Recently by Hannah Webster

After all the niggling injuries I have written about on this blog, the halfmarathon gave me the ultimate, painful, and incredibly annoying one of all.

Mainly annoying because I don't know what it is and even when I was in unimaginable pain with it in the days after the race I could not find it in myself to be bothered to go to A&E and sit there for three hours to wait to be seen.

My right foot, just in front of my ankle on the top of my foot, ached like hell from about five hours after the race.

I couldn't walk properly for a week and a half and spent that long with everyone at work telling me to goto the doctor because they were sick of me limping around like a sick puppy.

But I knew if I did I would just be told to rest and "see how it goes" so Ileft it, and now it's just plain irritating because I can walk properly for about five minutes, and I start thinking I might be able to start running again, and then I get a twinge and it's all downhill from there.

So I'll be laid up for the next few weeks where running is concerned, but I am determined to get back on the road as soon as I am able and keep doing races.

I'm sure I am not the only one to say a few 10ks wouldn't go amiss after all the junk I have eaten since the half-marathon.

That was probably the hardest thing I have done. Like everyone else I hope, I am pretty pleased with myself that I can now say I have run a half marathon.

And just to make sure I would be able to say that, I kept running throughout the 13.1 mile course - regardless of how much my body felt like it was dying with every step towards the end, and I was pretty pleased with my time of two hours 12 minutes and 42 seconds.

But when I finished, I had no idea what to do. Through my intense exhaustion all I could see was a sea of foil blankets around centenery square and I didn't know where I was supposed to go or how to get out of the crowd to meet Paul in the ICC centre.

I must have looked like a lost puppy as I wrapped a foil sheet someone had handed me around my shoulders and stumbled around the square on legs that suddenly felt like they were made out of blancmange.

Things seemed to apear from no where - various coloured bottles of powerade, bottles of water, more foil sheets, medals. I couldn't see straight, but I grabbed two bottles of water and downed one of them in five seconds flat. Then wished I hadn't because it made me feel really ill.

I picked up a goody bag and walked very very slowly over to the ICC centre where I found Paul, looking as bad as I felt. Seeing someone I knew made me want to talk about the race and which bits I found tough, which bits were like hell on earth and how pleased I was that I completed the challenge. I don't think he even heard me though, as he was desperately trying to recover from his cough as well as the run.

But suddenly, it was like a switch was flicked and I came over incredibly ill as Paul started to perk up. I could feel the blood draining from my face and I lay flat out on the floor in the centre. When Paul said he was ready to make his way home, I knew there was no way I was even going to make it to the door, and just about reached one of the bins before seeing half a bottle of watery lucozade in reverse. Lovely.

Felt so much better for it though, despite Paul's compulsion to tell the first person we saw about it, then text everyone we know telling them I vomitted within five minutes of the race, and then posting it on this blog. Such a caring boyfriend.

I can still say I ran a good race though, and that's the most important thing. Immediately after the race, I was saying I would never do anything like that ever again, but now I have recovered (albeit with a pulled tendon in my ankle) I am pretty up for doing a few more 10k races, and even - dare I say it - another half marathon next year.

But for now, I am going to sit back and relax for a good week or so, drink lots of wine and eat lots of ice cream. I reckon I have earned it.

You would think I didn't like my muscles, what with all the hell I put them through. I did the hour and a half run on Sunday and despite the warmth of the day, I didn't find it too bad. But then, after all the pain from last week's football, I went out and did all the same damage to my thighs again, only worse.

I think I pulled a muscle before I even started playing properly, because it was really killing, but I decided I wanted to have a good time and I ignored it. When we finished (we lost 16-15) I limped my way to my car and as I drove home I got such an agonising ache in my thigh every time I moved my right leg that I had to cry out - much to the alarm of the passenger I was delivering back to his car.

But, so help me, I will still do my run tomorrow and I will enjoy it. I've given my legs a good talking to (and a good stretching) and they are to get better and jolly well work to their best advantage. I'm not going to let anything silly like excruciating pain get in the way of my training. Not this late in the day.

