Happy New Year

Christ on a bike I can't believe it's 2014 already.

I know we say this every year, but doesn't it just feel like time goes by more quickly with the passing of each year. It feels like just a couple of weeks ago that I was eating cous cous and chicken every day, trudging through the snow on training runs around Banbury and elsewhere, a whole year ago.

But what's worse is that I can now say, I'm 40 next year. Horrific. At the same time, I'm getting married next year, which is a whole lot more appealing of course.

Suddenly two big milestones looming on the horizon and a whole other year to get through in the meantime.

I've spectacularly failed to stick to any kind of fitness regime throughout December, and perhaps it was naive for me to think I would be able to. My party season has featured several excessive drinking sessions, leading to a number of tumbles and a couple of quite bruised limbs.

So it is slightly injured and not in the finest of fettle that I peak warily at new year's day, following a rather wonderful evening last night with some of our best friends, and a big pot of beef bourguignon.

But on the upside, I am about a stone lighter than I was at this point last year, which means by 2020 at this rate I should get to where I want to be. Although of course I can’t wait that long for things to happen.

2014 is going to be a year of change, in quite a significant way I hope, and in order to put that in motion I have now signed up for my first challenge which is to run the Edinburgh Half Marathon, on May 25.

Having applied and failed to turn up for the full marathon before in the city, I’m setting my sights at a more realistic level and feel confident I can make it this time and make the fundraising count for something this year.

Happy new year to all and here’s hoping all our dreams come true this year.

Did They Know It Was Christmas? What has happened since Band Aid?

In 2014 it will be 30 years since those iconic news reports from Micheal Buerk were relayed into our homes from a famine-struck Ethiopia, which inspired Bob Geldof and others to release Do They Know It’s Christmas, and later led to Live Aid.

I’m thinking of this of course because it’s currently playing on a radio somewhere and it made me think about that time, and what has changed since.

For a start I can’t believe it’s 30 years ago, but for me it is so imbued with everything I remember about Christmas as a kid. I was nine years old when it came out, and my sister bought me the seven inch single, which still resides up in the loft somewhere.

I think that age between eight and ten is the zenith in the arc of Christmas meaning. It is the time when you are most aware of what seems like the endless consumerist possibilities that Christmas holds, while still being young enough to believe in the magic of it. That Christmas I believe I also got the 1984/85 season Southampton replica kit, which I wore 24/7, including shin pads, until going back to school.

I think the other thing Band Aid did, apart from raise lots of money for chariddee, was open our eyes to the world, and heralded a new age of global awareness. I admit I was only a kid at the time, but all I knew about Africa was what Mrs Reed taught us in primary school, which was a faintly rose-tinted colonial view of the continent, which featured drawing colourful pictures of abundant jungles, lions and funny looking tribes that bore little relation to reality. Nothing like the images of vast swathes of arid and unforgiving desert, offering no shelter to the millions of starving men women and children suffering in the heat, too weak even to bat the flies away from their faces.

On a subconscious level, as I was only nine, I’m sure it had a profound effect on me that led to becoming a journalist myself years later. Although there wasn’t much opportunity to shine a light on that kind of Biblical suffering while faithfully taking notes at Wincanton town council meetings.

The whole thing around Band Aid and Live Aid that followed is that for about six months everybody was acutely aware of what was happening in Africa, in the very place where humanity took its first steps where the very future of its people was in jeopardy, and doubtless for that time many lives were saved.

But in the 30 years since then human tragedies on an equal and at times far larger scale (Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe etc) are ongoing yet nobody’s hiring out Wembley stadium and trying to effect the kind of change we saw in 1984/5. Okay, there was Live8, but, it’s almost as if since our eyes have been open wide to dire state of some parts of the world, they’ve actually glazed over because there really is only so much we as individuals can do.

And so it’s up to our great elected leaders to sort things out, rather than impassioned rock stars, and that’s a bit of a worry. Although, I have to say, while I’m no fan generally of what this current coalition stands for, fair play to Cameron for continuing to put money into overseas aid. After all, you could argue, had we not roamed half the world looking for countries to conquer and squeeze dry of all resources, places like Africa might not be in quite so much trouble now. I think we probably owe them a fair bit, especially at this time of year.

Now, there's a cheery message for Christmas!

