My legs have been through the wars a bit in the past few days. One Saturday night I was bitten no less that 18 times between my ankle and my knees, not only that but the bites swelled up. So it probably wasn’t a great idea to run 4 miles on Sunday. In fact it was a bad idea – my legs didn’t enjoy it and neither did I. My ledgs felt like lead.

My 2-mile recovery run on Monday was slightly better but was at a really slow pace – for about half a mile I could hear someone just behind me and was worried that if i turned round to check I’d see someone with a zimmer frame looking for a clear bit of path to overtake me on.

Last night the bites had finally stopped itching (but had left an attractive bruise-type purple mark in their place) so I decided to do another run home from work. I managed to hobble home after 1 hour 41 min of fighting my way through pedestrians and traffic as well as shouting at the occasional cyclist to ‘get off the pavement’.

For those of you not familiar with the sights of South London, might I recommend Stockwell, Tooting and Elephant and Castle (particularly the underpass under the roundabout that smells of wee), as being placed straight at the top of your list. After three above-ground runs down the length of the undergroung south of Waterloo I’m looking to spice up my route home possibly with a bit of riverside action.