Do not read this if you don't like blood... or feet

After the debacle of Sunday, it was with not a small amount of trepidation that I laced up the trainers tonight.

I was down for a 6 miler, but wanted to up the mileage after losing a few with my leg so went for a 7 and a half.

Was all going swimmingly until I got up by the rowing club (I live in Surrey dah-ling!).

As I approached, shadows kept flitting through the dim light cast by the lonely streetlamp (that sounded nice didn't it? It goes downhill again on the next bit, don't worry).

At first my mind naturally turned to velociraptors (see!), but as I plodded closer it turned out to be people.

Young people.

Healthy young people.

Running along the same route as me.

C**k.

They were coming out in staged starts and they were flying along. Not literally, but they were running really really fast!

I was hoping they'd only be going a little way then turning round to go back to the boat house and do whatever pagan initiation ceremonies rowing people take part in, but no, they were doing my route. And I was stuck in the middle of them.

Now at first it was pretty bad as the healthy active ones naturally had an advantage over me. But after a while a few of them slowed and I, much like the eponymous hero of the hare and the tortoise, actually overtook some people who were significantly healthier than me!

I'm surprised my head got through the door.

I got to my halfway mark and headed for home, but the little buggers (though most were bigger than me) were taking up all the footpath, and in their hatred of such a fine long distance runner (me. Honest!) they wouldn't get out of the way so I had to do the old sidestep a few times.

Anyway, kept plodding back and got home in a very respectful time for me, warmed down and went to get ready for a shower. At this point I noticed my trainer, to paraphrase Mr Simon Pegg, "had red on it".

Now normally they don't.

At least not on that bit. Normally they look like the second pic.

This didn't look promising, so I did what any man would do in my situation. I took a series of pictures over time.

Now, given the number of people who have whinged about gory pics before, it's only fair to warn you, you might find this a bit grim.

Don't blame me if you have nightmares.

But, given that the purpose of this blog is to enlighten you, and share my suffering, it would be a breach of my promise to you to be anything other than completely honest.

So, like some sad uncle with a slide projector (kids - think of Powerpoint on a carousel) lets see the next picture. This is what it looked like when I took my trainer off.

I'm not saying I'm bleeding to death, but I would say, for a foot, there appears to be a significant amount of blood on the outside. As opposed to inside my foot where it belongs.

So, who wants to see what happened when i took the sock off?

No, well go look at a different site then, because here is the result of my run.

Now admittedly the pictures crap - the only fault I can find on my otherwise lovely Sony W910i is the lack of camera flash. But, it is quite red.

I personally don't think it's that bad, but given the reaction I've had before, some of you might disagree.

If you're interested, all the blood is actually coming from the right hand side of my second biggest toe where the perfectly trimmed nail of my middle toe has gouged a hole. This is mainly because the middle toenail has become dislodged from the actual toe.

The way I realised it was a hole was when I got in the shower and was washing it, I pulled a large lump of my own flesh from beneath the loos middle nail.

Now I'm cool with that - shit happens, it's all gravy though.

Some might be more alarmed. For these people, rest assured I cleaned it up properly, and have dressed it beautifully. I'm more than used to performing minor surgey on myself, so it's cool.

In future, the toes will be strapped (I'm sure I've said that before...), vaseline rubbed around the area, and a small goat sacrificed to the god of foot digits.

Now, for those still reading, here's a picture of a blister, inside a blister, inside a blister!

Enjoy!