Week 1 and five pounds down

Okay fat fans, the scores on the doors after one week are looking pretty good as I weighed in on Friday morning five pounds lighter than a week ago.

However, as a veteran around this particular block I’m well aware that the first week on this journey is often the easiest, and the mere fact of cutting calories and going to the gym a couple of times has a huge impact, when starting from a very low base point of activity. Next week is unlikely to be quite so dramatic I suspect, particularly after this weekend’s Jamie Oliver-inspired massive pie:

Steak, Guinness and cheese pie, from Jamie at Home 

And this is the biggest part of the challenge I think; living like an abstemious monk from Monday to Friday, and then falling into a vat of pie, red wine and indulgence at the weekend. So the five pounds that was shed so diligently is then layered back on by Monday morning. Now, that would be fine if I was oscillating between ten and ten and a half stone, dancing around the room in my skinny-arsed 26” waist jeans. But at this stage I just need to keep the good habits up seven days a week in order to make progress, otherwise all that will happen is that I keep going back to the start like a needle jumping on a scratched record. And nobody wants to sound like a broken record do they? (For anybody reading this who doesn’t understand that reference, this is a record.)

That makes me think that maybe the start of December, the run-in to the biggest overindulgence of the year, is not the best time to start trying to lose weight and get, but it shouldn’t take the brains of a trussed up turkey to realise this. In fact in some ways I think it is the best time, because I can at least get used to the idea before the cold harsh reality of January hits home, and the harrowing bleakness of a English mid-winter sets in.

What is interesting is looking at the stats of my progress through the magic of the interweb and the app My Fitness Pal, which helps me stay in control of calorie consumption. It not only tells me how many calories I’m taking in, but how many I burn during exercise, and what levels of carbs, fat, sodium, sugar etc that’s going into my system. Following my faithful entries this weekend including the pie, it looks like I’ve almost doubled the entire week’s calorie allowance

I’ve also been entering my weight on a regular basis and the past 12 months my chart looks not unlike a Manhattan skyline, with all its ups and downs:

The ups and downs of dieting

The stats are good and enables me to see exactly what’s happening and the make-up of my diet, but it’s also confirmation in black and white that the next three weeks are going to be a challenge for the waist line with two work parties, one for the St Paul’s Players and at least two invites to friends before we even make the trip to Amy’s family to tuck into the traditional huge turkey dinner. Frankly January comes as something of a relief, although I’m looking forward to all of those things of course. It is, after all, the season to be jolly. Cheers, I’m off for a run.

Getting Fit For 40 - Day 3

So far so good - three days in and I've already lost three pounds!
Whoop! Smashing it, #easy.

Getting Fit For 40

So, it was with a slight shudder that I realised I’m going to turn 40 in less than 18 months. And I don’t mean that I feel my life is over and ‘what the hell happened to my youth’ and all that whiney crap, (although, seriously, what the hell happened to my youth?).

In fact with each passing decade I’ve felt more and more comfortable in my skin and glad I’m getting further away from the embarrassingly nieve, self-centred and arrogant angry young man that stomped around this beautiful city (Bristol) with my pen and reporter’s notebook in hand, brandishing it with all the righteousness of a broadsword wielding Crusader during the sack of Jerusalem. I'm looking forward to my forties, there's a lot that should be happening which will be amazing, and after all, it is the new 30 in any case.

My point is, the skin. While I’m more comfortable in it, there seems to be more of it than there ever has been, all stretched and man-booby, in a way that is not attractive, which goes without saying, but also in a way that is just not healthy or indeed sustainable.

On March 10, 2015, I’ll hopefully be marking my fortieth birthday in some debauched, drunken and possibly depraved manner, as is the tradition, in order to usher in a new and exciting point in my life. Later that same year I will, (wedding Gods willing) also be getting married to the most wonderful, beautiful, warm hearted, intelligent, forgiving and patient woman I’ve ever met, and I know how lucky that makes me. She also laughs at most of my jokes, which surely makes her a keeper.

So I want to hit my fifth decade running, both figuratively and in an actual sense, by being fitter and healthier and giving myself the best chance of appearing like the good looking bastard I always hoped I would be in my wedding photos. Okay, I know, we’re not working miracles here...