I am getting really nervous now. Only three weeks to go and I haven't done as much training as I should do this week because I have been too stiff from playing football on Wednesday evening. I haven't played properly since I was 12, which is probably why.

All the blokes from work go every week to have a game of five-a-side and I have always meant to go with them but have been too intimidated by all the testosterone. But I just decided life is too short and went along to have a go, or rather, was pushed into going to make up the editorial team's numbers. I was the only girl across about eight pitches, but it was still fun and I wasn't too bad. I probably got a bit too into it because for the next two days the fronts of my thighs and my back absolutely killed every time I moved. It was impossible for me to run like that, especially with the back pain.

One thing that I noticed was that I wasn't getting nearly out of breath as the blokes were because of all the running I have been doing over the last 12 weeks or so. But I was in a hell of a lot more pain than them the next day.

This is the annoying thing about different types of exercise - you use whole sets of different muscles to do different things. I do indoor climbing about once a week, running three or four times a week, and I swim, and all of these things have caused different muscles in my limbs to ache the following day.

I have been put down to play football next week, but then it will only be a couple of weeks before the half-marathon, so I might lay off that one so I can concentrate on running without having to worry about all the different dimensions of agony I would be causing myself!

I hate spitting in public. It is absolutely gross, and I despise the sight of tracksuit-clad 16-year-olds sitting on benches and smoking while spitting their foul nicotine-infected saliva onto the floor. I can't think of a worse habit.

But today, I could kind of understand why I sometimes see runners having a quick spit in the bushes while they are out. I didn't do it myself, I hasten to add, but the cold October air doesn't half cause phlegm to build up in the back of your throat when you're running, making spitting seem a slightly more attractive option. I still refuse to do it though, it's so rude to everyone else using the same public space to leave deposits of yourself littering the environment, and even worse for other people to see you doing it. I don't care how bio-degradable saliva is.

Now that rant is done with, I am pleased to say my progress has not been totally diminished. I managed to do my normal 4.4 mile run in about 42 minutes, which is just under the time it used to take me before the holiday.

I did do 10 minutes of fartlek (with a ratio of one minute fast running, one minute slow) as part of it, which by the end of I felt like I was about to collapse in a heap, but this is normal for me so I'm encouraged all the same. Paul did an amazing personal best today of 4.9 miles in 41 minutes 17 seconds, shaving two minutes off his PB. So the holiday certainly hasn't done him any harm.

But I don't want to speak too soon, we will have to see how our long run goes tomorrow, then I can say for sure as to whether our current targets for the half marathon are still doable!

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last two weeks. Paul and I have been on holiday in Mallorca for the last eight days, and only just got back this afternoon.

Before that, we both had an utterly manic week. Paul was doing hostile environment training in Germany to prepare himself for reporting from Iraq in October (I'll let him tell you all about that), while I was running around like a headless chicken sorting out all our travel arrangements for the day he got back. A little more than 18 hours after Paul touched down at 11.30pm on September 19, we were jetting off to Mallorca. And in the gap, we had to drive from Stansted up to Brum to drop of his camera equipment at the Mail office, and get as much sleep as we could before driving back down the Gatwick to catch the plane. It doesn't sound like it needs much organising but it does.

So, after all that, I have not run a single step for a week and a half. Shameful I know, but I decided I needed a holiday more than I wanted to achieve my target time, and I refused to run myself down more than I was feeling already by that point. We both took what we felt were well-deserved rests for the week.

But I will be back into it from Tuesday. It will be interesting to see what a week and a half off has done to my speed. Three weeks left before the race, so I hope not too much damage!

Paul has decided his shin injury is too painful to risk running a race on it, and is gutted that he can't take part in the Lichfield 10K. So I will be running the race alone.

I say that, but as you can imagine with two people as different in height and stature as Paul and I, I am used to him racing off ahead so it won't be too different from usual.

I haven't done any running since Wednesday, purely because I have been so busy, but now I actually have some time on my hands, it is bucketing down with rain as I speak. Probably everyone who is reading this will know what I mean, as yesterday and today have been totally miserable weather-wise.

