Eurovision, Iron Men and Stickers

I work with some really great people. They are characterised by being intelligent, clear-thinking, driven and dedicated. They are also what you might call sporty. At lunchtimes my colleagues are as likely to be playing football, at the gym next door or cycling the length of Britain as actually, well, eating lunch. No longer am I labouring under the illusion that an Iron Man challenge is a competition to build a flying, bulletproof, weaponised exoskeleton by hand. If I threw a stone randomly from my desk it would almost certainly hit a triathlete, a marathon runner or a body builder. So I’m going to keep my stones to myself.

In this context, I have to keep telling myself that my little fitness programme isn’t minuscule and insignificant. It’s hard but I shouldn’t be comparing myself to everyone around me otherwise my targets seem petty and easy. But there really is no “grand scheme of things”; this is what I want to do and then I’ll think about what comes next. Half marathons. Marathons maybe. We’ll see. I still don’t enjoy running, or even “the buzz you get from completing a run” (I hear that quite often around the place.) But I do enjoy the feeling that I am someone who is getting fit, and losing weight, even 10 days in.

Speaking of which, my latest figures are:

Pounds lost: 6 (this is arguable as my scales are proving to be highly unreliable)

Beers drunk this week: 0

Other treats: 0 (unless you count two low fat yogurts and I don’t.)

Minutes run consecutively: 5 (this is a bit false but it’s the way the NHS program arranges things.)

FIFA World Cup sticker album % complete: 66 (from 90 packs)

I’m including that last one to track progress from here on in. The last third of the Panini sticker album is going to be tough. But damn it I’m not going to fail.

I’m especially proud of going a full year without an alcoholic drink. Well it feels like a year, it’s actually just a week. A friend and former work colleague kindly dropped off 20 bottles of his excellent home brew today. He’s asked for the empties back as soon as possible. I am treating this as another test from the maleficent higher beings who sent him over to make me crack.

So the rest of this week went: Friday night gym, Saturday run, Sunday short cycle (this was meant to be a rest day really). I’ll be on to week 5 of the NHS audio course tomorrow and I’m expecting this to be when it really starts to hurt. I did a ten minute run in the gym on Friday night to prepare myself but the treadmill is much easier than road running, so I’m avoiding it. Also I tried to show off and set the treadmill speed up really high (well 12kph). The speed made me drop my iPhone which clattered off the tread and was flung across the floor of the gym. This did not make me look cool.

Saturday night I watched Eurovision alone, and more importantly sober for the first time, so I know it really was won by a woman with a beard. The whole thing was like a Dalian nightmare ringmastered by gurning Danish car salesman convinced they could be successful comics if only someone would give them a break. Well I have news for them.

What was weirder is that it seemed all the countries were actually trying to win, even Greece who one presumes would struggle to pay for the lighting bill next year let alone whatever might be the equivalent of this year’s utterly surreal evening's entertainment.

Pizza, Football and Nik Kershaw

One week down.

Since Monday, alcoholic drinks 0, bread none (apart from some croutons, so sue me), pasta none, sugar none, well hardly any. There appears to be sugar in everything I now realise. I am living on muesli, chicken, vegetables, sushi, a little fruit and black coffee. I'm not sure how healthy this diet is for people trying to work out but I feel bloody starving all the time, and due to running in the evening I can't get to sleep so am tired all day. Boo hoo poor old me etc.

I popped out to get my chicken salad today and upon returning to the office to ingest it joylessly at my desk was met by the distinctly unwelcome sight of 60 of my colleagues wolfing down pizza. Free, delicious pizza. First Thursday of the month is Sales Pizza Day, of course. Worse still the ghastly pizza-eating devils were clustered around my desk so I couldn't even get there to consume my 300 calorie wisp of a lunch. My stomach was trying to break out of my torso at this point and head for the good stuff. I didn't let it. Screw you stomach!

Ahem. The good news: I've lost 4lbs, nearly 2kg, in weight in a week. I've kept to my fitness schedule and am progressing slowly with my stamina.

I think I am probably going to have to ease off on the dieting to keep my energy levels up as the running program starts toughening up next week. So far it's been relatively benign. This week's schedule is 3 minutes running, then 5 mins running, then 3 then 5 again with a little walking in between. Not too tough I suppose but it's critical in building up my stamina, which is my big "thing".

