The gruelling start...

Week one:  Day one - The gruelling start...  (Tuesday 19th February 2013)

 

Body weight: 12.6 st - 80kg

BMI: unsure

                                                                           As always I under estimated just how difficult this new venture was going to be.  It has been at least three long months since I have done any serious exercise, and at least four, possibly five months since my bike had left the kitchen ceiling. 

 

As always I under estimated just how difficult this new venture was going to be.  It has been at least three long months since I have done any serious exercise, and at least four, possibly five months since I had rode my bike.  The plan had been to do a cheeky half an hour, just to get a feel for the road again. So off I went... 20 minutes in and I was feeling good, my energy levels were lagging a little but my lungs felt great.  As I was already heading in the right direction I decided to nip road my old weekly route; a good hour’s cycle (or so I thought) to easy oneself back into the swing of things.  Just over the half-way point (or the point of no return) and my knee started to twinge, nothing too serious, but enough of a concern to make a pit stop.  Not that I had much of an option but I soldiered it home and jumped in a hot bath to ease the pain.

Injury aside the route took around an hour and a half, which is half an hour longer than it normally takes, again this is to be expected.

 

Route summary

Distance: 15.8miles/ 25.5km

Weather: Bright but chilly

Time to complete: 1hr 30mins

Average speed: 10mph

Stops: One due to knee pain

 

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msid=216397558187366656477.0004d689e05bb7d23462f&msa=0&ll=53.802678,-2.673454&spn=0.107866,0.308647

Day Two

I don’t feel too bad today, the expected aches and pain in the neck, shoulders and legs and of course that dull pain in my knee. 

Exercise plan for the day:

Hit the gym to work shoulders and triceps, plenty of light reps.

 

Day Three

Woke up this morning full of the flue, my whole body is aching, I cannot make out what is injury pain and what it flue ache.

Day Four

Doctors appointment: 10:45, I had to go and get an asthma inhaler, which I have not had to use in around 2 years.  Whilst in the doctors, nurse gave me a blood test to checks for signs of arthritis, I am hoping my joint pain is due to repetitive strain or at worst bad muscle alignment (which has been suggested by one sports specialist), process of elimination I hope.  

 

Day Five, Six and Seven

Plenty of comfort eating and rest (start a fresh next week)

 

The rational

With February nearly over and my most of my new year’s resolutions already in tatters I have decided to blog my way to fitness.  For most of my life I have been in relatively reasonable health; from the age of 20-30 my fitness level was always above average.  I regularly enjoyed fell walked, cannoning and scrabbling combined with the odd five run (2-3 times per week), as well as hitting the gym to push weights 3 times per week.  So on the whole I was a pretty fit guy; unfortunately as anyone that participated in a serious sport will tell you, sport is not all ways good for the health, sounds like an enigma?  What I mean here is that it is an inevitability that when pushed to its limits for long periods of time, eventually things fail.  The body is no exception here, one only has to listen to sporting news to here that so and so footballer has torn this or that, or that such an athlete has pulled or sprained some part of the body.  Anyone that does regular sport will tell you that they have had some sort of injury.  For me it is a re-occurring knee condition, I first encountered this when I was descending one of the Three Highest Peaks of The Yorkshire Dales; prior to this I had experienced knee pangs but nothing of this magnitude. To cut a long storey short this knee problem persisted on and off over a 5-7 year period, I did frequent a sports physiotherapist for a while, but to be honest I don’t believe he actually knew what he was doing, rather he certainly did not know what the underlying problem to my knee condition was, but I enjoyed the sports massage and we were pals, so what was I to do!   

As my 20’s were nearing an end I found myself doing less cardiovascular exercise and lifting more weights, as a result the demand for strong knees had been reduced, subsequently I convinced myself that my knees had recovered.  When I hit the big 30 I became a little self-conscious, largely due to the fact that I had developed a seemingly ever expanding midriff.  To this my answer was to run!  Which I did, in fact I ran and I ran and I ran, to be a little more specific I was out running 4 – 5 times a week covering an average distance of 5 miles each time, occasionally slightly more.  This worked extremely well; I managed to shed two stone in the space of a month.  So all was well, I was feeling fit, looking fit and eating fit, life was great, however unknown to me my running days where about to come to an abrupt end. 

 

One late summer’s evening I had donned my runners and hit the road, around 4 mile in and my knee began to switch; every ounce of sense told me to stop and walk home but being the pig-headed man I am, I thought I could run it off, this resulted in me finishing my run in a hobble.  The next day I was in excruciating pain, I could barely walk 5 meters.  I thought that a number of days on the couch would be the answer, this however turned out to be false! For the next three months I was a regular at my GP’s; I had knee scan, x-ray, cat-scan and all the other scans and checks my doctor could think of.  Eventually he admitted defeat, I received a letter stating that they NHS believed there was nothing else they could do for me and asked if I wanted to arrange a consultation to arrange ‘pain management’.  PAIN MANAGEMANT! I was outraged, I was barely 30 and they were talking pain killers for life.  I did not reply or attend to the consultation.  I perseverance the pain and eventually my knees recovered, although I never returned to running.

So here we are now, I am bang in the middle of my thirties, a full time student, 2 jobs, 2 children under 2, a wife, a house, the midriff is back with a vengeance and I feel now is the time to fight back.  As part of our studies requires us to blog I thought it a good idea to use my blog to encourage myself back into a fitness routine.  In doing so I can plot and plan a course of action whilst at the same time hopefully get expert advice on healthily eating, fitness and time management.  The later I hope to achieve by contacting experts via twitter and other social networking mediums and get them to post advice on my blog.  As I have I have around 10-12 weeks left till semester ends I am going to keep an 8 week blog.  The Blog will consist of my fitness progress, weight loss or gain, and of course health and fitness advise that I gain along the way.