Possibly slightly melodramatic, but that’s about the long and short of where I am at the moment. The usual glut of Facebook memories over the new year period, plus finding a load of photos from roughly ten years ago, have really brought in to stark contrast just how far things have slid in the wrong direction!
I’ve never been slim built, at a towering 5ft 9in I’ve never been tall for my age but a sturdy build still saw me play most of my school rugby as a forward, initially front row then latterly as a flanker. Other hobbies like mountain biking and skiing also fitted having powerful legs, even today with not a hint of gym work, my legs are big. The problem is, everything including my legs have a fair bit of padding that wasn’t there before. This was really highlighted in 2017 when I was in Las Vegas for the SEMA car convention. As ever, we were regularly doing 25,000 steps a day and I was at the heaviest I’ve ever been; 99.5kg / 219lbs. Frankly, it was brutal. At the start of 2011, I was 80kg / 175lbs, and walking around in the 20 degree heat of Las Vegas, I felt every single one of those extra pounds.
With marriage on the cards for 2018, I lost some weight. The success of this was somewhat muted when I raced in the C1 Cup at Rockingham in early September. Whilst I have raced without problems at my elevated weight plenty of times in the Scottish MINI Cooper Cup, those are sprint races of no more than ten minutes usually. With a conspiracy of safety cars and mechanical issues in the C1, I ended up doing just over an hour, taking the car to the flag. In temperatures getting on for 25 degrees outside the car, I was suffering inside. There was also the penalty in overall performance, at 20kg heavier than our lightest team member, that meant I was running 20kg heavier all race, which is not insignificant in a car which only produces 70hp.
So here we are, start of 2019:
- 92.7kg on the scales
- 30.18 BMI [obese territory but BMI is largely nonsense]
- 31.3% fat
Where are we going? Well, there’s more to it than just weight, my aerobic fitness has also dropped off a cliff and needs work also. Target over the next 3 months:
- 80kg on the scales
- 26.0 BMI
- <20% fat
- Able to run on the treadmill at speed 9 for greater than ten minutes without being sick
I’ll save the topless pics for my personal horror at present…