My employers very kindly gave us all the opportunity to have a quick, free health check, the highlight of which was watching someone feint after having their finger pricked for a cholesterol test.  I went down for a few minutes away from my desk, and to pick up a goody bag containing a free Company-branded travel mug.

I waited in line for my turn, then sat down for my consultation.

“Height?”

“Six three, six four.”

“Right, six three, then.  Weight?”

“Ooh, about eighteen, maybe eighteen and a half stone.”

“About?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, on the scales.”

“No, really, it’s eighteen and a half.  Probably.”

“On the scales.”

I got on the scales.

“One hundred and twenty kilos.”  Nearly nineteen stone.

“Alright, keep your voice down.”

“Your BMI’s very high.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You could do with losing a bit of weight.”

“Yes, I know.  It’s an ongoing battle.”

“You see, you’re here,” (shows me chart, points at ‘Very Obese’) “and your ideal weight is about fourteen stone.”

“I think those days are long gone.”

“But you could still stand to lose, you know, a bit of weight.”

“A stone or two?”

Lady smiles uncomfortably, “Well, yes, that would be a start.”

In the queue I had regaled my colleagues with the tale of the last time I’d had a health check.  I had my blood pressure taken and (as I recalled) the lady said, “That’s unusual.  Your blood pressure is very low.”  “Is that bad?” I asked.  “Well, no, but we’d normally expect to see low blood pressure in people who are super-fit athletes.”  Awkward pause.  “Would you…  describe yourself as…  super… fit?”  Me, deadpan: “No.”

That was two years ago and, despite being overweight I’d always told myself at least I didn’t have high blood pressure.  So, I sat down to have my blood pressure measured again, and I told the lady the story, attempting to break the awkwardness still lingering after she’d told me I’m five stone overweight.  

“That doesn’t sound right,” she said, dismissively.  “Your pulse is low though.” 

“Oh, maybe it was my pulse then.”

“Yes, that’s more likely.  Your pulse is quite low, but your diastolic blood pressure is high.”

“What?”

“Your diastolic blood pressure.  The bottom number.  It should be between sixty and ninety.  You’re 140 over 102.  I suggest you go and see your GP.  You need to lose some weight.”

“Yes I know.”

“Would you describe yourself as active?”

Unconvincingly, “Well, yes.”

“Do you do exercise that leaves you breathless for half an hour, three times a week.”

“Yes, I play cricket on Saturdays.  And, erm, cricket training once or twice a week.”

“And cricket, that’s, well, it’s not exactly continuous exertion is it?”

“It’s a bit stop-start, but…”

“And is that for the whole year?”

“Well, no, obviously, erm…  I walk to Sainsbury’s for lunch most days…”

Looks at sheet with three categories: Active, Walking, Inactive.  “I’ll put you down as a walker.”

“Thanks.”

“Your cholesterol level is fine; you just need to lose a bit of weight.  But do go and see your GP as soon as you can.”

“Right.  Can I have my free travel mug now?”

So, to surmise, I am twenty-nine and a half, five stone overweight and have high blood pressure.

Ladies, form an orderly queue.

He sure is

After some thought I decided it wasn’t a bad idea.  Part of the reason I was so motivated to get out running before Christmas was to train myself for the kilomathon.  Having an end goal is incredibly motivating, as most coaches will tell you.  As I’ve found already, a vague desire to lose weight isn’t as powerful as setting a target which must be achieved by a certain date.  Oh, hang on, that didn’t really work either.  But the point stands.  So I’m told.

So last week whatshername and I went out for a short jog.  It was only 2.5miles, but it was tough.  I wasn’t knackered or anything, but my knee struggled.  It started off feeling very stiff and awkward, eased up for a while, finally becoming genuinely painful in the final mile or so.  For the next few days it felt uncomfortable.  Never painful; just uncomfortable.

Then this week I thought I’d try again (well, technically speaking it was whatshername’s idea.  I didn’t really want to but thought it seemed like a good idea) and so on Monday night we did the same route.  This time it felt much better.  In fact if anything it felt much stronger.  A couple of days later and it feels fine.  Not great, not good even.  Just fine.