Playing football on Tuesday night I really noticed the lack of nutrition levels. I mean I'm not a great footballer at the best of times but this week I made the guy I was supposed to marking look like Leo Messi and he's about 18 stone and puffs like an asthmatic steam engine.

The next day (yesterday) I felt shattered and couldn't face picking up the running, so I just hit the gym pool for a few lengths and a quick sit in the hot tub. This is the only time in Week One that I've been near the place. The irony of spending £60 per month on a gym while I get fit running around the streets for free isn't lost on me, but I'm still quite glad it's there if I need a swim or a fake row or a go on one of those things that dries your swimming kit in ten seconds (they don't you know.) I hope David Lloyd is happy with all his/my money.

I really wish someone would invent an app that taught you to run but played music from your own collection, or at least your own Spotify playlist in the background. Or perhaps I should say "I wish I could be bothered to check whether anyone has made one of those". They probably have and it's really famous and everyone knows about it except me. Week 4 on the NHS podcast contains a song that is a lock, stock and barrel copy of Nik Kershaw's not-much-loved 1984 hit Wouldn't It Be Good. This breathtaking plagiarism bugs the hell out of me and I spend the part of the run where I am forced to listen to it considering whether it would be possible to report it as a crime against music, but then the original's no great shakes either and anyway Nik Kershaw's probably dead by now.

OK, I've just checked. He's not dead. In fact Nik is playing a gig in Cookham up the road from here NEXT SATURDAY, pop kids. I have no interest in his music whatsoever (although I did buy The Riddle album on cassette in the old days) but I could just turn up to tell him about the gargantuan rip-off of his biggest hit by the NHS with my hands over my ears for fear I may accidentally hear some of his show.

I think Blog posts are meant to be short and have a point. Must try harder.

Cool Turkey

Five days down. Infinity to go. Assuming I live forever of course, which is the plan.

As it turns out running every day isn't nearly as difficult as not consuming cheese, chocolate, wheat, sausages, alcohol, cake, pies, takeaways, bacon, croissants, ice cream or anything else that isn't unfortunate enough to be a vegetable or a pulse. Although having said that I've not done that much running yet.

The NHS is a great thing. Sometimes more in principle than in practice, it's true, but it's a great British institution which sets us apart from the rest of the world and I'll countenance no argument agin this. Especially when it has provided me with Laura. Laura is a young lady who voices the free Couch to 5K podcast put together by the aforementioned institution to get fatties off the sofa in pounding the streets, presumably hoping fewer of them will keep turning up at the doctors with niggling complaints. Like diabetes and heart failure.

Anyway I may not be quite the target audience but I'll take all the help I can get. I've jumped straight to week 3 as, without meaning to sound boastful, I can already run for three minutes at a time without stopping. You're supposed to do three runs a week, then move on to the next episode. Laura guides you through it accompanied by music so horrifically inoffensive and bland it's all I can manage not to do a little sick in my mouth. Listening to it while running is like being stuck in the world's biggest lift. But I will persevere as Laura has promised to get me running for 30 minutes at a time and she seems like the kind of disembodied voice who delivers on her promises.

So last week went: Wednesday:run, Thursday:rest, Friday:run, Saturday:run. Sunday I dusted the bike off, and surprised myself with a 7 mile cycle ride around the country park where the 10K run will be taking place in August. I couldn't believe it. It was utterly exhilarating, I've no idea why I stopped cycling or how I forgot how much fun it was but I can't wait to get out again. Obviously I got lost and it got dark and I swallowed half my weight in midges which I now know are not an acquired taste, but they won't put me off.

I need to get one of those apps which measure how far you cycle so you can then show off and annoy your friends on Facebook, although I suspect 7 miles is at the lower end of the facebook-bragging scale.

Today I was running again. Week 4 of the podcast. Laura is getting tougher now; we're running 5 minutes at a time with just 90 seconds of walking between. Not too bad really though, it's within my comfort zone but I expect I'll hate her guts within the next couple of weeks. At least she seems to change the music every week.

