I want to fit in a rugby shirt

Before I talk about my continuing efforts to get fit I just wanted to thank everyone who read my last blog post which described losing our first son to stillbirth. Thank you for the lovely comments and for taking the time to read it. So back to my tales of trying to get fit and training for the Bubble Run. When I last spoke about my training regime I was just recovering from my first Park Run and the Bubble Run was now only a week away. My plan in the week leading up to the run was to go for one or two more runs to make sure I'd recovered from the hill at the Ashton Court Park Run and be ready for the Bubble Run. After all it was the main reason for starting the training!! Things change pretty quick and one phone call after the Park Run meant my plans for the week would have to be changed. Instead my training would consist of cycling to and from work every day. If I'm honest I was happy enough with that. I figured that rather than training just twice in the week I'd get

A change of pace for my latest blog. My last posts have been about my adventures in running and cycling and generally trying to get fit. This post isn't about that. In the UK it is 'Baby Loss Awareness' week. Every singe day in the UK, 15 babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth.  On 5th January 2004 our son Thomas was one of those 15. This our story. First a short history. My wife, Denise, and I had married in November 2000 and on our honeymoon had decided we would try and start our family straight away. So we started trying, we both figured that within a few months we'd see a positive pregnancy test and everything would be great. It didn't work like that. The first few weeks of trying turned into months and the first few months turned into a year without a positive test. It was beginning to get a bit frustrating. After two years of trying with no success we decided to go to the doctors and get ourselves tested to see if there was any reason we couldn

In my last post I'd mentioned at the end about my friends Michelle and Hayley bullying me into doing a park run up at Ashton Court. For anyone who doesn't know what a park run is it is a free, organised, timed run of 5km that takes place on a Saturday morning at thousands of locations around the world. It's very simple, they have a website http://www.parkrun.org.uk/ that you can register on. You put your detail in, you get a sheet of barcodes that you print off and take one along with you to a park run at the designated time and location. Everyone starts at the same time and 5km later you cross the finish line and get your barcode scanned and a bit later that day you get an e-mail with your official time on, the position you finished etc. To say it's brilliant is an understatement. Anyway back to my bullying friends. Both Michelle and Hayley had been brilliant and we'd all been texting and messaging and they'd both said they were really proud of what I was d

So I'm training to take part in the 5k bubble run that I've signed myself and Harrison up for. In my effort to get fit enough to complete the 5k course I'd started off by getting up in he mornings before work and going for a bike ride, gradually building up the distances. I'd been doing this for a month (including some commutes to and from work) in the back of my mind I knew at some point I'd have to leave the bike at home and have a crack at a 5k run. There are 2 friends of mine, lets call them Hayley and Michelle (I'm not changing names to protect the innocent) who I've known since we were all about 14 years old and as mentioned in a previous post they'd been running and doing 5k runs for a little while and had both been encouraging me in my efforts. They were brilliant and very enthusiastic when I said I was going to start running and were telling me that once I felt ready I should go with them and do a park run on a Saturday morning. All very p

CYCLING TO GET FIT - THE EARLY WEEKS To recap - I'm 41, severely unfit and overweight and had recently decided to enter a 5km bubble run and had two and a half months to try and get in some sort of shape. After all my 12 year old son was taking part with me and I didn't want to show him up by collapsing part way around!!! I am using the run as motivation to get myself fit and lose weight for reasons mentioned on my previous post. I also had another reason for wanting to shed some timber. Now dear reader, I'm a simple bloke ('Bloke' was my nickname at college). I go to work and work hard (I think), I come home and spend time with my wife and son. I enjoy watching sports my favourite is rugby union. I'm a Bristol Rugby fan and season ticket holder. At the game on boxing day (a home victory to Worcester) I purchased the home shirt and got my surname and the number '76' (my year of birth) put on it. Lets be fair when I tried it on it looked like I'd

So I've recently (about 3 months ago) started taking regular exercise. Lots of people do so it's not really anything ground breaking to blog about. So let me introduce myself and try and make it more interesting. My name is Pete, I'm 41 years old, married to a wife who has end stage kidney failure and has to hook up to a dialysis machine 4 times a week and we have a 12 year old son called Harrison. When I started I weighed in at just over 26 stone (conversions are available online) which if I was over 8ft tall would probably be my ideal weight but I'm only about 6ft 3. I've wanted (and needed) to lose weight for years - I figure with a wife that has the health issues mine does I need to try and do what I can to remain healthy for her and our son. Discipline has always been a problem for me when it comes to losing weight. I love food and (according to Mrs Byrom) I eat like a puppy. She's not wrong - I eat until I feel full rather than stopping before. I can'