A few weeks before Christmas I ran for approximately 14 miles on the Sunday, followed by lifting our Christmas tree out of the loft on Monday, and then my right foot started hurting. It hurt in the middle of the foot, I'd say at towards top of the foot and where the toes attach to the foot. I don't know what the problem was, but I found that I could only run a maximum of 5 or 6 miles on it for the next six or seven weeks, which really knocked my preparation for the Wokingham Half on February 10th and of course marathon training too.

Just to compound these problems, I had a small cold before Christmas, followed by a much nastier cold straight afterwards. I am still coughing badly from this cold now. At least the colds coincided with my foot problems, as both needed rest from running.

I now feel that I have lost an awful lot of fitness, and I'm still not really sure how long I can run for, but I did manage to run the Perch IX race yesterday. It is a hilly course of 6.25 miles up on Epsom Downs. The conditions were great - sunny and cold. I managed to finish the course in 46:15, which is a bit slow, but at least I managed to finish without foot problems, which is really good news.

I'm now planning to try to run 10 miles next weekend, and if that is successful, then I'll contemplate running the Wokingham Half, although I won't be trying to run in a time I was hoping for a month or so back.

Hopefully I'll be back on course with my marathon training then. Fingers X'd.