Not the best start

Regular Philwatchers will know that given I've known about my place for a week, I'd already have a strict training regime in place, changed my diet to optimise performance and have done a series of gruelling runs to get the base mileage up.

Or not.

That was the plan. I do have an outline training plan, which I'll post about later, and I am looking at improving diet and nutrition to compliment it.

However, even as I ease back into this running lark, things aren't going to plan. Last weekend in Yorkshire, I suffered an horrific burn on my left calf.

I say "horrific" because it looked minging. and there was a ginormous blister.

I wish I could tell you I got it running into a burning orphanage saving crying children from a certain death. Sadly, it wasn't quite that dramatic, though it was still alarming.

I've been trying for a while now, but have realised there's no way to big it up so I'll just come out and say it.

I burnt my leg on a hot water bottle.

I'll let you have a giggle for a mo, then carry on.

Done?

Ok. Well having driven the 200 odd miles home, I landed at the folks' about 10, so sat up for a bit chatting before going to rest my weary head.

Now I'm not sure why, but my ma seems to think that because I live down south now, I've become a bit of a softy. She thought it'd be nice idea to prevent her only son dying of exposure in bed by slipping in a hot water bottle.

Two things:

1. I was sleeping in a bed. With a duvet. In a house. With central heating and double glazing. I don't have double glazing here, and am too tight to have the heating on most of the time, and I've yet to die of cold.
2. I think she filled the bottle with liquid that had just passed through a volcano. Not filtered by the volcanic rock, or any of that marketing bollocks. Actually heated to nova-like temperatures.

I didn't notice it at first, and when I did, it was just the that warm glow you get when your legs are near. I fell asleep, as one does in bed, and thought no more of it. Indeed I was asleep so not really consciously thinking about anything.

I vaguely remember feeling uncomfortable lying on my leg in certain positions in the night, but generally slept as well as I ever do.

When I woke up in the morning, my leg felt a bit weird. I went to rub it and got that familiar graze-like feel. At first I thought I'd done my famous cutting/injuring myself in some unknown way and not realising until later. Possibly I'd been mauled by a lion on the drive up.

When I looked, I could see the beginning of a blister, a couple of inches long, and about an inch across, on the bit if my leg where my calf sort of joins the shin (not sure what it's called. It's below my knee).

Then I realised that my other leg was unduly warm still and the hot water bottle was still at a decent temperature, despite the ensuing hours since it was drawn from it's fiery source.

My ma brought me a tea, and thought it was funny (she prodded it!! hardly the act of a woman who supposedly loves me as only a mother can!).

As the blister came up over the weekend she became more sympathetic (I may have been pushing the child abuse angle a bit) but I didn't think much of it, as I'm used to bumps and scrapes.

Normally I burst blisters, but this was a big one, and I didn't fancy getting several gallons of blister juice all over the place, so decided my body knew what it was doing so I'd leave it.

By Thursday, it was killing, so I checked it and it'd burst and gone a bit scabby. I gave it a wash with the Savlon, and thought it'd be right. I gave my run a miss as I couldn't walk well on it, never mind run.

On Fri, it'd got a weird red tinge, and on Sat I noticed a slight yellow tinge to the edge, so I thought it was time to call the pros.

So I'm currently sat on my bed, waiting for the Dr's to open so I can call for an appointment to see if it's got infected. Hopefully it's right, and worse case scenario will mean some anti-biotics are called for.

I just want it to stop hurting as there's now only 28 weeks til kick off, and I know how much work there is ahead. Will also check a few other niggles when I'm in there.

This means I need to revisit my outline training plan, as I was hoping to be up to about a total of about 20 miles by the end of this week, but I've only done 3 so far.

Not worrying too much yet,. Hopefully this will be the bit of bad luck over with, and I have a clear run for the rest of the training.

That's rather optimistic of me!