Twice shy

I woke up this morning with itchy legs. Yesterday we stopped to refill our water bottles and I felt something chomping at the back of my legs. I thought nothing of it until about 4am this morning. I was in a half dreaming happy state, and it was that nice sort of itch that felt really really really nice to scratch - until I regained proper consciousness due to my legs stinging and worked out what was going on.

In the shower I realised that I have:

A bite the size of a small child's head on my right hip
One the size of a tennis ball on my right calf
One the size of a squash ball on my inner right thigh
My left leg - well that has one huge bite that has turned the whole of the back of my left leg bright red

And all these lumps are hard and HOT to touch :-0

I'm not exaggerating, I could prove it actually (in a tasteful way) but this blog shall remain photo-less.

I am pencilled in for a sports massage tomorrow. About a week before an event I usually spend an hour with "big John" who used to be in the Navy amongst other things, and is very very good at his job. Massage normally conjures up ideas of scented candles and whale music, but the only scent in John's room is anticipation of pain and the only music is the yelping of the specimens he is dealing with. Anyone who has had their IT band stripped will know what I mean. For the record I don't tend to cry or scream in pain, but try and keep talking through it. When it just about gets too much there is usually a pause as I forget to breathe, followed by uncontrolable laughter as the pain hits. Weird huh. Apparently he has rugby players that blub.

So I don't think the massage is gonna happen - I don't really need one it is just a nice to have, and to be honest I should probably save my money and go to him in September when 4 consecutive marathons have broken my legs.

Good news is that I did a little run when I got back from work, and despite all these deformities sticking out of me they don't seem to have stopped me from running normally. I think I should be thankful I didn't get bitten in the back of the knee or similar because with the amount of swelling that would have given me real problems.

I'm sure I will do another bump update tomorrow. Despite having an OK run it is still stressing me for some reason :-S