A New Leaf

Sometimes I take a look around Aberdeen and think to myself 'I am glad I live here'. Today was one of these days. We're not always blessed with the warmest weather. (I notice it is dryer than the west coast, but it is certainly a hell of a lot colder. )This morning however felt like the first real day of spring, with a hot sun beating down from a cloudless sky. The beach was peppered with families, doggies and people having a good time. McNulty dug in the sand, bade farewell to yet another ball as it was carried off on the waves, and ran around with a couple of Westies.
It felt like a day for new beginnings - so here's one. I'm aff the drink.



The 10K is now 6 weeks away. I've been following a training plan for the last 6 weeks and have gone from running in tiny little bursts, to half an hour quite pleasantly. But it's now time to really up the ante as I want to do this 10K in an hour, and that's obviously twice what I'm capable of at the moment. In a bid to make it a little easier on my body, I'm going to cut out all alcohol for the next 6 weeks just to see if it makes a difference. Well, it can't really hurt.



My days of clubbing are behind me now anyway (last night being a rare excepetion to the rule - but I don't know if you call bopping around to Hole on an empty dancefloor, clubbing as such)but I do enjoy a glass of wine in front of a film or a few beers after work on a Friday. So it will be a bit of a task for me to cut it out altogether, but I'm going to give it a shot. I want to get to that starting line in 6weeks knowing I did everything I could.



Progress this week: On Thursday night I decided to jack in the plan for the night and see if I could actually sprint a couple of miles, as opposed to the idle jogging I'm accustomed to now. It felt bloody marvellous for about 10 minutes and I felt like I was running properly, for perhaps the first time. Now I warn you, this part is pretty gruesome but sadly it is also true. When I finished this sprinting session and started climbing the stairs to the flat, I started feeling sick. Like, dreadfully sick. The contents of my stomach were churning up, my whole body suddenly turned very red and hot and it felt like my guts were going to discharge themselves from any number of orifices. It was grim, I can tell you. I'll spare you the details of what happened next, but I felt much better after lying on the bathroom floor for a while, then taking a bath. I think I'd better stick to the plan from now on and stop playing at being an athlete when I'm clearly very far from it.

Physically my shape is changing. I've lost several inches from my waist and my face has gotten a bit slimmer. I'm slowly getting more lean but I haven't actually lost a single ounce on the scales. I know this is because I am putting on muscle, but years of yoyo dieting and lapsed Scottish Slimmers and Weight Watchers memberships has given me a scales fixation that's hard to break. So maybe if I cut the empty alcohol calories out I'll finally see the numbers go down.

I'm on holiday next week and plan to do lots of writing, take the dog to some pretty places for walks - and start my 6 week to 10K plan.

And here's the dog smiling on the beach.