Not posted for a few days for various reasons. Main one being that I am injured and have been feeling so down about it that I didn't feel like writing anything. It happened on Saturday morning; I was bending down and twisting to clean the shower doors and when I got back up I just felt my back go ping.... it hurt so much I yelped out loud. Then I couldn't stand up straight for about five minutes. For the last three days it's just been the same... the same old back pain I get on and off every couple of years or so. Can walk around fine, but bending backwards and forwards, turning round, picking anything up off the floor, sitting down and getting back up again, getting in and out of cars, even really tiny forward motions like cleaning my teeth or doing the dishes - are really, really painful. It doesn't seem to have got any better at all over the last three days.

I've just been trying to carry on with things as normal, not give in to it. But every so often I make a movement without thinking about it and just freeze with the pain.

I think I wrote elsewhere in this blog, that I could cope with any injury that gets thrown at me - as long it's not my back. It has been the bane of my life for the last fifteen years or so, and I knew, I just bloody KNEW that this would happen.

Tomorrow after work I'm going to go to the gym and try and have as decent a cardio workout as possible as I feel like I've done NOTHING of any benefit over the last five days (well, I haven't) and I'm worried that my fitness levels are going to plummet. I've got to do something before I go out of my mind.

I'm trying to banish all thoughts of having to pull out completely out of my head, but they are there, lurking at the back of my mind. The thought of six months training going to waste is the most soul-destroying, depressing thing. I just can't even contemplate it.

I haven't run now since last Thursday, when I did about five or six miles along the seafront in a freezing sea mist. Seems like absolutely ages ago. I've got to get a run in in the next couple of days even if it's only two or three miles, otherwise I'm going to go a bit insane.