So I really am cutting out all the bad foods and feeling pretty terrible (and constantly hungry). The headache is possibly dehydration but I also read in the paper today that it could be my body craving sugar. I don't eat all that much sweet stuff but the article said that if you drink alcohol, you'll be satisfying your body's need for sugar that way, and when you go cold turkey on it you'll get the same reaction as anyone with a sweet tooth. Makes sense I suppose.

Having said all this, I leaped merrily off my shiny, recently assembled wagon on Saturday and enjoyed a beery day out with friends watching my beloved Reading FC snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and fail to reach the Championship playoffs. In fairness I avoided all manner of football ground food compared to which the McDonalds and KFC round the corner are like Holland and Barrett. But I did have a few (5) pints and a packet of peanuts in the Nags Head afterwards, having hazily remembered that peanuts are a lot better than crisps, health-wise. Which is not to say that they aren't full of salt and fat but I was at least trying a bit.

I might also have had a little bit of cake and cheese after dinner as well. But we were entertaining, darling.

Other than Saturday I have been very strict for five days now and it's going ok. A constant feeling of burning in your stomach is the feeling of it shrinking, I'm certain.

Right so it's 5-a-side football tomorrow night, then I shall reacquaint myself with NHS Laura on Wednesday. Onwards and upwards, with a bit of sideways and possibly a smidgen of backwards along the way.

The Starting Line

OK.
So here goes.

I am a natural pessimist. I get it from my mother and I can see it in my son. The older one. The younger one is just nuts. But it's in my family.

People tell me "anything is possible" and I nod and agree with them but I don't really believe it. I think that people's limits are different to one another, and that we underestimate them, but they're still limits. I think I could probably, given time, become a decent skier or oil painter or write a not-entirely-unreadable novel. But that doesn't mean I have it in me to be Franz Klammer or Rembrandt or Dan Brown*. Not everyone can do everything well is my point.

But last week I sat in a room and someone told me that "anything is possible" and I nodded and agreed with him but, and I still can't quite understand why, I believed him. Actually it was more than one person, and it was a room full of other people with whom I work and although actually I didn't completely believe him or them it was enough. Enough to make me think differently and try to be more positive.

The people in the room said think of a goal and then double it. They said aim high and even if you fail you'll achieve more than people who aim low and hit their target. They said if you believe you can't do something you won't be able to. They said go home and practice spinning a plastic plate on a plastic pole. Even to a pessimist all this makes some kind of logical sense, although the plate spinning is really starting to piss me off.

I've been pretending to get fit for years. I play football once a week and badminton about once a year. I own a bike. It's in great condition for the same reason the crown jewels aren't all scuffed and scratched. I bought an eye-wateringly expensive gym membership 18 months ago, figuring that I wouldn't want to waste that kind of money and never go. Plus I knew I would use a tatty, under-equipped cheap gym as an excuse not to go. So now I don't go to my expensive gym, and I play my football once a week and I tell myself I'm in better shape than most other people and than I really am. I wish I'd worked as hard actually getting fit as I do at pretending to.

Anyway so remember the people in the room? The people in the room gave each of us a buddy. Buddies help each other to reach their goals. This is a good thing because I am going to hate reaching my goal and so I need all the help I can get. My buddy seems like a very nice guy. He's probably going to have to get a whole lot nastier.

So my goal then. My goal is to get fit, basically. It's to lose precisely 17lb in weight and run 10K by August 14 2014. This date dropped into my inbox last night, in the form of an email containing an open invitation to a local 10K fun(!) run round a nearby park. Perfect location, perfect timing and perfect price (£12). If that wasn't a sign from a higher power then, well, it was an email from a friend who likes running and just sent it to everyone.

Either way, damn. I'm going to have to do this then.

For context, I've never run more than 2K before. That's my current limit. Pathetic, I know. This is why I am going to do something about it.

This blog is going to be my other buddy. It's going to help me make me get fit. That's the idea.

I have not yet figured out whether (fairly) drastic weight loss and a large increase in fitness are compatible.  I don't know if there is any chance of me completing this or if so whether 3 months is a sensible timescale. I don't know but I don't care at the moment. Because someone told me anything is possible and I believe them.


*I'm kidding about Dan Brown, obviously.