But this isn’t just some vanity project. Although who doesn’t want to look their best on their wedding day? This is about understanding how to achieve that thing that seems to be so elusive to me, which is about having a healthy balanced diet, getting regular exercise and not having to worry about whether or not I’ll reach 40.

Why am I doing this?

Last year my dad gave us all a scare by having a heart attack in the middle of the night, thankfully all was well and the good people at TauntonMusgrove Park Hospital did a great job in keeping him alive. However lately it’s been making me think, and specifically it’s been making me think about the time in my very early 20s when I was living a fairly typically excessive student lifestyle, burning the candle at both ends if you like, and melting it in the middle probably. My doctor told me that if I kept living my life like that for the next ten years, I probably wouldn’t make it to 40, due in part to my heart condition which I didn’t really take very seriously at 20, being that at 20, I felt pretty much invincible.

Of course I grew up and out of all that but as the big ‘Four Oh’ now approaches I can’t help but think that my health needs again to be my top priority, because despite my on-off relationship with fitness and running, including the year-long full-on sordid affair with the London Marathon back in 2009/2010, it turns out I’m not in fact invincible. It also turns out that running one marathon doesn’t mean you can then eat crap for the next three years and expect the well-toned snake hips not to turn into a big fat whale’s arse - (I never had snake hips of course, I was just reaching for some easy animal analogy).

Okay, where is this going, why should I care? Two good questions.

What I’m doing here now is trying to focus everything on getting fit for 40, not because it makes an easy alliterative blog title, although that helps, but because it’s a crucial age, a crucial year in my life and the fact is it’s going to take more than a year to turn this bloated tanker around.

Here are the stats as of November 25, 2013:

Age: 38

Weight: 17st 6lbs

Height: 5ft 6ins

Waist: 38ins

Chest: 48ins

Collar: 18ins

BMI: 38.21

Life expectancy: 73 

There are some bad numbers there, and there are some really bad numbers. It’s not pretty, and nor are all the attending health issues that go with it.

So, I’m starting a journey, today, to change those numbers and my life, although I admit there’s not much I can do about my height unfortunately. And without sounding too much like a hopeless X Factor contestant, I’ve decided to share this journey because I want to know how to achieve a normal, healthy state of being, without having to go on a cabbage soup diet, or run ten miles everyday, or any other extreme measures which are not only unsustainable but utterly miserable.

I enjoy my food, that much is clear, but I mean I enjoy good food and wine...and beer. I don’t want to give up the simple pleasures of life for a Spartan existence that may well see me return to a 28 inch waist and look ten years younger, but at what cost? We live in a society where we all work long hours and during the week me and the missus-to-be see little of each other beyond getting some kind of dinner on the table, watching a bit of Corrie on catch up and falling asleep in front of the news. So I don’t want to give up those times at the weekend when we can enjoy a good meal and maybe two or three bottles of wine. Or even maybe four...

It’s also clear that there are a lot of people, especially men, who probably feel the same and I want to hear from them and build a community of shared experience. Men are still woefully ignored by the diet industry, in my opinion, and only have fitness mags that seem to be written for and by elastic-waisted twentysomethings. Instead of titles like Mens Health, we need things like Fat and Balding Bloke’s Health, with features on how to enjoy a few pints of Doom Bar at the weekend without having to pay for it during the rest of the week and easy recipes for food that tastes real without worrying about calories. Shed building, Ford Focus maintainence, how to let out your Levis around the waist, etc. Please save us from diets, but instead work out a good balanced lifestyle.

The challenge ahead

I’ve just been looking up my ideal healthy weight for a man of my height, and according to the NHS Choices website, a healthy weight is between nine and 11 stone. I don’t think I’d have the muscle strength necessary to get out of bed at nine stone. So I’m going to aim for ten stone, which give or take a few lamb baltis is about eight stone from where I am now, which seems like a lot. And it is.

I think I can do it, in time for turning 40, but what’s really important is what happens after that. Professional sportsmen (with whom I have little in common it’s true) will say that winning world championship, the Premier league, Wimbledon etc is one thing, but retaining the title year after year is a much bigger challenge. And that is the true nature of this challenge before me. It’s not to lose eight stone and run another marathon, but to lose weight and to keep it lost on a permanent basis as that is the title that eludes me.

A bit less of this....

...and a bit more of this.

