slow steady....

[sad face]

OK.

So my body is finally dropping me a hint so unsubtle that even I can't fail to notice.

I've been feeling a bit under the weather.  Time was that I would go from year-to-year with barely so much as a sniffle.  I used to think that this was down to my general levels of fitness and my superhuman intake of fruit and veg.... it turns out that it was more likely due to my overactive immune system.  Now that I inject immuno-suppressants every week, my resistance to colds has predictably been somewhat less impressive.  I still don't get all that many, but every couple of years I now seem to get a stinker that I can't shake.  I was pole-axed through November/December and some of January by a cold so persistent that I actually managed to crack a rib with coughing and wasn't really able to run properly for more than a month.  The rib has barely healed, and already I seem to be on the edges of another cold... the scratchy throat, the catarrh, the ominous burning feeling at the top of your lungs.... uh oh.

Coupled with this (and perhaps not unrelated) are the problems I've started having with my legs: the stiffness in my muscles that sees me staggering around like an old man in the morning and that seems to have taken some of the spring out of my muscles when I'm running.

I've been going to interval sessions at the track to try and shake my training up a bit and to accustom my heart, my lungs and my muscle to running a bit faster.  I'm one of the slowest people there, but it's been good to push my comfort zones and to work myself hard.  I idly dread the sessions all day, but feel great at the end... so I've kept going.

I ran 11.5 miles on Sunday.  I've got a half marathon coming up in a couple of weeks, and although I'll be running with a friend who is looking at running about 2.5 hours, I want to make sure that my body knows what's coming.  The hip on my weaker side gave me some bother in the last couple of miles, and I wasn't as fast as I'd like to be, but I was faster than the last time I ran that route, and it was all good.

Then I went to run 4.5 miles on Monday and just found that the well was dry and that I was totally gubbed.  I ran the same route in the first week of March and I was 8 minutes faster.... in practical terms, that means that I was a mile behind where I was merely three weeks ago.  My legs felt dead, my feet were completely numb and I just had nothing at all in the tank.

I felt terrible.

Alright! Alright!  Enough already!  I can take a hint!

I'm giving myself the rest of the week off (not including my cycle commute to work, of course... I don't count that as exercise any more).  I already feel bad about missing the track session tomorrow night, but I"m off skiing next week and I don't want to make myself any worse.

The last 12 months have shown me how strong my body is (London Marathon, Thunder Run 24 hours, 1200+ miles in the year), but also how fragile.

[/sad face]

anger is an energy....

I'm sure that you've seen the terrible pictures from Turkey and from Greece as Syrian refugees desperately try to reach Europe.  I won't republish them here, but if you want to see them, then you can go and look at them over on the Guardian.

Shocking, isn't it?

There's been some debate on my feed on Facebook about how it's a step too far to publish and share these pictures; that we know that the death of a child is awful and we don't need to have those photos of a personal tragedy for one family shoved in our face.

I disagree.

Those pictures are hard to look at, and they should be shocking.  But it also serves an important purpose: it reconnects us with the fact that these people are human beings who are desperately fleeing a conflict zone.  In spite of what you may have read in your newspaper, they are not trying to come to Britain because they are seeking an easy life with free money and housing and healthcare.  They are fleeing their homes and leaving almost everything behind them as a last resort; they are risking their lives in a desperate attempt to get themselves and their families to somewhere safe.  From the other side of Europe, it seems to be easy for us to forget that.

As Herman Melville once wrote: 'Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."

It's easy to feel helpless, but there are things that you can do to help.

Oxfam have a page where you can donate to their response to the Syrian crisis.

If those images of that little boy on the Turkish beach have moved you, then Save the Children have a page where you can make a donation.

If you want something a lot closer to home, then my friend Abigail met a man today who is trying to raise £2,500 to fill a van with essentials to help the refugees in the camps at Calais.  You can pledge to help him towards his target here.

Meanwhile, our Prime Minister David Cameron, recently re-elected by the Great British public with a full majority in the House of Commons, is busy telling everyone that Britain is full and couldn't possibly take in any more refugees.  Germany will take in 800,000 migrants this year, and apparently we're looking at a maximum of 1,000 Syrian refugees (280 so far!).  Nigel Farage doesn't even believe that these people are genuine refugees.

Not good enough.  Nowhere near good enough.  Embarrassing, in fact.  We should be FURIOUS about this... at the very least, we should share those images to shame our spineless government into action and we should reach into our own pockets to help where we can.

Labour have made a right mess of things recently, but Yvette Cooper had it about right when she said today, "“Hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing from a new totalitarianism and Europe has to help – just as we did in generations past. We cannot carry on like this. It’s immoral, it’s cowardly and it’s not the British way.”

And here's Jeremy Corbyn:

"Nobody could fail to be moved by this harrowing and heartbreaking image, it should remind us of the situation facing millions of people desperately fleeing a terrible civil war. The government's response to the refugee crisis has been wholly inadequate, and we are being shamed by our European neighbours. It is our duty under UN law, but also as human beings, to offer a place of safety, and play a role internationally to share our responsibilities, and to try to end the conflict."

I'm sad and a little ashamed that this needs to be said. And people think Corbyn is a radical outsider.