December Status.

It's Christmas Eve. 8:15pm. Youngest is in bed and might actually be asleep. She's had a busy day, culminating in being Mary at the children's Christmas mass this evening. Joseph didn't make it through the whole service as he was a bit under the weather. Poor lad.

The teens have now hijacked the telly. I finally feel I have a half hour to write my blog, which kind-of says something about the past 2 months.

It probably comes as no surprise that, in November, I managed to damage my ankle again, or more accurately, my achilles tendon. I know exactly why it happened. I've been sticking with a 3 mile course as it's been getting darker and darker in the morning, but familiarity breeds recklessness, and instead of taking it nice and easy, increasing distance gradually, I've been gradually increasing pace. Now this isn't to any blistering speed. It's increasing from around around a 9:40 pace to 9:0X or slightly sub 9, and not really on purpose. It felt comfortable.

However, however comfortable for heart and lungs, my brittle tendons can't handle it. The damage occurred on November 19th and I left it for 2 weeks. On 3rd December I tried again and it felt just as bad - and I was undoing any healing that had taken place. So I find myself on the wagon again, waiting for things to mend.

The consequences are, of course, rapidly declining fitness and I can't wait to be able to pick things up again. Other forms of training just don't fit in my life at the moment.

But I've not stopped. The spirit is definitely willing, and with RICE, the flesh will heal. I just wonder how many times I'm going to have to learn this lesson over pace! New Years day looks like a reasonable target to pick things up again, so I hope to be back with some reports about that shortly afterwards.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas to you all.

Mr Stumble.