Must admit, prior to doing any of this kind of running and triathlons, I used to get a few colds and coughs and quite a few aches and pains, but it didn’t really bother me. Now, I start to get more and more paranoid about it and whether its going to stop me from doing any training.

Since I entered the Cheshire Half, everyone has come down with something in our house. The worst has been my 2 year old daughter who I’ve had to have at the doctors twice. The first time, I phoned them up late afternoon and asked if they could see her the following day. Bit of a silence and then a no, we’re full tomorrow, how about the following day? Do we have to book illnesses in advance now??!! To give them some credit, the receptionist asked the age of my daughter and how far away from the surgery I was. As I’m 2 minutes away she said they’d squeeze her in, but I had to be there in 5 minutes, so all sorted in the end.

As she’s started nursery 3 mornings a week, she has started coming home with all sorts of little coughs and sniffles, though this was a particularly bad sore throat. So bad, she hardly ate for 3 days and getting her to drink was a problem. The medicine soon sorted her out, but not before my wife and her older sister caught it. May as well have put a big red cross on the door there were that many germs floating around here.

Whenever anyone gets ill in our house, the first thing I do is pop some Echinacea pills. They’re easily available at all the health food type shops, and they’re supposed to boost your immune system. I’ve got to say that since I’ve done this, it always seems to work and I tend not to catch anything. The one time I happened not to have any in, I came down with what everyone else had, so I have to say they seem to work, for me at least.

Also make sure I have plenty of water and vitamin C. I’m no expert at any of this, so I can only say what works for me, but with this half marathon coming up, I’ve just checked and I’m well stocked up.