A First in Five Years!

Today was a first for me in over five years, although in reality it was probably achieved a few days ago without me realising, such is the nature of the circumstance.

I knew I was getting close over the last week or two, solid progress towards the target evident with each passing day. Even the arrival of my shiny new Garmin, with all its fancy applications such as built in heart rate monitor, stairs counting, steps counting etc, couldn't stop the end result.

Yes, for the first time in over 5 years, I weigh more than 11 stones. 11 stone 1 pound to be exact.
An unrestricted diet of pretty much whatever I wanted got me to this point, coupled with a serious lack of training. Cake, any kind, but especially Christmas cake, chocolate, but particularly peanut M&M's and quality street, and biscuits, much mince pies and a fair few takeaways of mainly fried chicken, chips and Chinese resulted in every tightening jeans. And I enjoyed every single calorie!

The intention was to resume normal service yesterday, but wouldn't you know, I have caught an illness. A serious headache, coupled with a sore throat, and a slight temperature meant I decided that it would be unwise to further stress an already under pressure immune system. The fancy new watch showed a resting heart rate average of less than 40 go to over 50 in two days, coinciding with the onset of the adverse feelings. Not sure how that might play out in the future but it will be interesting to observe the correlation, if any.

So the new regime will begin tomorrow, refreshed and polar bear like in my new layer of natural thermal insulation, ready for winter training , although the days now are getting longer, and as we Irish like to say 'sure there's a grand stretch in the evening'. I know that I have lost a serious amount of fitness since Dublin, but in a way that motivates me afresh. Progress will be observable quite quickly, rather than if I had retained a similar level, and made little improvement, and I am hoping that it won't take too long.

Half marathon target in March, 10 mile target in April, Berlin training begins mid May. I don't expect to be over 11 stone for very long. It's quite amusing actually. Observing the weight on my body, I see it as 'something' rather than me. I know I am underneath it, I just need to shed it again. But I sure did enjoy putting it there!