I decided the Robin Hood half marathon seems like a good idea, so naturally I looked on-line for the date.  Sunday September 12^th 2010.  Slight problemo.  That weekend is what we in local cricket parlance call “the double-header weekend” (stop sniggering at the back).  The final two games of the season crammed into 34 hours of sedentary sporting activity, the culmination of nearly five months of standing around in daft white clothing.  League titles could be decided, relegation avoided, or mid-table obscurity secured.  There’s literally all to play for (except the preceding twenty games which will have already been played for and settled).  Literally anything could happen (within certain strict criteria).

Robin Hood, famous of course for running 13 miles around Nottingham at some point

My double-header weekend looks like:

Saturday: Belper Meadows (away)

Sunday: Sawley & Long Eaton Park (home)

Would it be completely ridiculous to squeeze a thirteen-mile run in on Sunday morning?  This is a genuine question.  I have thirty weeks and three days to train myself from ‘obese’ to ‘able to play a cricket match, run a half marathon the following morning, then play another cricket match.’  Is this in any way feasible?

If anyone has run a half marathon before please let me know what you think.  Will I even be able to stand up afterwards?

I have another question too, mainly aimed at anyone with a sports or medical background (and/or experience of sporting injuries): if my knee still doesn’t feel right, should I be trying to exercise and strengthen it, or should I be completely resting it?

"Get up Gaz you're next man in."

A word to the wise: for productivity reasons, never Google any phrase containing the word "boobs" if you want to get anything done, ever.

This was last Wednesday and it did, if nothing else, motivate me to persevere with the weight loss/getting fit thing.  I decided I’d prove him wrong.  And I’m slowly getting there.  Friday’s Boots weigh-in came and went, and if you cast your mind back to this blog post you may recall that I promised I’d get the black progress line back below the white target line.  If you can’t remember then to be honest I think you really need to pay more attention.  But I digress.  And for once I’ve made good on a promise, see:

Some stats for all you stats-freaks:

• since Jan 4^th I have lost 7.5lbs
• this is over half a stone
• I am a still-massive 18st 5lbs
• this is 3lbs lighter than the Friday before
• I did have my haircut in this week in fairness
• I am ahead of my target.
• Completely hypothetically-speaking, is it wrong to find the following picture arousing?

• I’m just asking like.

That I can describe myself as “reasonably fit” without too much sarcasm is something of a triumph and a surprise.  I don’t do exercise, generally.  The only mildly energetic pursuit I normally indulge in is a spot of cricket in the summer.  Now, as sports go, cricket can be a fairly sedentary game at the best of times.  This year I took over as 2^nd team captain, meaning that I had an excuse to exert myself even less than usual.  Saturdays this summer typically went something like:

• 10:45 — give girlfriend some bullshit excuse about having to leave early for cricket.
• 11am — meet Miserable Musical Macca, Mr Tickle and Ugly Smug Cunt at Cob Corner.  Full English with toast and fried bread plus black pudding and tea (one sugar).  Chat intelligently about the issues of the day.

• 12ish— trip to Co-op en route to cricket ground.  Buy Nuts or Zoo or both (depending on attractiveness and/or chest size of cover model and/or likelihood of toplessness), some sugary sweets and a bottle of Orange Lucozade (if I’m feeling hungover).

• 1:30onwards — if we’re fielding I stand at first slip shouting encouragement to the lads I get to do all the bowling and running around.  If we’re batting I sit on the balcony occasionally looking up from my copy of Nuts or Zoo or both to cheer on the lads doing all the batting.
• Around 4:30 — tea.  I love playing cricket because it’s one of the few sports which stop halfway through for a meal.  I usually gorge myself, knowing full well I’m going to get my team-mates to do all the batting and bowling.
• 8ish — game finishes.  If we’ve lost I’ll have a few pints of Guinness and maybe console myself with a kebab.  If we’ve won I’ll have a few pints of Guinness and maybe celebrate with a kebab.
• My only real exercise of the day is staggering home about midnight.

