Vicarious training and a bad case of hypochondria

A bit of a lost weekend training-wise – unless it counts to watch other people running around energetically whilst watching in comfort from the stands. Saturday was the Twickenham Sevens – the latest round in the world series that takes in Dubai, Hong Kong and others. Somewhat belatedly, the RFU seems to have woken up to the enormous potential to lure both men and women, girls and boys to a springtime fancy-dress frolic with instant gratification rugby in the background and with partying and drinking in the foreground. Still, all the fun meant that any training on Saturday was out and, with a combination of the prince of hangovers and a 200 mile round trip to collect Henry and then go to Tom to take the 16 year old birthday boy out for pizza, so too was Sunday.

I had a plan though. A run on Friday and a run on Monday – 10km to and from the office in London Bridge. Friday was great – left the house at 7.00, took a while to get going but by the time I reached the Elephant and Castle, I was chugging along like a well run-in diesel. Admittedly, a few joints and muscles spent the rest of the day seizing and throbbing respectively,but with a nice bottle of chilled white wine and a G&T at lunchtime to celebrate Nigel’s birthday, proper lubrication was restored.

Monday not so good though. Tried the route in reverse – from London Bridge to West Norwood, but never really got going. Tried some stretching and bending somewhere in a park near Camberwell but that didn’t help much so I just had to man up and dog it out. A little humiliating to be overtaken by a rather chubby lady running to catch the bus, but I was able to console myself that her cholesterol was probably off the scale and her blood pressure a ticking time-bomb just waiting to blow.

There – it’s out now. This is an interesting mental development in my unwilling but inexorable slide into middle-aged decrepitude - a new-found and quite heroic level of hypochondria. Maybe I should keep this to myself, but am I alone in ignoring my complete lack of medical knowledge ( I even failed Biology ‘O’ level in 1980 for goodness sake!) to devise a theory for every ache and pain, every small defect blown 100 times out of proportion? Today’s miracle of mental leaps of ignorance was a slight cough – it was just a tickly, slightly annoying frog in the throat – well, it started in my head as throat cancer then became a tape worm.

I know it sounds ridiculous – but as I ran past Kings Hospital in Denmark Hill, it seemed quite clear. The tapeworm explained both the throat and the feeling of bloatedness and fatigue. (Nothing to do with the 10 pints of lager on Saturday obviously!) And now my foot hurts a bit – it’s probably just a bit of muscle stiffness, but oh no! In my head the metatarsal has sheared in two, the jagged bone ends grating together. I could be osteoporosis or something even worse…You know, maybe I should just put away the box set of House DVDs and find something more positively inspiring. Maybe this is just the middle aged way of dealing with pain. When I was younger, doing these crazy endurance events was just about ignoring the pain because you knew you were invincible. Maybe now, the only way the body can cope is to throw something really dramatic at you mentally so the reality doesn’t feel too bad after all.

Off to the gym at lunchtime for a spin class – let’s see if I can get through that without triggering a pulmonary embolism or exacerbating my Lupus and setting off a bacterial shower - and let’s hope there is a defibrillator on hand just in case...