Thursday 24 November 2011

...and under 15 again.

It's all going rather well. The new exercise regime is interesting - I am both stronger in my gait and faster as a result of running fewer miles, quicker. And yesterday, I ran up one of the biggest hills in the area, and down the other side, without any real problems.

Lots of people have been saying "Crikey*, you've lost a lot of weight", but I haven't really. I've firmed up in some places, and I have lost some fat, but I always think of weight as numbers, and the numbers are largely consistent.

Except, I made a game-changing alteration - I pretty much stopped drinking. In three weeks, I have been drunk precisely three times, and each time I have A) not enjoyed it and B) woken up thinking 'what a waste - I woke up feeling so good every other day this week and now I feel like this!'. I'm retraining myself to not enjoy it at all, and I must say, it's working!

When I don't drink, I am often up at 5:30am for a 6am run, back home, stretch, wash up, make sandwiches for The Child, wake Wifelet up with a cup of tea, then walk the hounds. After a drink, I still walk the dogs but that's about it!

Anyway, I feel like weight is actually moving now that my exercise has changed, and my consumption habits. I've enjoyed sobriety more than I thought I would, but the urge to misbehave remains, and I hope it always will.

I weighted myself at my parents' house last night, and the scales revealed I weighed 15st 2lbs, or just a shade under. Fully clothed, and after a solid day's eating and drinking. So I reckon I can reasonably claim four or five pounds for my clothes, which puts me quite comfortably under 15st. And that's worth celebrating with a doughnut.

Just kidding.

But it is.

I haven't been this light since I started running, and weighed myself after massive fluid loss in my first half marathon (somehow still a personal best of 2:08). I feel absolutely fantastic, and I haven't even started the next marathon training cycle yet. Everything looks achievable, even - dare I say it - 13.5st. Or even less.

What's been really strange, and I pointed this out to Wifelet to her surprise yesterday, is that I have lost muscle mass from my legs. They've shrunk. Unless it was cunningly disguised fat, of course.

The worry - and this will sound dumber than dumb - is that women will start finding me attractive. I don;t know why, but that annoys me sometimes. It's hard to explain. Of course, if my wife were to find me utterly irresistible, that is a bonus and a damn fine one. Everyone else can just look.

Wednesday 2 November 2011

....Now I HAVE weighed myself...

...and I'm still 15 stones 2lbs, despite a concerted drinking effort etc since I last weighed myself. Actually, I haven;t been drinking a great deal. Much less frequently, too. Most evenings I am in bed by 9:15, and awake bright and early for a run or a long dog walk, or both. Most days, I cover around 9-10 miles before breakfast; four running, the rest walking hills with the dogs.

Dogs, plural - we are now dogsitting Darcy, a beautiful Wisla cross boy, for the next couple of years. His owners are in Dubai, so we decided amongst us that he would have a much better quality of life here in Shropshire than in sunny Dubai, and he and Millie get on well, so it's win-win.

Anyway, I'm really pleased that my weight is consistent. I also just changed my running routine, so two runs a week are now much faster. So it'll be two easy runs (four miles each), two faster runs (one two miles, one three miles) and one long run (probably just six miles, but adding a mile a week to it) for a total, when I'm ready (I'm building the mileage slowly, it helps to avoid injury!) of 19 miles a week as a base to build on. By the time London comes around next April, I will be running 40-50 miles a week.

I shall look like a racing snake.

In other news, I have stomach muscles. You can't see them yet, but you can feel them. A nice by-product of the exercises I do to keep my arse strong.

Oh, and I'm now getting paid to write about running, so there's absolutely no excuse not to immerse myself in it now... Racing Snakesville, here I come.