Is a mile, jus a mile?

So I have had a week off the training with what felt like a terminal illness… Okay so that’s a slight exaggeration but let’s just say it was a bout of Man flu that saw me sitting at home for the first three days of the week feeling sorry for myself and watching DVD’s and things that had been Sky+’d this to an extent was actually quite nice, I enjoyed the break and the quiet and the cats seemed to enjoy my company to, cats being cats, this was only because it meant they were allowed in the lounge during the day to sleep on the sofa or lay across my warm legs without a care in the world, what a life… although I soon tired of the running nose, tickly couch and looking like Rudolph.
What’s worse with this cold Monday morning saw me unable to even talk, I could croak by the evening after having my magic potion, let me explain… you see as coincidence would have it, I had left over chicken, bones, and veg that I had boiled up at the weekend… I waste nothing you see and I hoped I would make something with the stock, I started to feel ill on the Sunday, and when I woke up Monday morning feeling rather like the Grim Reaper sitting on a radiator, I decided I would make it into a Soup. After a return to bed and some recuperation (About 6 hours sleep, until the phone rang) I woke up still feeling dead and unable to speak but able to stand and stem the running of my nose just long enough to blend up all bits (minus the bones) and make the most amazing Chicken and Vegetable soup AKA Magic Potion, I had at least one bowl of this for the next 4 days, not only was it tasty but is the PERFECT thing for a cold… Fulla goodness!

My week followed this pattern all the way through really, I wasn’t well and seemed to get worse for a couple of days, Thursday I thought I was well enough to go back to work, although thought the gym would just be a STUPID idea, well it seemed work was to, I sat at my desk feeling rather sick all day but I did manage to sit it out and come back the following day.

Anyway enough of the dramatics in relation to the Man Flu, that is gone and my Chicken Soup cured all, well not totally all, believe it or not I was still feeling ill on and off over the weekend, colds don’t normally linger with me, but this one is a hanger on!

I have also decided that I am going to use this blog as my ‘food diary’ I need to be putting all this stuff down somewhere so I figure here is the place… Let’s start with yesterday as I can remember what I had, the Morning saw me munching peanut butter on toast while poking a cat with my foot, Then it was off to Mafia’s in Clacton for lunch, I had grilled goats cheese on a bed of salad, followed by chicken in a mustard sauce… wonderful, then came the evening and whilst watching X-Factor I had a rather large piece of something referred to as “Death By Chocolate” I am not sure this really counts as one of my five a-day but it was nice!

Back to training then… I was up at 6:00am this morning, I felt it was a little bit of a trade-off to my normal 5:30, I would get an extra half hour in bed and so long as I got to the gym for what I wanted to do by 7, I would be fine… So there I was in a rather cooler than usual kitchen stirring my pan of porridge and supping my coffee looking forward to my first session back at the gym, I had already decided I was going to ease back into the training as opposed to just hit it hard and kill myself, so todays chosen activity was to swim a mile… with as many tumble turns as I could stack up!!

I arrived at the pool pretty much bang on 7, so in I got and began my session… It became apparent after the first tumble turn that due to how lose my shorts were (even though I had tightened them as much as the string would allow) I would be doing less tumble turns than anticipated, otherwise I would be giving my fellow swimmers a little more to see than they might like…however…as I swam it seemed that pushing off anyhow at any speed short of slow would cause this issue… unless I dived as I did it, so tumble turns with a slight dive and a more gentle push off was the order of the day, still I managed my mile a whole 64 lengths and in just over 40 minutes, not to bad I thought, but it got me to thinking is every mile just the same… if it took me 40 minutes to run a mile I would be completing the Marathon in 17 Hours, as opposed to the 4 I would like to achieve, but then I settled into the steam room thinking I am sure running 1 mile burns allot less calories and requires allot less effort than swimming a mile, I hope so anyway.

What’s next? Well I am just munching through my mid-morning snack of mixed nuts and fruit, and at lunch time I will be having an organic mixed salad… maybe with fish fingers, I’ll have a fruity snak this afternoon and dinner will be more mixed salad (it needs using up) with a slice of quiche, and tomorrow I’m booked onto a Spin session, and if I have my dates right we will now be on a new program so I should expect to be exhausted, But I will let you know!

Time for my sledgehammer like gentle reminder, aside from the fact that I want to get fit, lose weight and look like an Adonis, there is another important reason I am doing this, I am running the London Marathon next year to raise money for Asthma UK, who work tirelessly to help save and improve the lives of asthma suffers everywhere… Did you know:

There were over 79,794 emergency hospital admissions for asthma in the UK in 2008-09. Of these, 30,740 were children aged 14 years or under.

An estimated 75% of hospital admissions for asthma are avoidable with help from Asthma UK

To see exactly what Asthma UK get up to and how they help asthma sufferers pop along to their website http://www.asthma.org.ukonce you have then decided to hand over your hard earned cash pop along to my Virgin Money Giving website http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/JohnClitherowand donate as much as you can, I have £150 in to my £1,700 target, so get ya wallets out!

Love, peace, and happiness…
Jay (Red John).