Having said I don’t want to rely on a diet of cabbage soup and run ten miles a day, I know that over the next couple of years I need to take action to get fit and that is going to mean a lot of running, walking and cycling, and abstaining from all that wonderful stuff that I’ve paid such a heavy price for. Time to get off my arse!

And of course no challenge would be complete without trying to raise money for relevant charities and for me that is the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

I have set myself a goal of raising £2,000 for these two vital charities over the next two years, by taking on a number of different physical challenges in order to lose about eight stone in weight and to Get Fit For 40.

Obesity, and all its attending health problems, is a major cause of heart disease and cancer, and as I underwent a heart valve replacement in 2007, and have known too many people lose their lives to cancer, it feels right that anything I can do to help should benefit these two leading charities.

With the scale of the challenge ahead of me I feel two years is about right and in that time I plan to complete the following:

2014:

May - Edinburgh Half Marathon

June/July - Three Peaks Challenge

August - Action 100 Bristol to London Bike Ride

September - Bristol Half Marathon

2015:

March - Bath Half Marathon

June/July - Ridgeway route walk 87 miles

August - Action 100 Bristol to London Bike Ride

September - Bristol Half Marathon

That is the plan right now, but that may change with things like life and weddings having their impact and I will keep this updated if there are changes. I’ve not put in for any planned activity for 2013, as there’s so little time left so I’m just going to focus on getting down the gym and avoiding too many Christmas sweets. Although a Christmas Cracker 10K may not be too far out of reach.

I know very well the pressures on all of us financially, but if you can give anything to this cause I would be hugely grateful, and of course every penny goes straight to the charities, so even if you think I’m a complete arse, your hard-earned will be going where it should. 

Also if you got to the end of this blog post, then especially well done to you!

To find out how to donate, go to my VIRGIN MONEY GIVING PAGE.

Right then, I’m off for a brisk stroll to stock up on celery and diet pills!

Too much noise

Today I sat at my desk and thought, quite seriously that my head might explode.

It was like I could feel the pressure building up inside my skull, like an over-pumped balloon, with no means of letting it out, other than perhaps to run around the room screaming my head off like some kind of crazy bastard.

I was going to say it's hard to explain, but if that was the case I might as well stop writing as the whole intention of the post is to go some way to explaining it. People say things they don't mean a lot, at least I do, I think.

What I really meant was, it sounds kind of melodramatic, but that's really not the intention, it's more observational than 'woe is me' kind of stuff.

Just lately it feels like all the noise of the world is building to an unbearable pitch at a decibel level beyond anything a fleet of jet engines could get close to, and it's all building inside my head and feels like it's about to go bang!

Everyday I walk into my office and into a maelstrom of white noise and media cacophony, and I don't mean necessarily the people in the office, but the activity we generate inside, like one of those cartoons when Bugs Bunny opens the door on a room where the noise bursts out and then slams it shut again for silence.

It's similar to what I imagine it is like being inside the Hadron Collider when millions of electrons and particles are racing round at screaming speeds, only the noise is generated by a million pointless news stories racing round the internet and broadcast news and eventually landing wet with ink on the inside of a dozen newspapers.

We live in a world where the slightest indiscretion, off the record comment, misunderstanding or harmless and insignificant observation dropped into the mediaverse in the small hours of the morning, begins to spread and build and grow and expand, stretch and distort beyond anything resembling reason by lunchtime. By drivetime it's the topic of the day, by six it's headline top story, ten it's a full blown scandal and then it's someone's job to prove how the country is going to implode under the weight of the crisis by the weekend.

And all the time, the same tiny kernel of truth is passed around so many times, embellished, interpreted, analysed and laundered through the media machine so that there is really nothing left.

Whether it's the front page claiming killer spiders are invading the UK, based on the word of somebody who thought it might be true, or the endless ‘gates’ from Pleb to Sachs, and every one gets further and further from the original Watergate and lessens in impact and public interest as a result.

Sally Bercow having a drink, Roy Hodgson’s team talk, the Kardashians giving birth, wearing bikinis, having new hair, old hair, Beyonce’s lack of hair, hairgate, Kanyegate, Simon Cowell’s girlfriend wondering how many millions it will take to bring up their baby, while, I’m afraid to say, two thirds of the world live and die on a dollar a day, millions of kids still growing up with Aids in Africa, the Middle East imploding in a war that stretches back a thousand years and men and women who do not look like they’ve walked out of a salon, wondering just how the hell to find the merest scrap of motivation to carry on with the daily fight for existence.

