The First Steps To Redemption

 In mid-September I'm heading over to Italy for a month to have a look around and to watch the road cycling world championships and Tour of Lombardy. I want to be able to enjoy myself... I want to be able to walk all day and take in the sights and I don't want to try that at 130kgs, or 120kgs for that matter. So I set a goal... to lose 25kgs by September.

How's that going? It's 12 weeks on from my reaching peak weight. In those 12 weeks I've managed to shed 16kgs and it's still coming off. I'm confident that I'm on track to hit that goal and I'm going to try my hardest to knock it out of the water. But I need to be diligent about keeping up the good work that I've started.

There's no secrets and no special diets. I'm not giving anything up... if I want a night out or a burger then I'm going to indulge. What I've changed though is just being conscious of what's going in on a regular basis and making "better food choices". Sandwiches for weekday lunch have become salads and instead of a coke I'm drinking a lot more water with a squeeze of lemon. I've actually been surprised at how easy the change has been.

The second key thing has been exercise. Essentially getting off my arse and doing something everyday (well, maybe one day off a week sometimes!!). At first this was walking. Walking at lunchtimes, walking before work or walking after work. Gradually though I felt this wasn't enough and at this year's annual work trip to the Great Lake Relay up in Taupo, I felt that I was underdoing myself and the team by doing a walking leg (for the second year in a row). Then on my daily walks I often found myself wanting to go faster... to run.

I've always hated running.

One morning, halfway into a 5km morning walk the urge to run got the better of me. Since then I've discovered that, for the first time in my life, I'm enjoying running [WTF?].

So here is a second goal. To finish my year off by doing The Goat - a 21km alpine run on Mt Ruapehu from Whakapapa to Turoa skifields. Now this looks like a pretty tough race... basically a half marathon, off-road with 1,000m of vertical ascent. That's going to take some serious training.

Well the preparation is underway. It started with the Porirua Grand Traverse and their option of a 7.5km "fun-run". With a couple of training runs under my belt, I headed down there on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year so far. Arriving in Porirua it was a chilly 6 degrees but with a real feel of 3 degrees thanks to a brisk southerly and cold light rain. The run was only 7.5km long but came with over 200m of vertical ascent, the bulk of which was in the first kilometre from the Titahi Bay beach up to the top of Mt Cooper in Whitirea Park.

The view from Mt Cooper back towards the start on Titahi Bay beach.

I had set myself a very conservative target of 1:05:00, but was really hoping to go under one hour. When I reached the finish line though I was pretty stoked to look down at my Garmin 910XT to see a moving time of 54:29.

And I still felt pretty good. That afternoon I still felt good (warmed up after a nice hot spa when I got home!!) and was even more surprised to not really have any aches and pains the next day. So I've kept on running.

The next target is the Xterra Wellington trail running series. It kicks off this Sunday with an explore of the Makara Peak mountain bike park. I may only be taking on the short course but I'm still just taking baby steps.