Right. You might have noticed it’s gone a bit quiet on here. That’s because I’ve been in Malta for ten days, and I’m not going to pretend I spent them on a juice cleanse.

Call it a holiday reset. Call it my last little blowout before the proper training for The Long Road Back begins. I’m calling it both.

First, the running. Nobody warned me Malta was this hilly. The first run was on 8 October, from Swieqi round Gharghur: 4.31 miles at 11:13 a mile, with 398 feet of climbing, in heat my Dorset legs weren’t ready for.

Bloody hot and very hilly.

The next morning I went long. 9.72 miles out along the east coast past Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, up Salina Road and inland to Naxxar, which is supposedly the spiritual centre of Malta. Spiritual or not, I couldn’t run the hills all the way up to it. That’s 643 feet of climbing over 1 hour 48 minutes, and Strava got the honest version:

Could not make the hills all the way up to Naxxar. Almost 2 miles of climbing.

The church in Naxxar has 1726 and 2026 on the front. Three hundred years old this year. By the time I’d walked the last bit up to it, I felt about the same.

Then I danced. A lot. We were out for Anjuna Deep Malta, across four venues during the trip. As a DJ myself, there was never any chance of me standing at the back. On Sunday 11 October the step counter said 57,317. That’s 31.9 miles in a day, according to my phone, which is further than a marathon and further than I’ve run on any day since Day Zero. It was a day of walking and a night of dancing, with a drink in hand. Strava will never know about it, but my legs certainly do.

Now for the honest bit. I fell off the smoking wagon in Malta. Not a little wobble, either: totally. I said back in September that if I slipped I’d say so here, so here it is. The smoke-free clock goes back to zero. Day 1 was 17 October, the day we landed, which makes today Day 5. Attempt two. Slowly, slowly.

The food wasn’t too bad, to be fair to myself. The beers and cocktails were very much enjoyed. And yet the scales this week say 90.5kg, half a kilo down on before I went. I’m giving the credit to the dancing. In the interest of full honesty, I did take one water tablet on each of the first two days back, 18 and 19 October, just to clear anything the holiday had left behind.

And the biggest news of all: the rattle has stopped. I came out of hospital on fourteen tablets a day. By the end of September it was nine, with the steroids coming down one tablet at a time while the test sticks stayed clear. I haven’t taken a single prescription tablet since we flew out on 6 October, apart from those two water tablets.

When my consultant and I talked about the Rituximab, the advice was to get off the steroids and the tablets as soon as I could. I’ve got there a bit sooner than either of us might have pencilled in, so I’m checking in with him to make sure he’s happy with where I’ve landed. I’ll update this when he replies. One thing I’ll say clearly: please don’t read this as a reason to stop your own medication. Talk to your doctor first.

The Albustix sticks are still coming back clear. What’s left in the cupboard now is turmeric with black pepper, a cranberry kidney cleanse, a Bioperine capsule and some good gut bacteria tablets. That’s the lot. The pill organiser has been retired.

So that was the blowout. Now it’s back home to Dorset for a detox and a restart: off the ciggies again, the booze back down, and the training for Paris properly underway.

That was the last little blowout. Now the work starts.

— James