So less than 9 hours on and I'm out again?

Yes, after my last-minute squeezed-in mile, welcoming Saturday in with heaving breath, cold fingers and a hacking cough, I decided that today was also looking uncertain and to get up and out was the only way I could be certain of doing my run.

It nevertheless took some determination. My bed was warm and cosy. I faffed on Twitter. I faffed on Facebook. I faffed on Twitter some more. But eventually I got up. The moment of truth arrived - run the bath now and enjoy a calm, gentle, warm, cosy morning? Or on with the gear still scattered next to my bed and back out into the cold wintery morning?

I peer out of the window. Hmmm, that is a huge ex-puddle ice trap across most of the road outside my house. It looks really very cold. My house is hardly a sauna, but comparatively it suddenly glows with warmth and cosiness.

"Helen." Stern voices are called into play in my head. Not working? "Helen, Helen, you have no milk, you need milk, this is the perfect way to ensure a nice coffee." (I leave out the obvious "when you get back" additional tagline.) Then somehow Janathon discipline does after all kick in. I start to mechanically don my running clothes. I avoid any possibility of switching my brain on again as I get dressed, find a key and some change, seek out the gloves and hat that are my shield against reality, and leave the house. As I walk again I start to cough a little. I have a cold, I need to go home! No, I scold, it is just the cold air. Walk on. Now jog ...

2.8 gasping miles later I walk round the newsagent buying milk and a paper. A lovely woman in the queue is entertained by my walking up and down rather than queueing and lets me go in front of her as I explain it might just entirely paralyse me if I don't help out my protesting calves by keeping moving (the idea I am "warming down" remains something I cannot say although, as ever, my face is lit up like a beacon in the dark). As I walk the last stretch home clutching my paper it starts to sleet. This is sort of the final straw but also, surely, my vindication. It was not yet 10am and I had Janathoned again. 22 days straight ... and even the sleet held off until the very last moment.

It is hard and getting harder, this Janathon. But with the support and help (and mild incredulousness, it has to be said) of all my friends, family and fellow Janathoners, we still go on. I wouldn't be doing it without you :-)