So here I am at 6.30 in the morning, in the pitch darkness on a long, icy descent in the middle of the woods in Tblisi, Georgia, thinking, ” I am sure my Mum warned me about things like this.”

It has been the first morning since I arrived that I have been able to run outside as the roads have just been too icy. In two months, I will be running the Marathon Des Sables, and I can not afford an injury at this point – or at least I have to TRY to avoid them.

I am here to help Maestro TV with the relaunch of their news and current affairs offering and in particular their nine o’clock flagship show.

6.15 start out of my hotel which is near the brow of a steep hill and the first obstacle was the death inducing cobbles. They feel like a skating rink. Then on down to the river as I reckoned that even I couldn’t get lost with a river on my right hand side.

And I didn’t get lost exactly, but I did manage to meander through some dense woodland and a housing estate in trying to get down there. Fortunately, in spite of various movie themes unhelpfully spooling through my head, no mad axe murderers were around.

The run along the river was great – there is something really soothing about dark waters. There was hardly any traffic and my only company was the street cleaners who were all assiduously sweeping up the leaves from the pavement. Most of them were women, which felt strange somehow. But I did meet one male one – who shouted after me, “Beautiful Womans!”. Since this is what I looked like – I  think he was being VERY generous.