Having said that, I am not rain-shy, I have been out running in the rain several times - I actually prefer it to running in the heat. But I can't and won't go out when it is raining so much that I would be squelching rather than running. I can't see how going out with every piece of clothing on me waterlogged would really do me any good, so I will be sitting today out as well, and hoping that not running for three days will not put me at a disadvantage for tomorrow's race.

My aim is to do the course in under one hour, which I am pretty confident of doing, but I'll see what the weather is like before I make any outlandish predictions...

I finally managed to do nine miles in ninety minutes! I have been having a go at it every Sunday for the last three weeks and went from 10.4 minutes a mile to 10.3...and then up to 10.4. Very frustrating.

But this week I mapped out my exact nine-mile route on walkjogrun.co.uk and figured out exactly what time targets I had at various points on my route before I went out. I managed to beat all of them by a minute to a minute and a half, a lead I demolished in the last 20 minutes because I was so shattered, rolling in at 89 minutes and 50 seconds. Get in!!

The only problem, like Paul, was the effect the wet weather had on my clothing, which it turn had a very painful effect on my skin. I started running in shorts a few weeks ago, which did wonders for the flexibility of my legs, not to mention keeping me cool. But in the rain doing a long run, it felt like a tiny person was trying to saw my right leg off from the inside of my thigh.

It hurt. A lot. And the pain only got worse as the chafing broke the skin and the nasty little person kept sawing away at my raw flesh. It didn't start bleeding though, thankfully, but it sure as hell felt like it was about to. Now my leg looks like someone has attacked it with sandpaper. Lovely.

After I had recovered I went straight down to the shop and bought a big tub of Vaseline. My next mission is to try to find a way of carrying the tub with me, just in case, because I absolutely refuse to suffer that again.

Today, for the first time in weeks, my run started out perfectly. The pulled muscle in my thigh has healed, the ache in my foot has gone, my knees didn't have trouble warming up...it was all great. Getting to this point has been a slow learning curve though. It took me a while to realise that although stretching before a run is all well and good, wrenching limbs into positions they don't want to go is not that good.

I only realised my way of stretching (pushing something into a position where it hurts - no pain, no gain was my motto) was actually damaging my muscles, when I read about stretching in Runner's World. What I should have been doing was pushing something just far enough that it felt stretched and holding it there for 15 seconds. Then start out with a gentle jog to warm up.

Having since tried that, it has made the world of difference and I can now progress to a decent speed quickly after beginning a run. All perfect, I was going at my target pace of 10 minutes a mile and on course to run four and a half miles in 45 minutes...and then my stomach started playing up.

I slowly remembered I had eaten a mint toffee and a couple of Murray mints before I left work today, and boy did I pay the price. By the 25 minute mark my stomach was aching and with every step I could feel its contents lurching from side to side. I had to cut off the last part of my run and take a short cut home.

But I still managed three miles in 30 minutes, so still on target (sort of). I just hope the runner's diet learning curve is a bit steeper.

It was raining twice this week. And I don't mean a bit of drizzle, that can actually be nice to run in, it was bucketing it down. I decided to take a leaf out of Paul's book and went down to my mum's gym to use the treadmill. It turns out my left foot isn't too keen on the treadmill. I did a forty-minute run and an hour run, and by the end of it I had a dull ache on the outside of my left foot. I think it is something to do with having a different gait on a treadmill, or just that I'm not used to running on one.

Why does my body keep telling me how little it thinks of running? I have only just managed to get over pulling a muscle in my thigh, my toenail has died and fallen off, and now my FOOT doesn't like the exercise. I refuse to give in, however, my body can like it or lump it.

When I told Paul, he reckoned I was a hypochondriac. Now, however, we are just about to go out for a run after a night out last night and he is complaining about a swollen knee after his efforts on the dancefloor, and a hurt wrist (How do you hurt your wrist on a dancefloor exactly?). Yeah, I'm the hypochondriac.