So, a week on in my new regime, how am I doing?

Not sure is the answer. Last week I ate properly and was reasonably active, including running, the gym and softball (ok, half an exercise point for that; I did walk home as well) and on Saturday I managed another decent run. My weight - before exercise; I sweat a lot, alright) - was 13 stone 7 llb, which is a stone off my target.

It went a bit Curley Wurley yesterday, which featured croissants, pub fish and chips, popcorn and toast (although if I was Michael Phelps, that’d just be breakfast). So, this morning I thought I better get an exercise point in, but the work football team is full and I’ve forgotten both my ipod and my gym card. I’m rubbish at running without an ipod, so I don’t know what the chances are for exercise tonight.

Being lunchtime and the thought of not doing exercise, I thought I would get something healthy and came back from Eat with a Moroccan Falafel Wrap (less than 5% fat). I ate it before I finished reading Dick Pontain’s article in PC Pro about why he can’t be bothered to blog - and I still feel hungry. Knowing that it takes your brain time to get the message that your stomach is full, I thought I’d write this blog entry and see if I’m still hungry at the end of it.

So, in honour of my efforts to sort my health and fitness out, I’ve created a new blogroll category: “it’s not a diet, honest”. Let’s see how I get on over the next few months.

Oh and yes, I’m still hungry  

The water cooler talk of the week has to be, “could you eat Michael Phelps’ diet?”

The man is a sporting miracle. He has also happens to be an eating miracle, apparently* scoffing his way through 12,000 calories a day.

Forget about getting a free meal if you eat a 32 oz steak at your local pub, this is serious eating.

The Guardian’s Jon Henley thought he was man enough to have a go himself.

“It just smells so horrible,” says the photographer, helpfully, as we survey the table before us. On it are a large bowl of porridge; three doorstep-sized sandwiches of white bread, butter, fried egg, fried onion, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise; a five-egg omelette tastefully garnished with parsley; three slices of French toast liberally sprinkled with sugar; three pancakes topped with chocolate chips; and two large cups of coffee. That’s breakfast. Yummy.

You can watch Jon Henley try and manage his way through the day’s diet.

Monty Python’s Mr Creosote springs to mind.

Looking at Phelps’ diet, I’m surprised the the calorie count only comes out about 12,000: there’s just so much fat, sugar and gunk in there. I’ve always harboured a secret desire to turn Pukka Pies into a health food – it looks like they’ve missed the sponsorship opportunity of a lifetime.

*My cynical PR radar is just going off. I remember reading this story in The Metro earlier in the week, but I do wonder where it originally came from. Still, like all good stories, it’s got people talking.

It has all gone pear shaped. My waistline, that is. Having weighed myself last night, I’ve now crept up to 13 stone 9 llb, pretty much where I started off when I began my exercise regime a couple of years ago. It didn’t help that the weigh-in was fresh from a stag do weekend in Berlin, consuming a diet of beer, German bread, curry, pretzel, chocolate cake and cooked breakfasts.

Whilst I’ve managed to keep the running up, my pace has dropped off and I’ve been pulling muscles a bit more regularly.

So, I’m throwing down the gauntlet to myself: I want to get down to 12.5 stone and be able to run 10k in under 50 minutes before the end of the year. I won’t be employing any new fangled diets or weird programmes - it’ll just be the old fashioned approach. Eat less rubbish, drink less alcohol, do more exercise.

How difficult can it be (ahem)?

The exercies regime is all a bit up and down at the moment. Fresh from a fantastic weekend in the Peak district, I managed a 4 mile run around Hampstead Heath on Monday night. So far, so good.

By Tuesday, it’d gone to pot. Despite a 7.30am start, I didn’t leave the office until about 9.30pm - that 6.20pm game of Touch Rugby was a little optimistic. Today, I’ve got a bit of an upset stomach, so tonight’s run doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

On the plus side I suppose that at least my appetite isn’t that strong, so beer, crisps and pizza are out for the time being.

I’ve been clocking up the hours at work rather than in my running shoes, which has also meant limited blogging opportunities. Still, it’s worth mentioning that from a Septathlon challenge point of view I’m back on track, having just competed my fifth major event: the BUPA Great Capital 10k.

Again I was luck with the weather. The run was a very pleasant meander around Hyde Park, with the trees providing shade from the sun. Apart from the usual complaints about the shortage of loos, it was highly organised and the only real gripe was a lack of enthusiasm from the supporters, who were mostly made up of tourists passing by. I ran it in 57.37, which is way slower than last year’s Derby 10k, but if you saw the pictures, you’d realise that my paunch might have something to do with that.

