This is not medical advice. I am the last person who should be giving medical advice. Except maybe for Doctor Who, who’s neither a medical practitioner or a PHD, just a conman with a phonebox, or Dr Hannibal Lecter, who’d eat you as soon as cure you. So, when I ask, can you still train with the coronavirus, I’m being half serious.

Can you train with the coronavirus? If it was a cold or flu or a broken leg then, for most runners, the answer is “yes, just run it off!”.

Amateur athletes are notorious for training and racing while ill. We assume that any cough or headache or Ebola virus is just a sign that the training is working. Of course, I’m not well, I’ve been training!

But yesterday I went swimming and I thought: “Should I be here?”. Should I be in a swimming pool that’s a coronavirus cocktail of sweat and spit and whatever else has washed off the bodies of a thousands swimmers?

What about the changing room? Do you need a hazmat suit just to change out of my birthday suit in a room filled with perspiring bodybuilders?

Or do you assume that this is no different to any other cold or flu or bug and live life normally until the government says otherwise?

It seems as if many have already started to panic. There are no toilet rolls or pasta on supermarket shelves. Personally, if I was stockpiling for two weeks I’d be stocking up chocolate biscuits and cake. Stuff fusilli pasta, if I’m coughing and hacking, I want a KitKat.

I don’t get the obsession with pasta either. After the virus started in China there were numerous people saying they wouldn’t eat Chinese food. Now the virus is in Italy, we’re eating Spaghetti Bolognese like our lives depended on it (literally).

Not to mention we’re washing our hands for 20 seconds. The Government says you should sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice. I don’t think you need a song though – just wash your hands like you’ve just killed a man and don’t want to get caught. You don’t need soap to clean hands, just pretend you have a guilty conscience.

But if water and soap is effective then all you need to do if you want to swim is pour some liquid soap in the pool. Turn it into a sink. That way 2000 metres will leave you cleaner than an Italian hypochondriac eating Kung Pow Chicken.

And if you’re adding soap then also add conditioner for your hair. I was told by a hairdresser that if you want to avoid damaging hair with chorine then apply some conditioner before you swim. Now, you’re not just training, you’re protecting yourself too. With all the soapy water, you’re immune from the coronavirus.

Possibly.

As I said, I’m not a Doctor, and this is definitely not medical advice.

But if you want proper advice then I’d point you in the direction of the Swim England guidance for swimming in swimming pools, which includes the following quote:

“Water and the chlorine within swimming pools will help to kill the virus. However, visitors to swimming pools are reminded to shower before using the pool, to shower on leaving the pool and to follow the necessary hygiene precautions when visiting public places to help reduce the risk of infection.”

You can read the full guidance here

If you say “I’m not lost” then that is a sure sign that you are, in fact, lost. Not that I was lost when I said it. I knew exactly where I was – in a wood, near Elgin, at night, in the dark, surrounded by deer – but I admit I may not have known quite exactly which path to take to get back to Elgin and not end up, hours later in Inverness…

Last week, I decided to try some night time trail running. I was in Elgin and, while there is a lot of nice varied routes to run round, there is one thing missing: hills. Elgin is flat. If you dropped a slinky, it would not slink. Elgin’s completely flat. Run through town, flat. Run through Cooper Park, flat. Run to Maggot Wood (one of my favourite place names as it does make you think how many maggots must there have been to name a whole wood after them), all completely flat.

For a change, I decided to run out of Elgin and try some trails I could see through the hills on Elgin’s western edge. I brought my head torch, found a willing companion who didn’t baulk when I said “fancy going to the dark woods tonight”, and we decided to see if we could find a route through the trees. 

Problem one: we didn’t know where we were going or where any path might start.

Problem two: we didn’t know that everything looks like a path when you only have a head torch to guide you. A flat bit of grass between two trees looks like the start of a patch when you can’t see further than three metres in front of you. 

