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I haven't run a 3000m track race for 20 years. I used to do them on an old cinder track in the depths of south London way back when I was trying to be a cross-country star. Now Bobby has thrown me into one tonight. It's one of the Boulder Road Runners summer track events on the swish University of Colorado synthetic track at Potts Field.

Day 1 Restart Phase: easy 10 miles on trails out past Wonderland Lake and onto the Eagle Trail Loop. Basically one mile trending uphill to start with, then four miles downhill to the turn at 45 minutes, four miles back up and then the downhill finish.

Praise be that although there was a stiff wind, it was nowhere near as strong as when I did this same run last week. So although there was less help going out, there was nothing much to battle against on the way back.

Already there is progress; last time out I ran at 8:55 pace for 84 minutes covering 9.5 miles at an average heart rate of 130. Today it was 8:42 pace for 87 minutes covering 10 miles with an average of 129. It felt pretty easy, apart from a slight cramp in that bu-ttock when I restarted after a pause for a glug of Cytomax.

Well, it's taken around 4 months to track down and fix, but it looks like my serum ferritin problem is over.

Um... that's the good news. The bad news is - does this mean I've got no more excuses?

A quick recap in the best tradition of the soaps: Simon ends the season burnt out and injured, has a month off running to allow the adductor tear to heal up, starts training,goes down with a virus, recovers magnificently, starts training, gets slower and slower and more and more tired. Reduced to training only every other day, he gets a blood test and discovers he has basement-level iron stores, so hasn't got enough oxygen in his blood. This is quite worrying, seeing that he is living and training at altitude. Gets an iron shot in the butt and embarks on two months of iron supplementation. Retests: serum ferritin goes DOWN. Has intravenous iron. Feels worse. Guts shot to hell. Can't breathe when at speed, but lung function tests super-normal. Starts to feel OK except at speed.. the first "good" sign for months. Suspects iron problem is fixed but has lost so much training he is now just not fit enough...