I never thought I'd miss running as much as I did – what was I thinking?
Some good news – I'm back on a rugby field. Yesterday I was actually running on actual earth, which has put a real smile on my face.
I got up to 90 to 95 per cent running on a pitch and I have been doing hurdles, pitch ladders, speed sprints and repeater sprints.
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Archery was one of the activities on a varied agenda for Exeter Chiefs' playing squad at Honiton's Land Rover Experience on Monday Picture: Mat Mingo/Pinnacle
For the past seven weeks I've been saying how much I have missed running and how I wanted to get back. But, having spent Monday and yesterday doing it, I thought I'd be enjoying it a bit more.
It has been tough work, but it is great to be back running and every time I've been blowing a bit hard I have to remember how lucky I am to be doing it again. You should never take these things for granted.
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Hopefully I'll be back training with all the boys some time soon. When that time comes I'll be wearing the red bib – whoever is wearing it doesn't get tackled. They can join in doing drills and all that, but they just can't get tackled.
I have do some off-line running first, which means changing direction, and, once I get those boxes ticked, I should be pretty much back into it.
It's come along quickly, which is nice, I'm now on the short-term injury list, which is even nicer, and out of the leg brace, which is nicer still.
The rest of the boys had a week off last week, but we all got back together again to have a bit of a team bonding day on Monday.
Rob likes us to set ourselves points targets to get in little groups of games throughout the season. So, for instance, if we had got 12 points from our past four games, the club were thinking of taking us up to Cheltenham.
The four games we had were Sale, Saracens, Welsh and Quins, so we had a bit of an incentive there. Obviously we didn't quite get the points total, although we did get to ten, which was still pretty useful with three being away, as well.
It's a bit like a win bonus thing. The club get what they want out of it if we do well, and we get the opportunity to do something to break the training regime, and liven things up a bit.
So, no Cheltenham Festival, but they did lay on a bit of an afternoon out for us instead.
It gives us a bit of a reward for getting the points. I don't think we need these things to keep us focused on winning or anything like that, it's just something that Rob's brought in and it works well for us.
It helps us focus on sections of the season, and stops us thinking about the bigger targets at the end of the season. If and when they do come along it will be because we have achieved the smaller ones.
So we all went off for a Land Rover Experience day, just outside Honiton, where we also went shooting, had a go on a Segway, and did a bit of archery. It was all good fun.
There were a few nervous boys out there on the Segways. There were some races too – and we are a pretty competitive bunch, as it turns out.
Chris Whitehead incurred a five-second time penalty in one race, and lost, which he wasn't happy about. He was moaning about that for the rest of the day.
It's good to have a bit of a break because it can be hard to keep focused in these down weeks. You have to stay conditioned, but you need some rest as well. So a lot of the boys won't have done anything much last week.
But then everyone got fat tested yesterday, so even then it's not exactly like they had a week on the beers...
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