Problem three: Dear, God, what are those glowing eyes in the woods!!!! Head torches, we discovered, make every deer glancing in your direction and caught in your headlight, look like they’re possessed by the eye of Sauron. 

Problem four: sometime the darkness in front of you is not just darkness but a twenty-metre drop from the side of an old quarry. A good tip, quickly learned, was to only step where you can see the ground in front of you.

Problem five: if you hit an A road, turn back. A roads don’t have pavements and cars racing at 70mph to Inverness pass very close to you if try and venture onto the verge. 

Problem six: if you turn back, remember where you have come from as, when you finally meet three mountain bikers out cycling with powerful beams you don’t have to say “I’m not lost but, do we turn left or right here to get back to Elgin?”.

Apart from that, night running is fun, just remember to keep safe though when out!

One summer, when we were 10, our auntie Margaret hired a caravan on Coll beach, just outside of Stornoway and near our granny’s house. It was a typical Lewis summer. Grey sky. Cold wind. Rain likely. So, perfect weather to go paddling in the sea. We lasted 30 seconds.

I’d brought my trunks to the caravan, wrapped in a towel, of course.  We changed there and ran down to the water’s edge. By the time we got there we’d invented Avatar, 25 years before James Cameron thought of his race of blue skinned people. The water was even colder. 

“Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggghh!”

We ran back to the caravan.

And that was my outdoor swimming experience. One dip. Barely up to waist. And that was it. 

Today, people say it’s invigorating. Soul clearing. But when you’re 10 the only thought you have, when the waves reach your crotch, is “Eeeeeeeek! I can’t feel my balls!”

I didn’t venture back to the sea until I was 25. I was on holiday in the United States, I was driving from New York to New Orlean via a book called “Roadside Attraction of America”. Every night I’d decide a different attraction – the house shaped like a shoe, the dinosaur park – and drive there while generally heading to New Orleans. Yes, it was a boy’s trip. What gave it away…?

We’d reached Florida and was staying near the oldest town in the United States, Augustine, which was settled in 1500s then comprehensively rebuilt by to be a Walt Disney version of a historic town. If you like your McDonald driv-thrus to be housed in a replica Spanish villa that looks like it was just built by a Spanish conquistador, then Augustine is the place for you.

We have a motel beside a beach and we decided it would be fun to swim in the sea, despite the fact I’d not swum since school and I didn’t have any trunks or, naturally, any goggles. 

“It’ll be okay,” I thought, “I’ll soon get used to it!”, remember my school days in halcyon terms and not the chlorine induced acid eyeball bath they actually were.

Waves were crashing on the shore as I waded out. The water was warm, which was the first shock. Water could be warm? The ocean could be a bath? The second shock was when I ducked under a wave. Salt! What the effing eff was salty water doing to my eye. It was like Tom Cruise had taken my acid eyeball bath and placed it in a mixer with a cheese grater and was recreating his finest tricks and flicks from Cocktail.

Disorientated, eye shut, frantically trying to clear the water from them, I swam out further and further until I thought I should really turn back. Except I couldn’t. 

I couldn’t understand it. The waves were going towards the shore. They were big and powerful and heading in the direction I wanted to go but why, when I swam towards the shore, was I not going forward? 

I tried to swim faster by kicking harder, the only way I knew how to swim faster because my arms were as much good to me when swimming as Douglas Bader’s legs. 

I went backwards.

Damn.

I thought of shouting, there were some people on shore, when I had another idea. There were surfers up the beach. They were further out but they were making it back in. And the only difference between them and me was that they had a board. So, I should pretend to be a surfboard and I’ll surf back in. Genius.

Next wave. I lay as stiff as I could and kicked forward just a s the crest of the wave passed through me. I did the same again with the next wave, and the next until I reached the shore, thankful and ecstatic that I’d discovered the secret to not drowning. Don’t swim.

So, I didn’t. Not for another 10 years. And during those 10 years I can confirm that I didn’t drown once. 

The problem with being a twin is when someone sends you a photo you have no idea if you are you or if you are your twin.