And yet, and yet, and yet, the noise inside my head isn’t, as Obi Wan memorably said the sound of a million voices suddenly crying out in terror, but the utterly ridiculous banality of hearing about Harry Style’s new tattoo, somebody from a girl band eating some food in a place which sells food, with somebody she knows and somebody from TOWIE or Made In Chelsea, as far from the realms of talent, intellect and credibility as it is possible to get without actually going back to the big bang, who has apparently taken her inspiration for her hair style from Marge Simpson. #margegate presumably.
But I'm sure I'll get over it and the pressure in my head will recede once I find my Halloween-themed onesie to wear to the office next week. A maze.

A perfect 10 for a Bank Holiday weekend in Bristol

Easily the best Bank Holiday I can remember for a long time, not only because of all the amazing sunshine which transformed the whole country, but for all the wonderful things Bristol offers.
The weekend kicked off nicely with a boozy Friday night at the newly-refurbished Anchor Pub, which is now part of the Mezze chain. Unfortunately we arrived just too late to make good on the promise of free flowing champagne, (and for some reason the two girls in impossible heels seemed to get served ahead of me) but nevertheless enjoyed getting used to the new-look pub and the several pints of Gem while chatting to an ageing hipppy call Cosmic Sam. I’m not even joking. His name was really Cosmic, something or other.
What was once a neglected relic with carpets and decor from 1973 has in the a matter of weeks been transformed into a modern, contemporary, Mediterranean-influenced gastro type pub, that I’ve been waiting to arrive since I moved here two years ago.
Saturday was full of chores and carbloading for Sunday, when Amy and I took on the Bristol 10K. We’ve both been looking forward to it, and after my decision to pull out of the Edinburgh Marathon, I could really enjoy the occasion and revel in the atmosphere. Amy did  a great job of setting the pace and we finished in a steady 1hr 20mins.

Approaching the finish at the Bristol 10K

It was quite a contrast to the last time we took part, about four or five years ago, when it was a much smaller field of runners and we were much less prepared and in the end was barely able to keep up with a woman dressed as a sugar plumb fairy, with the figure to match, and a few power walkers. I think they were even starting to pick up the cones and reopen the roads as we plodded along. But this year we smashed our previous time by almost 20 minutes, and had a great time being part of this amazing spectacle.
After finishing the run we hit the Burger Joint on Whiteladies Road for a well-deserved pint and mahoosive gourmet burger, which I’d been thinking about most of the way round.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a weird blur as I kept falling asleep on the sofa, in the bath and found myself almost in bed at about 6pm. It was all we could do to muster and get back round the pub for a few more pints in celebration of our achievements.
So today, with the sun shining, my little Schwin Fastback push bike was looking like a very tempting prospect, as news of Team Sky in Italy’s Giro came on the radio. Having just had the bike overhauled at Mike’s Bikes in Portishead, (which is definitely worth a plug as they did such a great job) I decided it was time to road test it properly.
Being lucky enough to live on the cycle network I headed towards Bristol on the Avon River Trail, went through the city and out to Bath, then back again, clocking up about 45 miles in the process.

Of course, everybody else in the world had the same idea and it was very busy, which is great of course as it gives people a chance to get out and enjoy the countryside, like I was. I just wish I could have had it all to myself. I’m waiting for the sunburn to kick in now as it was really properly hot on the road. Despite taking two drinking bottles I had to stop at an ice cream van on the harbourside in Bristol for what turned out to be the best can of Coke and Magnum ice cream I’ve ever had. Much needed at that point.

The view of Bristol's floating harbour and the Balmoral this evening

I also discovered why they have signs on the road there warning cyclists not to ride along the dockside at the floating harbour because of the danger of getting wheels caught in the old tram lines. I discovered this after getting my wheel caught in one of the old tram lines and falling haplessly off my bike, right in front of one of those signs. Must have made someone’s day.
So now back to work, at least it’s only three weeks until the next bank holiday, which I’m sure will be as sunny and amazing. This is England in the springtime after all.