A fall, a twist, a sudden dark thought: “Have I just knackered my knee?”

I’m playing football on Wednesday. Five-a-side. 10 minutes in and I’m trying to shoot when, to avoid a tackle, I jump, land awkwardly on my right leg and feel it buckle. I’m on my back, staring up at the steel roof and I can start to feel a dull ache around my knee. “Are you alright?” I’m asked.

I think so. It’s not the sharp pain that I remember from tearing a ligament a few years ago, and, after standing up, I don’t feel any reaction when I put my weight on it. “I think so,” I say, but I go into goals for 10 minutes to let it settle and see how it reacts to movement. It seems okay.

I come back out and, as soon as I try and pass the ball, my right leg buckles again. No pain. No reaction. I’m up again straight away but I play the rest of the game wondering if I’ve damaged it more than I first realised – and I wonder whether the adrenaline of playing is stopping me from feeling the pain that would tell me to stop.

I go to sleep later bracing myself for a reaction in the morning.

I wake up and try and bend my knee to see how it reacts. Nothing. Then a twinge. Then nothing. I’m lucky, but I don’t push it. I take Thursday off from training and use it as a rest day instead. Today, I’ll have a short BRIC session to test it on the bike and road. Next week, I think I’ll give football a miss.

If you gave me a choice between money or power I’d choose cake every time. I love cake – and chocolate and sugar and sweets.

I know that part of training involves eating healthily but the thought of a sliced cucumber after 90 minutes on a turbo is as enticing as, well, a sliced cucumber. I want a Mars Bars, a Twix, a Battenberg cake or, better yet, a ring donut with extra sugar sprinkled on top. Rewards should be rewarding.

But one of the dangers of training is the idea that just because you’ve sat on a bike for a bit means that you can then eat whatever you want, and how much you want. Going out for a run is not a licence to eat an entire packets of Custard Creams.

That’s why I start keeping track of my weight when I start training. I’m not someone who thinks about their weight; I don’t overeat; I have proper cooked from scratch meals most nights; I rarely drink and I don’t smoke. But give me a Mars Bar after running and I’ll eat it – and the Rocky biscuits in the cupboard and the pudding in the fridge.

So, as part of my training for Norseman I’ll keep track of my weight to make sure that I’m not losing everything I’m gaining by gaining more than I’m losing. It’ll be a piece of cake. Or not cake. A piece of cucumber (covered in cake).

Current weight: 12 stone 4 pounds.

I work in Larbert in an office park next door to a butcher and a baker but, sadly, not a candle stick maker*. I have one hour for lunch which just enough time to get to a swimming pool for a lunchtime swim. I could jump on the M9 motorway and get to Grangemouth leisure centre where the pool is divided into 25m lanes but, even though its further away, I go to the Mariner Centre in Falkirk instead.

The Mariner Centre doesn’t have lanes. It doesn’t even have a regular shape. It’s shaped like a shell, with a large children’s pool in one half and a deeper pool in the other. Families come here with young kids. Swimmers don’t – but they should. Because the Mariner Centre has one thing other pools lack: every 30 minutes they switch on their wave machine for five minutes.

I try and time my swim so I arrive just before the waves start and I finish just after the second waves end.

It’s brilliant.

The pool is usually quiet (on Monday there was only one other man in the ‘deep pool’) but when the waves switch on, if there are families, they usually leave because the kids are too small to face the… tsunami.

The waters get gradually choppier. The waves start to bounce of the sides of the pool until, in the middle, the waves crash over my head as I try and swim through them.

I love it.

I tell myself it’ll be good practice for Norseman and swimming in the fjord but that’s not the reason I go there. It’s fun being battered by the waves, trying to breathe properly by breathing between crests, feeling like I’m not moving as I’m caught in the current, then, seconds later, shooting forward as the current swirls behind me.

It’s only five minutes. The waves subside as quickly as they come. Back to laps. Back to work. But if there’s a better way to spend a lunch break, I haven’t found it yet.

*We don’t have a candlestick maker but we do have the best named building: the headquarter’s of ‘Mrs Tilly’s’ – the cake and confectionary brand. Their office is called ‘The Indulgence Factory’.

What sex is your bike? Is it male, is it female?

Does it matter if you’re a man, do you think of your bike as masculine first? If you’re a woman, do you give it a girl’s name?

Cars have sex (not in a Crash type way, you know what I mean). Cars have names. I have a Mini Paceman. His name is Spaceman – and he is a he. There’s no question about that. He’s squat and brutish and acts like he could easily pass for one of the dwarves in the Hobbit. Not the mad one. Or the one who wants to get it on with her-from-Lost. One of the ones at the back. Thingamejig or Whatzizname or Gerald. One of them.

