Cold War

How bloody annoying. I appear to have caught acute viral nasopharyngitis. AKA: The common cold. How utterly, incredibly annoying, so close to the marathon. The worst part of this is that I have absolutely no idea how I got the cold in the first place. Was it from training out in the cold? Was it from being in close proximity to a cold sufferer?

I'm hoping that I'll recover by Sunday, but I'm taking no chances. I've taken every possible action to try to get rid of the cold. Blowing my nose, wearing as many clothes as possible to sweat it out, overdosing on Ibuprofen and antihistamines, steam treatments, bowls of hot soup, mugs of hot Ribena, I'm even drinking tea. And I don't even like tea. It's just tepid brown water. I'd probably fail a drugs test, the amount of substances I've consumed.

Whether I have recovered by Sunday or not, I hope that it does not affect my performance. One thing that may well hinder me is the weather. I hear that rain has been forecast. I'm fairly prepared for this because the bulk of my training has been done up in Manchester, where, since I moved up there last year, I've had more rainy days than hot dinners. However, when I trained in the rain, I wore a jacket with a hood over my shirt. On Sunday I will be wearing a rather skimpy vest. I can't wear a jacket because if it's zipped up, my running number will be obscured (this is not allowed) and if it isn't zipped up, it will flap around as I run, and it will be severely distracting for me, and will get in the way of my fellow runners.
And when the race is over, if it has been raining the whole race through, I will probably have caught an even worse cold.



Training news, and I have done my last training run, so that brings the months of backbreaking pain and agony to a close. Time to rest my body parts for Sunday, as I'm not going to get any fitter than I already am. This is it now, the hard work is over. I just have to cross the start line, run twenty-six miles and cross the finish line. The end is near.



So, in terms of training and fundraising, everything is going OK. Can't complain. Well, I can, but I won't. I may have a cold but at least I'm not injured.