This morning I woke up at the Jury’s Inn hotel at the Albert Dock in Liverpool. We had been out at the Green Room the night before. A fascinating evening which most of the family looked like they really enjoyed. It’s a cabaret style club in the centre of Liverpool, run by Ricky Tomlinson – of Brookside and Royle Family fame. His face is everywhere. Like an omnipresent overlord of FUN. Sadly he wasn’t compereing this evening. But his stand in was amazing.

The first act was a 17 year old singer who came on to do three warbling songs – the standard fare on X-Factor (well, the bits that I’ve seen). The compare introduced him with the line “Give a warm welcome for this lad – he’s nervous back there. In fact he’s shitting himself”, and so the bar was set high before he even came on.

Second up was a musical comedy “impersonator”. His act consisted of donning different wigs and glasses, singing amusing lyrics to famous songs. There were elements of this act that I found difficult to enjoy, but on the whole I’d say that most people really enjoyed him a lot. I watched a lot of it from between the gaps of my fingers.

The third act was a sort of cabaret entertaining singer. He was good. His rendition of Born Free had Jude and I singing along – we were singing the Vic Reeves version, but it was still fun.

Finally there was a Stylistics tribute act. They were fine. They played two songs that I recognised, but there was a lot of dancing around the tables. And yes, I joined in.

Overall it was fun – everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and Sue (who’s birthday it was) appeared to have a brilliant time. The way the evening unfolds, it feels very much like we were being bludgeoned into having fun. That probably sounds a bit churlish. I’d go back. There’s a Take That tribute band on in May, that would be incredible.

So when I woke up this morning the top of my right foot felt sore. It feels like something has been pulled. I’m not sure what it is because I’ve never had a soreness quite like it. I’ve had a quick look on the Bupa running injuries site, but I can’t see what it could be. It’s definitely not plantar fasciitis, because it’s in the wrong place, but I decided to be a bit careful.

I was going to go out to do my 8 mile run today. A glorious run down towards Westhead and then back around Lathom and Burscough to get back home. However, I was worried that I might hurt my foot a bit more and so instead went to the gym this afternoon. At least I could stick to machines that wouldn’t impact my foot too much.

I pulled out my old card that I hadn’t updated since November and did the programme that I was doing back then. Happily I did a bit (and sometimes a lot) better than I was doing back then:

• Running machine, 10 minutes, speed 8.5-9.0 (up from 8-8.5)
• Rowing machine, 2000m. 8 minutes 51 seconds. Down from 9:05 last time
• Mountain climber machine thing. 10 minutes, 1.3km compared to 1.07km last time.
• 3×20 swiss ball crunches (didn’t do these last time, was waiting for the cross trainer machine)
• Cross trainer: 20 minutes, 3.34 km compared to 2.86km last time

On the whole it looks like I’ve improved across the board in the last couple of months. This is good. I’ll try and include a session in the gym through February’s training as I really felt that I could have done a lot better on the rowing machine.

I can still feel my foot, but it’s not too bad. It just doesn’t feel right and so I’ll continue to err on the side of caution until such time that I’m confident to do a good long run on it.