Chapter 15 - In Which the Lard-Ass Writes Again

So, I haven't written anything now since January. I'd like to say that this is down to me being busy becoming some sort of chiselled Adonis, but that would be a lie and I have no interest in having my pants catch fire. I haven't been completely inactive, and in fact for the first time in my adult life have taken part in organised events which resulted in medals being awarded to me. Unlike in the previous blogs, my focus for getting into shape shifted from running to cycling, which is frankly a lot easier. I still like the idea of taking up running and it's not something I've given up on but at the same time, it's also not something I've actually done any of. In all honesty, in the last two months I've not actually done anything. Readers of previous entries should be unsurprised by this statement. I think I laid out my lazy credentials early.

'So what did you do this year?', you are no doubt asking. Well let me show you...

First up in June was the Rob Roy Challenge. This is a splendid jaunt through the Scottish countryside combining both walking (or running if you're one of those fit people) and cycling for a combined 55 miles across the full course (gold level) from Drymen to Kenmore. The eagle eyed will spot that my medal is in fact not gold, but silver. Silver is awarded for completing the 16 miles on foot first section and the first 22 mile segment of cycling for a total of 38 miles of self powered torture adventure. Have a look at the link for more details. It's very well organised and run for charity, plus 2015 is the 10th anniversary so have a look if it seems like something you fancy a crack at.

Next up, is the Pedal for Scotland event, another brilliantly organised jaunt through the countryside. This time there's no walking or running or any of that malarkey, just a straight up cycle. The clue's in the name really. This consists of getting into Glasgow at an ungodly hour with a bicycle, then setting off with a steely determination towards Edinburgh, for what turned out to be an absolutely brilliant day, and something which while technically is categorised as exercise, was very enjoyable. Details of  my efforts can be found here on Strava. Again, can't recommend having a go at this enough to folk.

Linlithgow during Pedal for Scotland

Couple of observations from both these events. Firstly, after both of these I felt fine in a muscular sense. Sure, I was tired, but at no point was I particularly sore. On the Rob Roy, I stopped at silver not due to any issue with muscles but due to feeling wiped. I had absolutely no energy. Looking back on it a couple of days afterwards I was sure this was down basically to not eating properly on the day. No food = no fuel = no energy. This was not something I wanted to repeat on the Pedal for Scotland so I devised a cunning plan... I decided to give energy gels a go. Wiggle (cracking online shop, they give you Haribo) had High 5 race packs on sale prior to the event, so I bought a couple of these to try. On the day I carried a few of the gels and the wee tablets to stick into my water and these combined with a packet of sandwiches at Linlithgow carried me through marvellously. Later that night though, there was a couple of hours where I could not stop shivering and ran a fever and wonder if this was down to massive amounts of caffeine in my system.

Anyway, this is the point at which this peters out with no stunning conclusion or moment of lucid clarity which draws everything above together into a surprising and uplifting finale. Here's a song to distract you so that I can leg it while you look the other way. If you like electronic/industrial/good music in general then you need to check out WVM. You can hear the influences in the music while it's still it's own thing. Highly recommend his stuff, although the last EP may be hard to find now. Check him out here

Chapter 14 - In which our hero finally gets back off his arse

Time flies and such like, eh? Once again after that post about intentions and looking to get back to doing something by way of exercise I stop, take a look around, and realise months have gone by. I'm really not good at this whole self motivation/doing stuff thing. Better late than never though apparently.

So then, as it says in the title, our hero (me, obviously) has finally gotten off his arse and started the Couch to 5K again. It began this morning, with my alarm clock set for an early rise to get up and at it. I then proceeded to sleep through said alarm, and so it's off to a good start as usual. When I did get up, it was no time to be going for a run. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like it would be an actual bad time to do it, but Goals On Sunday was about to start and I had missed Match of the Day, so what could I do? After this, it was almost lunchtime and I had a bunch of housework to do so the run was put off to later in the evening. At this point, old Ally would have put it off to another day, but not this time. Not today. This is all new(ish) Ally. Half five came around and it was time. Podcast was already loaded on my ipod, thermal running tee on, shorts on, shoes on, out the door.

Fuck me, it's cold.

Two minutes out from the house and it started snowing, but that's cool. I'm invincible and possessed of a steely determination. Honest. Well, maybe not, but I was feeling OK so kept going. If you've done the C2-5K before you know how it goes: walk a bit, run a bit, walk a bit, run a bit, etc. You know what, after the first couple of runny bits, I was feeling good. Maybe I wasn't as out of shape as I'd believed.  Ha. That type of judgement is best left to the end, and at that point I realised I was exactly as out of shape as I had suspected. My physical ability, combined with the remnants of a bad cold from over New Year meant that while I maybe wasn't quite breathing out my arse by the end, at the same time it wasn't a cake walk either.

