Jeepers Creepers

It's still been warm and there's still mozzies around at night so each night I'm going to bed cocooned in a mozzie net. It's nice to know I can have a hot flush in the middle of the night and not be attacked by a swarm of those noisy blood-suckers.

But the other night the mozzie net did the opposite to what it's supposed to. Instead of keeping the baddies out, it locked them in with me. Kind of like a white-collar criminal in with an axe murderer.

It must have been around 4:00am when I roused briefly to have a debate in my head over whether I should bite the bullet and go to the loo or whether I should trust my ageing urinary sphincter for another couple of hours. Common sense prevailed over optimism. It was when I'd returned to bed and settled down to (hopefully) a couple of extra hours of sleep cause I didn't have to get up early to run, that I felt it. Something ran over my hand.

Shudder. Goose bumps. And a creeping feeling of dread.

It was dark so I couldn't see what the culprit was. And there was no point in turning on the light because I'd flicked that sucker so hard that it was hiding somewhere peaceful to lick its wounds. Then I realised in my still sleep-dazed but increasingly adrenalin-fuelled state that whatever it was was still trapped within the confines of the mozzie net.

A moth would have been the best option. Followed by a cockroach. I could cope fine with a cockroach crawling on my hand as long as I didn't have to see it. I'd be less fine with one of those rhinoceros beetles that we get - not since one latched on to me and drew blood. And even lesser fine if it was a spider. I'm not the sort of person who runs out of a room when I see a spider but neither do I enjoy them creeping over any part of my anatomy in the dark.

I tucked every exposed bit of my body under the sheet so only the smallest bit of my face was exposed but any more sleep was just not going to happen. Of course, once it was light enough to see there was no trace of the creepy critter who'd stolen my sleep-in.

So the next night I was extra-careful to block off all entry opportunities to my sleeping quarters. That net was firmly tucked in and I was sure there was nothing trapped within its confines. I had another morning with no running ahead so that meant no alarm and the rare opportunity to sleep till I woke up naturally. Bliss!

And again at 4:00am I was in that semi-awake state having the same old debate that ended up in the same result. And once again I tried to settle back down to a couple of hours more sleep when I felt it. The ticklish scurry of something over my hand.

But this time, when I did that whole jerky, hysterical flicking of my hand I managed to work out what the culprit was.

Not a spider - thank goodness. Or a beetle, cockroach or moth.

It was the tissue that I keep tucked half under my pillow. Fluttering in the breeze from the fan.

Yeah, I felt pretty stupid.

And for those of you wondering how I managed to have two mornings off running while I'm smack-bang in the middle of training for a marathon. I gave myself those morning off. With Coach Chris's blessing of course. I'd just started to get a few warning signs that I wasn't recovering from my sessions. The elevated heart rate, leg fatigue, headaches. I've been here before and ignored the signs and it hasn't ended well.

So this time I decided to nip it in the bud. Just take a couple of extra days to get my body back on track before knuckling back down. It was just what I needed and I could tell how much fresher I felt when I ran 25k on Saturday. What I found especially interesting was the data from my watch. Both runs were done at the same pace and on pretty much the same course. The weather was fairly similar but my average heart rate was 10 beats slower in the second run.

Objective achieved.