Which one was me and which one was Iain? Am I on the left or am I on the right?!!?!?

On a Saturday night in Berlin I had half a raw potato for my first course. This was followed by 34 more courses including, as a particular highlight, a single pak choi covered in butter. It was less a meal and more a single plate presented one ingredient at a time. I’m all for trying new things when eating but a menu designed to showcase every ingredient really made me crave a Big Mac and chips.

Even worse, before we could eat the potato we had to listen to it’s origin.

“This is a potato from the farm of Gunther and Helga, just outside Leipzig. Each morning they carefully spray the potato field with a fine mist of honeydew while Gunther sings Dolly Payton’s ‘Jolene’. When it comes to harvest, they ask a local priest to bless their trowel before it is transported by electric car to the market in Berlin.”

After 35 holier than thou pretentious tales I really craved a noose.

I can’t say I enjoyed the meal. It definitely an experience, one I won’t repeat, but if you want to spend three hours slowly eating a grocers one vegetable at a time, then Ernst in Berlin is the place for you.

If, on the other hand, you just want to run, then Berlin is the opposite of Ernst. It’s as simple as can be. It’s completely flat. And because it’s completely flat, you can’t go anywhere in the city centre without being able to see the radio tower that stretches into the sky over Potsdammer Platz. It’s impossible to get lost.

So, for this holiday mile, I decided to run to the main site for the Berlin Wall and back and I decided not to use a map to find my hotel because I knew how to get to it from the tower. An easy run followed with no chance of getting lost. No wonder Berlin is one of the world’s fastest marathons.

Saying that, the lack of variety does mean that it wasn’t the most interesting of runs. Even a treadmill can have an incline. But if all you want is a easy run along wide streets then Berlin is the place for that.

Tyler is a Jack Russell. And a dog – except when he’s pretending to be a cat.

Tyler is my aunt and uncle’s dog. They live in a village in the Western Isles. There’s very little passing traffic so they let Tyler walk on his own. He has the run of the village.

Every night at 11 o’clock, Tyler would bark and run to the back door to be let out for a final walk before bed. 30 minutes later he’d be back. A single bark to announce his presence and my aunt and uncle would let him back into the house.

This happened every night for six months until, one day, my aunt saw a neighbour’s post on Facebook. “Does anyone know a small white and brown dog that’s been running round the village before midnight’

It could only be Tyler.

She didn’t know the neighbour that well so went round to her house to explain that Tyler was just out for a walk and to see if he’d been barking or making a noise to disturb them.

“He’s not been barking,”said the neighbour, “he’s been shagging! Our dog’s pregnant!”

No wonder Tyler was so keen on his final walk of the day. He’d been playing Romeo to some other dog’s Juliet!

“Was he sneaking into your back grden?’ Asked my aunt.

“No,” said the neighbour. “We knew our dog was in heat so we’ve been keeping her indoors.”

“Then why do think Tyler’s involved? He can’t get into a house” Asked my Aunt.

“He’s been sneaking in through the car flap! We caught them at it in the middle of the kitchen!”

My aunt was quick to apologise but it turned out that the neighbour was really only interested in finding out if Tyler was a pedigree because it turned out she had a Jack Russell too. When my aunt confirmed that Tyler was indeed a pedigree dog genetically, if not morally, the neighbour was delighted.

“Excellent, I’ll be able to sell the puppy’s for £500 each!”

And Tyler was encouraged to continue his midnight walks.

I thought of this story as I start to think about training over autumn and winter. It’s always hard to go outside when it starts to get dark and cold and wet. It’s easy to come up with excuses to skip a run or a bike ride. But dog’s don’t have that excuse. They go out in all weathers and wait patiently at the door for their chance to walk and run so we too need to take our inspiration from dogs and find our reason to always head outside. But not to have an affair with someone down the street – and definitely not to break in first! That’s not an excuse to get out of the house, that a reason for the cops to come round and encourage you to spend a lot more time inside!