Following a family members suggestion
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't open a chocolate bar and not finish it (I'm not sure I want to be friends with people who do 😁). Every now and then I've tried 'being good' - cutting back what I eat and trying to get our for a walk each lunchtime for a bit of exercise. Trouble is I'd have a couple of busy/bad days in work and I'd want to eat loads and not go out for a walk at lunchtime.
I haven't exercised regularly since before I got married in November 2000. Don't get me wrong its not like I was thin back then - but I carried the weight (around 19 stone) better. I've been incredibly lucky in that so far (touch wood) I've not suffered with many health issues because of it - I have slightly elevated blood pressure that is controlled with a low dose of daily medication. Despite my family history of diabetes etc I've not been diagnosed with anything like that so far.
So what has made me get into it now? Well back in mid-May 2017 I was in work and our MD sent around an e-mail about an upcoming event - a bubble run in aid of Weston Hospice. The company I work for supports the local hospice in a number of ways. For the last few years the hospice had held a paint run on the beach (I live in the seaside town of Weston super Mare) and the company I work for had sponsored the green paint station each year. The paint run is a 5km run up and down the beach and at various points there are colour station that local companies sponsor and employees turn up to throw coloured corn starch (paint) at the runners. All very good fun. I've gone down and volunteered the last couple of years to throw the paint. The only downside is the amount of showers it takes to get the 'paint' off that blows around and sticks to you.
This year there was a change. No paint run but a bubble run. A 5km run around Apex Park at Burnham on Sea where you run through coloured foam stations at different intervals. As ever the company I work for was sponsoring the green station (the primary colour in our logo is green) and the MD was asking if anyone wanted to take part. I sat there reading the e-mail and looking at the date of the bubble run wondered if I could take part and cover 5km. Its a fun event so if you want to walk around the course that is fine. Our son had come along with me last year to throw paint and had been nagging me about doing it again this year. So my mind continued to wonder and I started trying to work out if I could complete the run - could I get fit enough in the two and a half months before the event. Before I knew it I had registered both myself and my son to take part in the race and was circulating a sponsorship form in the office and had set up a 'just giving' page on the internet. That's it I was committed. I now had to get my ass in gear and start putting in some work.
So I had to decide what to do to get fit. As it was late May I had the advantage of it being daylight before 0500 so as I'm an early riser I decided to get any exercise at about that time in the morning. Plenty of time to do my workout, get back home, shower, have breakfast and get to work. The next thing was to decide what exercise to do. I'd noticed that some college friends of mine (Hayley Thatcher and Michelle Taylor) had started running and I'd had brief conversations with both of them (by text message/messenger) about how they were doing. They mentioned an app called C25K was quite useful. I downloaded it and looked at it. Quickly I decided that it wasn't for me just yet. I wasn't sure I could do the amount of running at the beginning that it suggested and I knew that with this if I got disheartened I'd give up. I had a bit more of a think and decided that to start with I'd (literally) get on my bike and start pedalling and perhaps build up to running - after all it was a 5km run I'd signed up for.
I already had the Strava app on my phone to track a bit of cycling I was doing at the end of 2016 so I decided to use that to track my efforts - especially as it tracked both running and cycling. A week or so before the bubble run I was messaging with my cousin (who lives in Canada) Cristina Byrom on Facebook about my recent efforts to get fit. Cristina had seen the updates on my Facebook feed from the Strava app and suggested I start a blog about it. I thought that it sounded like a really good idea. Who knows if other people read it they might realise that they can start taking regular exercise etc.
So here is my story and progress.
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't open a chocolate bar and not finish it (I'm not sure I want to be friends with people who do 😁). Every now and then I've tried 'being good' - cutting back what I eat and trying to get our for a walk each lunchtime for a bit of exercise. Trouble is I'd have a couple of busy/bad days in work and I'd want to eat loads and not go out for a walk at lunchtime.
I haven't exercised regularly since before I got married in November 2000. Don't get me wrong its not like I was thin back then - but I carried the weight (around 19 stone) better. I've been incredibly lucky in that so far (touch wood) I've not suffered with many health issues because of it - I have slightly elevated blood pressure that is controlled with a low dose of daily medication. Despite my family history of diabetes etc I've not been diagnosed with anything like that so far.
So what has made me get into it now? Well back in mid-May 2017 I was in work and our MD sent around an e-mail about an upcoming event - a bubble run in aid of Weston Hospice. The company I work for supports the local hospice in a number of ways. For the last few years the hospice had held a paint run on the beach (I live in the seaside town of Weston super Mare) and the company I work for had sponsored the green paint station each year. The paint run is a 5km run up and down the beach and at various points there are colour station that local companies sponsor and employees turn up to throw coloured corn starch (paint) at the runners. All very good fun. I've gone down and volunteered the last couple of years to throw the paint. The only downside is the amount of showers it takes to get the 'paint' off that blows around and sticks to you.
This year there was a change. No paint run but a bubble run. A 5km run around Apex Park at Burnham on Sea where you run through coloured foam stations at different intervals. As ever the company I work for was sponsoring the green station (the primary colour in our logo is green) and the MD was asking if anyone wanted to take part. I sat there reading the e-mail and looking at the date of the bubble run wondered if I could take part and cover 5km. Its a fun event so if you want to walk around the course that is fine. Our son had come along with me last year to throw paint and had been nagging me about doing it again this year. So my mind continued to wonder and I started trying to work out if I could complete the run - could I get fit enough in the two and a half months before the event. Before I knew it I had registered both myself and my son to take part in the race and was circulating a sponsorship form in the office and had set up a 'just giving' page on the internet. That's it I was committed. I now had to get my ass in gear and start putting in some work.
So I had to decide what to do to get fit. As it was late May I had the advantage of it being daylight before 0500 so as I'm an early riser I decided to get any exercise at about that time in the morning. Plenty of time to do my workout, get back home, shower, have breakfast and get to work. The next thing was to decide what exercise to do. I'd noticed that some college friends of mine (Hayley Thatcher and Michelle Taylor) had started running and I'd had brief conversations with both of them (by text message/messenger) about how they were doing. They mentioned an app called C25K was quite useful. I downloaded it and looked at it. Quickly I decided that it wasn't for me just yet. I wasn't sure I could do the amount of running at the beginning that it suggested and I knew that with this if I got disheartened I'd give up. I had a bit more of a think and decided that to start with I'd (literally) get on my bike and start pedalling and perhaps build up to running - after all it was a 5km run I'd signed up for.
I already had the Strava app on my phone to track a bit of cycling I was doing at the end of 2016 so I decided to use that to track my efforts - especially as it tracked both running and cycling. A week or so before the bubble run I was messaging with my cousin (who lives in Canada) Cristina Byrom on Facebook about my recent efforts to get fit. Cristina had seen the updates on my Facebook feed from the Strava app and suggested I start a blog about it. I thought that it sounded like a really good idea. Who knows if other people read it they might realise that they can start taking regular exercise etc.
So here is my story and progress.
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