I don’t know about bikes though. Do bikes have names? Mine is a Focus Cayo Evo 4.0. Red and white. Thick bars. A bit of poser with matching saddle, tyres and handlebar tape in white. He should be a squaddie. Not one for thinking but good for going for a hundred miles in a straight line without thinking. I think ‘he’s’ a man – but, last week, as I cycled for the first time outdoors, I thought I’m not sure. Could it want to be a woman? Is it a woman? What sex is it? Could I even have a Danish Bicycle?

I’ve never given it a name. Never thought to either, which is why I stop and ask – what sex is your bike? Is it male, is it female or is it Eddie Raymayne?

I had an idea to write a blog post about watching Making A Murderer while on the turbo trainer. I was going to call it ‘Netflix & Turbo’ as a play-on-words on ‘Netflix & Chill’. However, I’ve just googled the phrase “Netflix & Chill” and, call me innocent, but I thought it meant watching Netflix and, you know, chilling, the clue was in the title. Netflix. And. Chill. But it doesn’t mean that: according to the Urban Dictionary it means:

“A subtle way to lure a girl to come over to your place, initially as just a “friend”, so that it can lead to an opportunity of getting intimate with her while something is playing on Netflix.”

Or:

“SEX. Basically a new way of booty calling.”

Which has totally changed the post I was going to write!

However, perhaps I can resurrect this idea by calling it ‘Netflix & Turbo Alone’? That would make it clear I’m just talking about cycling and remove any smutty misunderstandings.  Yes. I think ‘Netflix & Turbo Alone’ would be a far better title. First, I’d better check that ‘Netflix & Chill Alone’, doesn’t have any other meanings.

[Googles ‘Netflix & Chill Alone’].

Erm…

…. Netflix And Turbo Alone…

… I think it’ll be best if I just scrap this idea.

The Nigel Barge 10k was traditionally the first race of the year in Glasgow. It was held on the first Saturday of January and attracted hundreds of runners to a hilly and challenging course around the West End.

It was set up in 1943 to commemorate Nigel Barge, an officer killed at Dunkirk. Nigel was a keen runner and a member of Maryhill Harriers running club. After his death, his father set up the race in his memory. It has been held continuously for over 70 years and is now one of Scotland’s oldest road races.

You can find out more about its history here: Scottish Road Running History

Today, the course has moved from its original route to Garscube sports grounds, about four miles further west. Unfortunately, the race may have moved but the hills have remained. It’s a two lap course with two steep hills, tackled twice.

I was looking forward to running. I’ve never raced as early as January before and I thought it would be good practice to see how I’d perform after a couple of weeks of training. I thought 47 – 50 minutes would be a good time and give me something to build on for the months ahead. It would also be a good test of running in bad weather, or at least I thought it would…

Unusually, Sunday turned out to be almost Spring-like. The temperature was in double figures and the sun even threatened to peak out three months early.  I ditched running gloves and an extra top and went with a base layer, t-shirt and leggings. It was too much and I found myself wishing I’d just worn a t-shirt after the first kilometres.

I also felt I started too fast. The course is downhill for the first 500m and, with everyone jostling for position, I couldn’t help running faster. Iain also starts faster than me and I tried to keep up even though it felt like I was running faster than I should. Normally, he would start to pull away, but this time I kept pace.

After 500m there was a short 100m section across playing grass before re-joining the main path. However, after raining most of the week, the grass was just a boggy swamp. Runners lept from foot to foot like Cossack dancers to avoid touching the ground. A few slide. One even found a sink hole that went down to his knee. It was funny until I remembered I was running in (no longer) bright white new trainers.

The first hill came a minute later. A long steady slog near Garscube vet school. The second hill a short sharp climb to Maryhill Road. Neither were pleasant but they both had longish descents after them where I tried to open my stride and run faster. On the second lap, on the descent after the first hill, I started to lose Iain. On the second descent, I grew the gap to 100m.

After that, my only thought is: “Don’t let him catch me, gotta keep ahead of him.” I looked back once, with 200m to go, and saw he was still 100m behind. I knew I was safe but still tried to finish with a burst, my thoughts now turning to Norseman: “Only another 20 miles to go (and a mountain)”.

I finished in 45 min 58 seconds, pleased with my time and with beating Iain after he’d “won” our last few 10k races.

One race done. One race won. A good start to the year.