Last weekend I was 232 pounds, or, for those who prefer to measure
humiliation in metric, 104.5 kilos . That is one egregious lard
mountain. Checking my running stats later, I found that this was
heavier than any time in the last 5 years. The fattest I’ve been since
records began, you could say.
Wow. I was so shocked, I nearly got out of my armchair. Mercifully, I
managed to settle back before I found myself doing something
irrational, like cancelling my visit to the pub.
History shows that a day or two later I did indeed shift my prodigious
arse and go a’plodding, but so far it’s had little impact on my
impressive bulk. My weighing scales seem to have fallen foul of the 229
bug. On Monday I was 230 pounds. Tuesday 229. Wednesday 229. Thursday
229. Friday 229.
What’s going on? I’ve had a week of healthy eating, three decent runs,
and twice-daily walks. No alcohol or ghastly sweet stuff. I’ve been a
paragon of nutritional rectitude and incorruptibility, but those scales
just aren’t playing ball.
The most I’ve ever known myself to weigh was 243 pounds, or 17.5 stone.
That was Christmas 2000, and I was so horrified that I went out a few
days later and bought an exercise bike. It didn’t get me anywhere.
OK, so it did really. I started to shed weight quite quickly but a
couple of months later, I reached a plateau, and it was then that I
toyed with the idea of ‘jogging’. And you know what happened next. Yep,
not a lot. I spent the next 8 months trying to run 3 miles without
stopping, finally succeeding in November 2001, just days before hearing
that I’d got a place in the London Marathon the following April.
Laugh or cry?
2002, the year of two marathons, had my weight going up and down like
the proverbial tart’s knickers. Just before Chicago in October, I
finally dipped below 200 pounds. But I found that while I could lose it
pretty quickly, I could put it on even faster. And I’ve been at war
with myself ever since.
For most of my adult life I hovered around the 180/182 pound mark. I
was never thin, but in retrospect, I was always a reasonable weight.
And then? And then I stopped smoking, and shot up about 3 stone without
really noticing. I’d moved house around that time, and presumed that
the Huddersfield microclimate had made all my clothes shrink. When I
eventually had to replace my jeans, instead of being a 32 inch waist,
I’d somehow become 38. It was only then that the terrible truth hit
home……
Just recently, I’ve wondered whether I could get down to that sort of
mark again. 182 pounds. It would be tough. Losing weight seems to get
harder as you age, and 50 pounds is a LOT to lose. But I’ll have a go.
And I’m mentioning it here for the same reason that I started
RunningCommentary in the first place. I reasoned that the more public I
made my intention to run London, the harder it would be to climb down.
So there we are. My target for the Two Oceans Marathon in April 2007 is
182 pounds. It means shedding just over 2 pounds a week between now and
the start of April. This is actually quite do-able if you know about
weight loss. It’s the amount that’s regarded as “sensible” by most
nutritionists — not that I have ever aspired to good sense.
If I could get anywhere near that mark, my chances of getting round the
TOM would be hugely increased. Right now, the thought of doing the race
is plain hilarious.
I was out this morning at 7 o’clock, as the temperature dropped below
zero for the first time. My sprouts were frozen.
I noticed this as I crunched past past my vegetable bed at the end of
the garden. It’s important news. I keep reading that brussels are at
their best once the first frost has got to them. I’ll test the theory
this weekend. It could be an explosive experiment.
But what a morning. What a
morning to be a runner. While the rest of the world looked glum and
frightened, I bet that runners across the nation were as spellbound as
I was. For us, it was Christmas come early. We defeat the cold not by
wearing more clothes but by wearing fewer. We show defiance. We
celebrate it. We don’t stay away from it; we plunge into its heart.
I heard yesterday that half a million Brits had emigrated last year.
The radio phone-ins were throbbing with whingers. How awful Britain has
become. How they envied people who could pack their bags and leave for
Spain or Australia. How they hated this country.
I thought about this as I trotted along the frosty footpath into the
trees, marvelling at my very own New World. Being a runner allows you
to emigrate any time you want to, safe in the knowledge that you’ll be
back home within the hour. I thought about those wretched people who
never discover this. I know that many of those who complain about their
lives have never truly lived them. And I’d say with certainly, they’ve
never scampered through a frozen English wood in early November, in
that first golden hour after sunrise.
