Lofty running ambitions deflated by injury

IT is a perfect morning, possibly even a plus-perfect place to be running right now. With a new day dawning over Eastbourne's seafront, the early morning exercise merchants are enjoying the last remnants of "short weather" running.

Just as the clocks religiously go back an hour during the last weekend of October to herald the end of balmy British Summer Time and the advent of Greenwich Mean Time - with the emphasis here on the "mean" - so runners are preparing themselves for the inevitability of trading in their silky summery shorts and loose-fitting t-shirts, for clingy leggings and laboratory-designed, all-weather fluorescent tops.

It's a veritable fashion parade along the promenade this morning. One petite lady, ponytail flapping in the breeze, eases past Eastbourne's grand pier with designer clothing, dark glasses, sporting an ipod and earphones, with a luminous yellow jacket tied around her waist.

A young couple with enviable bronzed bodies, golden hair and sickening looks to front any self-respecting fitness magazine, pass by at a fair lick in the opposite direction towards Beachy Head, with a seagull-chasing Labrador trailing in their wake and struggling to keep up.

I'm watching this spectacle from a fourth-floor seafront flat which overlooks the pier and the beautiful gardens which provide a dazzling splash of horticultural colour. A roadside sweeper pulls past a red and cram Brighton & Hove bus picking up passengers, while out on the horizon a huge container ship laden with cargo is slowly heading westward up the English Channel.

Me? After my first week of a new job in Eastbourne, I'd hoped to be joining the throng of runners this morning, but instead I'm embarrassingly laid up with the sort of injury which few athletically-minded fortysomethings would brag about.

Dispensing with the need for a ladder, I decided at the weekend to pull myself into the loft to bring down a box, while perched precariously on the upstairs bannister. It was a big-time miscalculation. Eventually I managed to haul my portly frame into the loft after much grunting and groaning, but I ended up with a painful side strain.

I thought the pain would subside quickly. But the injury has been quite debilitating and recovery pretty slow. What a muppet way to get injured. With new work colleagues to meet, many of whom have heard about my running exploits thanks to a glowing biography emailed round by my new boss, it is particularly pathetic to explained the reason for my running abstinence is that I've been sidelined by a side strain. What a wuss!

Now a searing hamstring tear, a delicate Achilles' strain, or even a Beckhamesque metatarsal injury would be worthy of some impressive nods and knowing looks. But a numpty sidestrain caused by trying to climb into the loft.....keep it quiet!!

Although the injury has gradually improved this week, I'm feeling anxious because my next race, the Swindon Half Marathon, is little more than a fortnight away. I've yet to run more than 10 miles in the past three or four months, and I need to get at least another 10-miler in before my October trip to Wiltshire.

So this week has been one with plenty of rest. What else can you do? Plenty of hot baths, frequent applications of Deep Heat, and bizarrely I've been microwaving a wheat pack which has been applied to the painful area just beneath my ribs.

The irony is that this week I feel I have arrived in East Sussex and landed in a running Mecca. Eastbourne is bordered on its western front by the glorious South Downs, an undulating terrain I know all too well - challenging remote running, but glorious all the same.

And then to the east is the coastal road. For the past couple of days I have been working in Hastings and driven along the coast road past delightful Pevensey Bay to reach the historic town.

It is another glorious day here. The last of this season's holiday makers are lapping up the last of this year's sunshine beneath blue skies swathed with wispy clouds. I feel that this is a place where I can get into some serious running. No treadmills, no traffic-choked streets, no meal-mouthed excuses for not getting out of bed, but a readily available running paradise right on the doorstep. First, though, is the small matter of a sidestrain.