Apart from four games I missed due to weddings/stag weekends, I did the above every Saturday from mid-April to mid-September.  This is no doubt the primary reason for me putting on weight, not that I’m trying to blame anything other than me and my generally slothful existence and penchant for unhealthy food.

This all makes me especially surprised at how quickly I’ve got into this running malarkey.  I actually feel really motivated to get out there and run further and quicker every time, knowing that I won’t feel completely and utterly fucked at the end of the run.

Tonight, arguably, I’m going to attempt something very, very stupid indeed.  Wednesday nights — as you loyal readers will know — is my 5-a-side night.  A normal Wednesday night involves driving to football, playing football, driving to the pub for a couple of diet cokes or beers (depending on mood), before going home.  Tonight I’m going to jog 2.7miles to play football then jog the 2.7miles home afterwards.  That’s 5.4miles, plus the two or three hundred yards I will probably run during an hour of 5-a-side.

*collective sharp intake of breath*

There’s no need to worry.  I’ll be fine, honest.  Well, probably.  Possibly. 

I’ve created an iPod playlist of songs which for some reason I think will help me.  Crucially the playlist lasts 29-and-a-half minutes, the target I’ve set myself for each 2.7mile leg.  I know you’re all dying to know what songs make up said playlist so here you go (in order):

• So Alive — Ryan Adams
• Bend And Break — Keane.  Yeah, that’s right.  Keane.
• Yesterday’s News [live] — Whiskeytown
• Under The Gun — The Killers
• Fans — Kings Of Leon
• It’s Getting Better (Man) — Oasis
• Goodnight — Easyworld

It’s by no means perfect but I’ll see how I get on.

.

The moment: the thirty-yard screamer, the three-pointer, the diving catch, the hole-in-one, the double on the black to win.  We play because we all know we have it in ourselves to have a moment of glory.  Every dog has his day, and all that.  This is the only explanation I can think of for people who spend hundreds and thousands of pounds on golf equipment and green fees when they can’t even hit the ball straight.  They hope for the moment.  The applause, the cheers, the high-fives, the celebratory beer afterwards.  It’s why shit people play sport, I’m convinced.

An old person playing golf

And this brings me on to the subject of me playing football.  A friend says he’s organising a game of football, so I let him know I’m interested in playing.  I can do a half-decent job at centre-back, I said.  (This is not entirely true, but playing at centre half probably involves doing the least running—except goalkeeper, obviously, but more on that later—and, as every knows, you generally put your big ugly donkey at centre half and tell him to kick anything that moves.)  My mate says he’s already sorted for centre backs, so I tell him I played every position in the team for South Normanton Athletic juniors.  I can play anywhere.  Then I start thinking…

I didn’t play in every position because I was good.  I played everywhere because I was so shit I didn’t warrant being chosen in any particular position.  This is not to say my career (span: 1990-94) was a disaster.  Far from it.  My U12s Top Scorer trophy sits proudly between my U11s and U13s Sportsman of the Year trophies (Sportsman of the Year award definition: a consolatory trophy for the shittest player who turns up every week without fail and never moans when he doesn’t play).

I started reminiscing on my own personal highlights package in my head, and decided upon some of my more notable performances in the various positions I played.

Centre half.  I started off as a centre half, but my inherent laziness was a problem.  I recall our manager once pointing out, after the opposition had scored, that I was out of position.  Specifically, I was stood on the halfway line with my hands on my hips.

Full back.  I played right-back for a while until I got sent off twice in the same game.  (It was a friendly, and the opposition manager ordered his team to walk off from “these animals” mid-way through the second half.)  I was tried at left back for a while too.   The highlight was a game against ADASC at Ripley, where I found myself as substitute.  We were all aware of the ability of ADASC’s tricky right winger, but at half-time it was 0-0 and our left back, Gary Forbes, had played a blinder and had their winger in his pocket.  Unfortunately Gary had to come off injured, and I went on to replace him.  Fast forward to the end of the game and their right winger has a hattrick and we’ve lost 3-0.  The moment that sticks in my mind was the build-up to his third goal, where I ran alongside him from the halfway line as he dribbled towards goal, too frightened to tackle him because I knew I’d foul him as he was too quick and I was too shit.  I kept running alongside him until he rounded our goalkeeper and scored.

