in a call centre) so I decided to give the swimming a miss for a week or two until it went completely better. It’s no big deal, I told myself. After all, I’ve got until September to get this swimming thing right. (But perhaps I really should try and learn to swim properly, for I suspect it was my faulty breaststroke technique which has caused this injury in the first place, and not, as I may have implied, the hilarious antics of some teenagers or a hairy pensioner). And, I told myself, I am still maintaining my fitness – after all, I’m still running twice a week.

Then disaster really struck. My eldest son caught a flu-type virus. He was really miserable. Then I caught it. And I was really miserable too. My youngest son is now coming down with it. He’s pretty miserable as well. On the upside, my husband is yet to catch it. On the downside, the fact that my youngest son was crawling all over my husband when he returned from work tonight and wiping his snotty little nose all over my husband in the process probably means that it’s pretty inevitable that he is going to catch it. And you know what men are like. They don’t get colds, they get flu. And when it’s flu (and, oh God, it’s felt like it) they’ve got something worse. So when he does catch it, not only will I be nursing one miserable toddler, one miserable child and feeling sorry for myself, but I’ll also be nursing someone who’s somehow contracted yellow fever. Anyway, the upshot of all of us being stricken in this manner has meant that I haven’t done any training whatsoever.... I don’t know which is worse. The virus or the guilt. I mean the bug is bad, but the guilt is crippling. It truly is worthy of the italics I have placed in this paragraph to emphasise it. It’s only one week’s worth of training after all, but I feel like my muscles have wasted, my fitness has evaporated and I’m no longer capable of running up the road, never mind running all the greats. Plus there is the knowledge that in precisely 23 days’ time my first race takes place and this week the only preparation I have done for it is more Enid Blyton-esque lashings of lemsip and chocolate smothered toffee from Thorntons to make me feel better. It’s not good. It really isn’t.

So, sorry. I can only apologise. Next week, when I’m feeling better (and I’m already on the mend) I’m going to go and find a big hill to run up. This week, however, I have nothing to report.