14th December: Slightly rotund and of uncertain parentage.

In a previous post I mentioned how I recently went to the farewell gig of my favourites, the greatest kick-arse rock 'n' roll band in the world: Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine... Well the first track on their seminal album '30 Something' opens with a line spoken by Arnold J Rimmer in the BBC sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf:

"When you're young, you can eat what you like, drink what you like and still climb into your 26 inch waist trousers and zip 'em closed, but when you reach that age: 24/25, your muscles give up, they wave a little white flag and without any warning at all you're suddenly a fat bastard".

And then the instrumental piece Surfin' USM kicks in to gear with your eardrums being assaulted by a yelled chorus of you fat bastard, you fat bastard, you fat bastard's.

Back in the day as a 16 year old the gigs were a crowd-surfers paradise, which was fantastic then, but now those teens and early twenty somethings have become late 30 Somethings and 40 Somethings, crowd surfers are to be frank a pain in the arse as 20 stone of lard tries to be carried aloft the masses... Or should that be a pain in the back from all the heavy lifting you end up doing while you should be 'moshing'.

Its sad to say I too am one of those 30 Something 'fat bastard's' and in another year I will be a 40 Something fat bastard, so perhaps it is time to make a concerted effort to at least arrest the expansion of the waist band.

I've decided in the run-up to Christmas that for the first time in my life I will make a concerted effort to drop some of the poundage from my fat bloke's frame.

Christmas is a time of almost epicurean feasting, so with that in mind I would like to enjoy the whole food and drink side of the festivities but without the porking-out as a result.

I have never 'dieted' in my life and I doubt I ever will, but I have decided to keep a food diary in the form of the fitness app 'myfitnesspal' on my phone so I can see what really is going in and what is being burnt-up by exercise.

I have the Portsmouth Coastal marathon the Sunday before Christmas, the Brutal 20k and Winter Gutbuster 10 miler booked in on consecutive days between Christmas and new year and I fancy having a tilt once more at the Strava Festive 500 challenge where you have to cycle 500km between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so these should all help me with the challenge of emerging the other side of the Christmas break at least the same size and weight as I entered it... A bit of watch this space for any result I suppose. At least if I manage to step-up my levels of exercise and training I can still live by the mantra:

Eat pies. Drink beer. Run far.


Just in case you're curious, this is what Carter USM are like in the flesh when performing Surfin' USM (after the Monty Python intro):