Goalkeeper.  Towards the end of my career I played one game in goal for South Normanton as both our ‘proper’ keepers were injured.  We lost 3-0 against the team who were top of the league, and I was named our Man of the Match due to a string of outstanding saves.  We were ripped to shreds and should have been absolutely hammered, but I had the game of my life.  I was goalkeeper for our school team a few times, too, until it became apparent that I would make at least one massive fuck-up every game, which would ultimately overshadow my otherwise decent performance.  A bit like David ‘Calamity’ James (below).

Midfield.  I have never and never will be good enough or fit enough to play in midfield.  I think I found myself playing left midfield for a while, which seems frankly ridiculous.  My trademark move was to charge down the wing with the ball and ‘cut inside’ onto my right foot, as my left foot was and still is only for standing on and under no circumstances should I attempt to kick a ball with it.

Centre forward.  And now we come to that one season — 91/92 I think — when I could arguably have claimed to not have been completely shit.  The season started badly with a 3-1 away defeat in which I didn’t play.  The next game we were playing at home, and again I found myself as substitute.  With fifteen minutes to go we were drawing 1-1 with Ripley (who we should have been beating) and the manager gambled, throwing me on as a striker.  Fifteen minutes later it’s 6-1 and I’ve scored a hattrick, the third goal of which was a coolly-taken penalty.  I went on what at the time seemed a remarkable scoring streak, scoring in each of the next four or five games.  And we’re not talking about tap-ins against shit teams in 6-1 drubbings, either.  I scored the one and only goal in a game against top of the league Woodhouse Imps (a tap-in, admittedly, but an important one), the last-minute winner away at Ravenshead (picked the ball up on the half-way line, charged down the left wing, cut inside onto my right foot and — aiming for the top right hand corner —slotted the ball in the bottom left corner), and a late equaliser in a 2-2 draw at RJN. 

Then — and I’m not entirely sure what happened — I got dropped.  Now, my memory gets a little hazy here (funny how I remember every goal, but can’t remember being dropped, eh?), but I’m pretty sure I was dropped to the bench for a couple of games.  Despite being top goal scorer at the time, I was still pretty shit so I couldn’t really feel too hard done by.  I think I managed to come off the bench and poach a goal in a 5-1 victory, then found myself back in the starting line-up for the final two games of the season.  Riddings were put to the sword as I scored a hattrick in a 9-1 drubbing, and then I bagged another hattrick (three tap-ins, I seem to recall) against Ripley, the side against which my one and only season of glory started.

The hallowed turf of South Normanton Athletic

By the start of the following season we’d recruited some better players and I was back to being substitute again.  Not that I minded, really, because I’d always have my SNAFC under 12s top scorer trophy and I could always say I scored sixteen goals that season, including (in case you lost count) three hattricks.

So next time I’m asked to play football I should grimace slightly, grumble something about knackering my knees “in my playing days”, and politely decline because I know I’ve had ‘my moment’.  But I won’t.  I’ll say, “I can play anywhere you know,” because I’ll always always always fancy my chances of another glory moment or three.

.

I’ve been told that losing more than 2lbs a week isn’t sustainable and perhaps more importantly isn’t healthy.  I also found out to my cost that losing a lot of weight in a short space of time gets you drunk much more easily that usual.  Saturday I got really embarrassingly drunk, really embarrassingly quickly.  At a wedding.  Take yourself back to the hotel at 9 o’clock, wake up fully-clothed, mysterious liquid all over the bathroom floor type of drunk.  And yes, I’m completely and unreservedly blaming the weight loss for my drunkenness. 

The following day someone played me an answerphone message I’d left them which consisted of three minutes of me trying to talk cricket tactics in French and announcing my undying love for a waitress I was convinced was eyeing me up.

