THE BEAST IS BACK!

Happy New Year sports fans! Time to get you up to date with my continuous struggle with athleticism. 2015 drew in fast with a Christmas trip to Brighton. Here I ran outside of my usual habitat of smelly pollution ridden London for the first time. Running in wide open spaces with clean sea air is boring and the hum of donuts on the pier, sickening. Met this bloke on my travels however.

He is Steve Ovett. He won the 800m gold in 1980 in the Moscow Olympics. The statue was unveiled in 2012 2 days before the opening of the London Olympics. Incidentally 800m is 0.49 of a mile. Which means I’ll run 52 times the amount run by Steve in the London Marathon. Maybe I’ll get an erection too. Although at the speeds he ran he’d be done in an hour and a half. My target is a modest: finish before people go home.

I have to be honest and say that over Christmas my training lapsed, with my only exercise I did being carrying my kit with me throughout the festive period. I did do some research by interviewing friends who had completed marathons who gave me good advice. A marathon veteran told me reassuringly “Don’t do it!” followed by a discussion about his new titanium knees. 

Christmas came and I received a running related gift from Santa. He gave me one of these Fitbits (Seen on my wrist below). It’s a Star Trek type gadget which allows hackers to know where I am at all times, when I’m asleep, how fat I am and if I have done any exercise at all. When I strapped it on it told me that I had eaten six mince pies, 8 lbs of turkey, 4 lbs of ham, drank four bottles of Prosecco, two bottles of Champagne, ten mugs of mulled wine, fourteen measures of whiskey, twenty pints of beer, twelve bottles of wine and that I had averaged at least two cheeseboards a night since mid-December. My bit that is fit also measures my heart rate which was scary to watch when I opened my London Marathon pack awaiting me when I returned home. It states that the London Marathon (That I am mistakenly running) is on the 24^th April 2016. Countdown begins!

Now it seems real. So I decided to get right to it on January 2^nd once my hangover had subsided. As you can see I reassuringly sweated another wolf and today I nailed another 4 miles to my coffin as part of a sixteen week training schedule I have carved out to ensure I don’t do a Jade Goody.

What does 'CS' stand for on my hat? Enter the competition in the comment section for this blog. The winner with the best guess can choose an item of clothing for me to run in this Sunday!

Unfitbit