I am a snail inching my way up the slippery Everest of fitness.

Progress is slow. I am a snail inching my way up the slippery Everest of fitness. I am far from Methuselah but 50 is in sight and I no longer have the elasticity of youth. The view of mortality once so distant is assuming a sharper clarity, less of a smudge on the horizon, it is gathering shape. Four runs, totalling 12 miles, over a two week period doesn't sound like a lot but to me its mammoth. At the moment I can't go far so I am concentrating on the familiar embrace of my old friends, the local woodland. If its Everest I'm scaling then I'm still at base camp but I am preparing to leave, I'm hitting the exercise bike and my physio exercises - and I'm working as hard as I can in PE at school. Falling off the cliff face last October has defined the rest of my running life, I either recover fully and kick on to new heights, or I resign myself to being an occasional 10K runner. At this stage I can't predict which one it will be. I do know which outcome I hope for!