So what did I learn? I learned I'm out of shape - no surprise there really, and the whole point of this is to improve on that, so not exactly something learned. More like something already known reinforced.

Chapter 13 - In which our hero has a quick look at his weight

Back in February, I stepped onto The Scales. I weighed in at 15 stone 4 pounds. Now then, according to the healthy weight chart over at the NHS Live Well site (here), for a man who stands around 5' 10", I'm obese at that weight. In the lighter end of the obese range, but obese never the less.
I weighed myself again yesterday (28/10/13), and came in at 15 stone 5 pounds, a net gain of a pound. Ordinarily, this isn't something to be happy about, but in this case I am and here's why. In my last blog post I may have mentioned how I had basically sat on my arse for the last few months, all exercise cast aside. What I didn't mention, was that last month I weighed myself also. I was 15 stone 10 pounds. So, while since February I have gained a pound overall, in the last month I have lost 5 pounds, and am beginning to head back in the right direction. Next on the agenda is to get back under 15 stone.

According to that chart in the link above, a healthy weight for someone my height should be somewhere between 9 and a bit to 12 and a half stone. I assume this is based on healthy people who have never discovered the joyous feeling of eating bacon. Poor bastards.

Anyway, that's enough discussion regarding weight and I have no intention of bringing it up again for some time.

Final thought on the matter: for anyone who wants to know how I managed to lose 5 pounds in little under a month, I simply ate less crappy food and snacks, while maintaining my daily poo amounts. Science!

Chapter 12 - In Which We Realise Just How Long It Has Been

So then, The last post I made on this blog was back in April and frankly, that tells you everything you need to know about my willpower and ability to motivate myself. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, they used mine to tarmac over it and upgrade it to a highway.
I start things. I always start things. I'm good at that. What I'm not so good at, is then seeing those things through to completion. When I started this blog I had also started to exercise more. Both of those activities have lapsed in the intervening time between the last entry and this, always with the intention of "picking it back up tomorrow". That's the thing with tomorrow though: it's never today.

This was all brought into sharp focus the other day, when the postman delivered my bundle of shame. My entry pack for a 10K run I had entered all those months back when I started out. When there was more than enough time to get a reasonable level of fitness. Now, with less than a couple of weeks to the start of that race, I look at it and know there is no way I will be at the starting line, let alone the finish line. I haven't ran in months, nor taken any other form of exercise. I look at the pack and realise again what I've known all along: when you don't hold yourself to a high standard, you can't let yourself down. I've come to accept giving in as a fundamental part of me.

I'd like to change that.

So, I'm going to try again. Whether I keep going this time, I don't know. I wont know until one of two things has happened. Either I'll realise that I've stopped again, or maybe I'll realise I'm still going. I don't know which, though if I'm honest, the strong money is on the former of the two. That's how the form guide lists me and to deny it is to lie. Still, you never know how things will turn out until they happen.

Chapter 11 - In which I return to the C25K with a vengeance

OK, so probably not quite with a vengeance, but I have returned to it. If you look at the time gap between this post and the last, you should be able to work out I've not really done too much in the intervening time. I could blame work commitments (my shifts were a pain in the arse), etc, but in reality blaming it on self indulgant lazyness is closer to the mark.

I only managed to go along to the gym once last week. I did feel suitably guilty about this though, if that makes you feel any better. This week I've went back and decided just to stick to the C25K that I was doing before I joined the gym. Once I'm more comfortable with this running malarky I'll work the gym routine they gave me in around this (the more astute readers may notice I change my exercise plans more often than Kerry Katona (sp?) changes addictions). Since I've not gone entirely without some for of exercise, I decided to jump back in at the same point I left off - week 3. Loaded up the podcast, started up the treadmill, and away I went. You know what? Wasn't as difficult as I expected. That was Monday night. Went back on Wednesday night for week 3, run 2. A little bit harder, but again, not as tough as expected. I may be getting the hang of this. We'll see tomorrow morning when I head along again for week 3 run 3.

I guess what that shows is that although you may not notice the change at first, it starts to creep up on you, and you get a little bit fitter each time without realising it. Happy days. Looking back at the first blog post where I described myself as a wheezy mess, I realise that I'm still a wheezy mess, but it takes longer to get that way and I recover a lot quicker. I'm still not in a position where I can comfortably run for extended periods of time, but I can definately see the improvements and that helps to realise that I'll get there in the end.

Marathons and suchlike

More experienced and smarter people will have touched on this in better read and more thought out blogs than mine, but in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon, and unfolding drama that followed, I sometimes wish that Rufus had been right. It's times like this that the world could do with Wyld Stallyns bringing peace and uniting us all under the banner of rock music. I'm not trying to make light of the situation by any means, but there's an awful lot of folk on this planet could do with "being excellent to each other".

