With only three weeks to go before the big kick off, the gym has been deserted again and for the second week in a row absolutely nothing has happened - so brace yourself, this week's Diary is pretty turgid stuff unless you like wildlife.

The accepted iron man wisdom is that next week should be the last full week of training and that it should be nothing short of brutal.

However, the 2CC Team always dares to be different and as every single one of us is now injured or skiing or both, we've decided to call it a day on the training front. The rest should do us good.

While three of us will be appearing on BBC London 94.9FM's Sunday Sports Show between 2-3pm this Sunday to discuss the Challenge, the rest of us are all getting a little bored with the life of the professional athlete which is not all it's cracked up to be. You're either injured or recovering from injury and about to be injured again. You can't drink alcohol and miss it so much that you realise you're probably an alcoholic. You have a mountain of smelly training kit that has to be washed and you are always, always losing socks. Worst of all, every time your kind work colleagues ask you how the training is going you are ravaged with self-doubt and start worrying again about your injuries and how you're going to get the evening's laundry done without having a drink.

Leon's condition is the most alarming - an inflamed periosteum is no laughing matter although fortunately the muscle is currently still attached to the bone. This is on top of the problems with his left knee and right hip and he has been told that he is not allowed to run before Paris. If Leon was a horse etc. etc.

We have one other case of periostitis (shin splints), enough tight illotibial bands to string a grand piano, one fractured foot and potentially two more. Seb has an incurable biomechanical deficiency. Conrad has hurt himself on a bacon sandwich. Giles has a particularly virulent strain of man flu and is actually not very well at all.

Last week Diary joked that Pat and Angus would be running up mountains with skis on. They have been - Pat with his shin splints and Angus with his legs full of metal (please see the photo below). This news has made the rest of us feel even more inadequate.

Seb has done his best to keep our spirits up with inspiring quotations from the two great role models on whom he so obviously bases himself - Lance Armstrong and Albert Einstein, both of whom were, of course, world class endurance athletes.

We quite liked "Winning is about the heart, not just the legs" but the famous "Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever" seems to be the wrong way round and "If you were worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on it" is, for those of us who have now done any cycling, a load of cobblers. None of those is Albert Einstein by the way.

Sarah's procurement of 240kg of Lanacane Anti-Chafing Gel means that we now in tip top shape supplies-wise. We see the non-greasy, non-staining fragrance free gel with its silky finish and unique barrier against friction as being an important weapon in our battle against soreness from rubbing skin on skin or skin on clothing. We have no formal sponsorship deal with Lanacane yet but hope springs eternal in the human breast, as they say.

We're all snowed under at work and this week's words are therefore unfortunately all business related - "loan to own strategy", "fulcrum security" and "pivot".

So to finish on an athletic note here's a another quote about running for Seb to add to his list:

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

This is not particularly relevant and we really only included it to see if anyone has actually made it to the end of this week's Diary. If you think reading this rubbish is hard work, you should try writing it.

P.S. For some weeks now John P has been trying to convince us that as part of his 2CC training, he was going to take on his first White Collar Boxing bout. We obviously didn't believe him but here, the old war horse claims, is the evidence of last night's stunning first round knockout against a much younger and heavier (yawn) insurance assessor from Walthamstow. A big thank you to Wayne Alexander, the WBU World Light Middleweight Champion for the loan of the belt and to Mikey Collins at Pound for Pound Boxing for arranging this - a photo of Wayne will hopefully appear soon.