Sunday night I had two pints of Guinness and half a pizza to celebrate getting Sandiacre Town Cricket Club’s second team promoted after a workmanlike victory in our final game.  Then last night my girlfriend treated me to a curry at Kerala in Nottingham, an absolute brilliant restaurant which I highly recommend.  As far as curries go I’d say it was a fairly healthy one, but still, I’ll make a real effort to be healthy for the rest of the week.  Then at the weekend I’m going to Oktoberfest where, I’m told, there’s nothing to do except sit and drink beer all day.  Could be an early night again…

And later today or tomorrow — you lucky, lucky people — I will post for your viewing pleasure, the next chapter or so of Happy Ending.

But anyway, you may notice the blog is different.  I moved.  It looks a bit rubbish at the moment, I accept.  But I will smarten it up, I promise.

Secondly, the supposed diet.  Not a good week so far this week, and it isn’t going to get much better.  As I pointed out in my last post, Monday and Tuesday were disastrous.  A curry one night followed by a carvery (or “eat as much roast dinner as you can” as I usually call it) didn’t suggest I was taking this weight loss thing seriously.  The curry was my girlfriend’s idea (admittedly I didn’t put up much of a fight) and the carvery was for my Dad’s birthday.  Wednesday and Thursday were better, food-wise, but then I ruined things by having a few pints at a pub quiz last night.  Quite brilliantly we thought we’d won the quiz, until we realised we hadn’t thought to hand the answer sheet in.

And tonight I am going to visit some old friends and do a bit of a pub crawl probably followed by a curry.  Tomorrow morning my mate says he’ll cook me a fried breakfast.  I’ll then go and play cricket (very little physical exertion if I’m honest) and, if we win, I’ll probably sink a couple of pints down the club after.  Sunday I’ll be good, I promise.

Someone suggested I go to Weight Watchers, and while I’m sure they do a great job, there’s a stigma attached in that my Mum used to go.  And that’s before I think of “Fat Fighters” from Little Britain, and Peter Kay’s “slimming world” routine.  Obviously I’m not discounting going to Weight Watchers completely, but it’s way down my list of “ways to lose weight” just behind doing my girlfriend’s Davina McCall fitness DVD.  With the living room curtains open.  In my pants.

Firstly, I think it’s fair to say that I was wrong in my first blog. Blogs aren’t pretentious, and neither are they just for self-important types with high opinions of themselves. There are lots and lots of very interesting, entertaining and helpful blogs out there, and I’d like to bring a couple to your attention:

• http://iainobrien.co.nz/ – Iain O’Brien, New Zealand Test cricketer, nice chap. Interesting blog about the life, trials and tribulations of a professional cricketer. Currently sweating his nuts off in Sri Lanka.

• http://crackerwax.com/ – the insane ramblings of some chap who works in the same building as me. A definite candidate to do one day what can only really be described as “A Michael Douglas in Falling Down.”

• http://baldyblog.freshblogs.co.uk/ – now, serious head on for a moment. Without meaning to repeat what is written in his wonderful blog (and because I can’t do it justice), Adrian Sudbury – an old classmate from secondary school – was struck down with leukaemia, and he used Baldy’s Blog to chart his progress. Sadly he lost his battle exactly a year ago, but his friends and family are still contributing to the blog. It sounds clichéd I know, but no-one ever had a bad word to say about Adrian, and the courage he showed in his final months was truly inspiring. Just go and check out his blog, OK? Then sign up to be a blood and bone marrow donor.

But back to more trivial matters; specifically my attempt to write a novel. Before I start I’d like to point out that I don’t see ‘novelist’ as a career step towards fame, celebrity mates, posh London nightclubs and the like. I’m quite aware that it’s a tough career, and it’s rarely an especially rewarding one, financially.

So why do I want to be a writer then? Because it’s what I enjoy. Since school I’ve always loved writing and telling stories. I did an A-Level in English Language but regret not choosing to pursue it further. I took what I thought was the safe option: accountancy. I bottled it. I thought that in order to be successful as a writer (of any description) you had to be either insanely talented or unfeasibly lucky. I didn’t back myself to be either.

Here I am, twenty-eight years old, the soul-destroying big 3-0 a worryingly-near sixteen months away, and the urge to tell stories is still there. It hasn’t turned into a full-on mid life crisis yet. Not quite, anyway.

I’m not purposefully dragging this out, honest. I’ll write a bit about the actual novel idea soon, I promise.