Chapter 10 - In which I've actually been going to the gym

Gym is an abreviation of the word "gymnasium", which comes to us, like many things, from Greece in days of yore. It means something along the lines of "place to be naked". Now, for those of you of a literal disposition, do NOT take this at face value. Apparently it's entirely unacceptable to stroll around these places au naturale and any attempts to point out that you are merely adhering to the very definition of the name will be regarded with contempt by members of your local constabulary. Now luckily, I am occasionaly blessed with the gift of foresight, and so carried out some brief research into what is expected before I went along, but I thought I'd just provide this quick advice to those of you without the time to check on these matters, or who would just blindly stumble along and find out your social faux pas after the fact. Don't say you haven't been warned.

Onto those visits themselves then. I have now been along to the premises three times so far. The first two visits consisted of brief induction sessions. The first giving an overview of the various cardio type machines, the second giving a lesson in self torture via various machines based around the premise of lifting, pulling or pushing of weights. Each of these sessions lasted half an hour to 45 minutes at a guess, and neither consisted of any form of particularly strenuous work out, so I had a 20 minute go of the treadmills after each.

The third session I was to be provided with a "routine". I arrived to be greeted by one of the instructors who started to lay out a work out plan for me to try and follow.
"Is there anything you don't particularly like?" he asked. 'Ah good', thought I, a reasonable chap who understands I should enjoy my time spent honing my body to physical mediocrity. Blindly did I stroll into the trap.
"I really can't stand the rowing machine" I answered, joy and hope shining in my eyes no doubt.
"Good," came the response, "first thing when you arrive, you're doing five minutes on the rowing machine to warm up. It'll get your mind into gym mode and get rid of all that outside world nonsense." The rest of the program was made up in quick order, a mix of cardio and weighty stuff.
The joy and hope died then. "Now, how many times are you planning to use the gym?" "Two or three times a week" I replied, a bit more wary by now.
"You're going to do this program three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays you don't need to do this. Just come in and spend an hour on one of the cardio machines. You can have Sundays off though,"
I can only assume the man had once wanted to become a PE teacher, as all of this was delivered with the earnest, vindictive glint of the eye common within that profession*.

Now, six days of actual factual exercise per week is a wildly optomistic expection of someone with my levels of current fitness and aptitude for malaise, and realistically it's just not going to happen. You know what though, I'll give it a bash. Now, I  don't man I'm going to be in that gym six days a week. I'll try and get there at least four or five though. Starting from a long period of virtually no exercise I can only guess that day after dayof physical activity, without rest between, could end up causing some damage, but we'll see how I get on.

Anyway, time to stop bothering the world with drivel and go tidy my domicile.

Have fun.



Notes:
 *this evil glint may have been entirely fictionalised after the fact, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had been true

Chapter 9: In which a gym membership is (finally) purchased

So then, the joys of springtime in Scotland for someone starting out on a course of exercise. You get up in the morning, have a look out and realise it has snowed again. I've read several people on forums and blogs elsewhere talking about how refreshing and nice it is to get out and run in fresh snow. These people are fit. These people are the enemy. OK, they're not the enemy, and many of them are very friendly and encouraging, but I bet they're secretly out there, frolicking through the snow, feeling smug.

In the past two weeks, I've managed a total of two runs. I think you could safely call that a setback to my grand plans of gaining fitness. Similar to the last couple of posts, the weather hasn't particularly helped with my efforts (or lack there of), and also, my get up and go, got up and went. I got lazy. Now, granted this week has been spent on holiday (didn't go anywhere for the curious, just didn't go to work) and this entitles me to a certain degree of lazy idleness. I have made full use of this entitlement and definately got my monies worth.

So, we come around to the whole point of the last blog post again, and I quote "I'm joining the gym".

Actually, we can now move that into the past tense. I've joined the gym. I went along this morning and signed up, and I've got my induction on Monday. I could probably have arranged it for sooner, but figured I might as well get all the laziness out of me over the weekend. I think, I'll get the induction period over, then return to the running program. Had a bit of a tour of the facilities today. The equipment all looks like it will do the trick. Not entirely sure what some of it is, but there you go. Cardio equipment upstairs, weights downstairs, free weights in a seperate room.

I'll not be going in there. Ever.

And no, I don't lift.

Anyhoo, since I've gotten into the habit of chucking a song onto the end of this gibberish now, here's the latest one:

Trivia fact of the week:

I spent roughly 15 years where one of my biggest regrets was never seeing the Foo Fighters. Until I realised I had seen them at Donnington in 96. Memory is terrible when you were pished.