The next event is the Nike 10k at the end of August, followed by the Experian Festival of Running (the dafted event name I’ve heard of), otherwise known as the Robin Hood half marathon, in September. It doesn’t leave much room for error to complete my seven events before the end of September, but I should just about hobble in and reach my goal.

I joined the work football team last night. We’re called the Citi Slickers. Slick we’re not: we managed to win our first game 3-0, but after running around for 17 minutes, we were spent and lost the second 3-1. The other team were coasting and we could have lost by many more than the scoreline showed. Still, I haven’t played in months and wasn’t the worst (or best) person on the pitch.

Predictably I’m a bit achey this morning. So tonight’s start in the Touch Rugby team will be interesting… 

I ran a PB last night, the first one since last year. Yay. But before I get too excited, I have to point out it was for a distance I’d never run before: 3.5 miles. I had been persuaded to run the JP Morgan Chase Challenge for work, which is basically an enormous corporate jolly.

Some 13,000 runners from over 300 companies took part in a run around Battersea Park. And, not surprisingly, it was incredibly crowded, but it was nice to do my first race in London. Most of the people that took part were banker, hedge fund managers and the like (and actually they did seem vaguely normal), and were enjoying the corporate hospitality in their marquees in the ‘hospitality village’. We, on the other hand, had a picnic and congregated round a tree - not that it mattered.

I ran a fairly comfortable 29.54 - still a lot slower than I was running last year, but probably a quicker pace than if I’d run around the Heath. Congratulations to one of our execs Jonathan who got a top ten place, coming in in around 18 minutes.

Team Stavmat are now in Oban on their cycling tour and seem to be steaming along quite nicely (I, on the other hand, haven’t been on my bike since London to Brighton) and can’t have many days to go before they reach John O Groats.

Mat’s blog has turned into some sort of cycling gastro tour - well a pie eating omnibus, at least. They even wrote up the top three so far:

1. Glovers, Bamber Bridge

Sold mainly pies, in tin foil pie dishes. They were all hot (cooked recently and on the premises), which is important, and well filled. I liked the custart tart which was moist, eggy and nicely textured and flavoured. The butter pie and the meat pies were excellent.
2. Name unknown, Wem

Lovely cold cheese and mushroom quiche and hot meaty (importantly - gristle free) pies. Nice big Danish pastry and a quiet, well planted community garden down the road in which to eat it all.

3. Blakes, Liskeard

Amusingly had “Blakes the Master Bakers” over the shop - try saying it quickly. A fine purveyor of traditional Cornish pasties. Well filled, highly flavoursome with a good mix of meat and veg. Excellent Lardy Cake, a sweet bready thing with raisins inside and sugar on top. Tastes a lot better than it sounds.

The rest - Monmouth, and somewhere on the way to Bristol don’t get a mention for some or all of the following reasons.

Number 1 offence has to be cold pies & pasties. Nothing says “baked ages ago” quite as well as stone cold pastry. Flavours come out much better in a hot pastry (probably because the fats are liquid, transporting flavours to the tongue and improving the mouth feel) and the pastry stays crisper.

Underfilling is not uncommon, neither is the horrible habit of using gristle instead of meat. Both make one feel a bit cheated. Thick, dry pastry is never good either.

Now they’re in Scotland, they seem to be enjoying the salmon (and, I hope, the odd whiskey).

It’s almost inspiring enough to put the wheels on one of the two bikes littering up my lounge and go for a blast.

Stav and Mat, the widely regarded fit cyclists of our Budapest to Krakow cycling holiday (above) have taken on a bigger challenge, this time cycling from John O Groats to Lands End. They’re not doing it for charity or as a result of some beer induced challenge. No, they’re doing it for fun. If, like me, you feel that they’re taking it all a bit far, you can read how they’re getting on on their blog. Good luck peeps.

I’ve been a bit quiet on my running blog of late (in fact, my training has hardly been pushing any boundaries either), so thought I’d post a quick entry about my new fave place to run: Hampstead Heath.

I think it just about qualifies as a running commute. Basically I get the Tube to either Highgate or Kentish Town and take a meandering run towards and through Hampstead Heath and then drop down into West Hampstead.

Tuesday night was perfect, starting off at Highgate and running (getting a bit lost) around Queen’s Wood. Hampstead Heath was populated with loads of other runners, as well as cyclists, dog walkers and picnickers (probably the most sensible of the lot, given the warm evening).

The only pain is that work demands, and meeting up with an old mate for a curry yesterday, meant that my only other window for exercise this week was tonight. Predictably a late job stopped me from going. Pants. I hope the warm weather continues, so I can get a few more runs in before my next Septathlon Challenge: the British 10k.