The Grimness Factor

As I write this, my pal Sian is in hour seven of a faintly ridiculous endurance ultra-marathon called, with what could be described as a fair degree of prescience, The Grim Reaper. She's running a hundred miles, through mud and crap. Because she can.

To me, this feels instinctively like the kind of thing for which 'because I can' is not really sufficient justification. 'Because I have to,' yes. But to do this for some sense of satisfaction - no. There are far too many books to read, frankly. Still - my hope is that she makes it through without actually dying. One of the last things she did last night before grabbing a few hours of sleep was to berate me that I hadn't written a blog entry in quite some time, and she's right of course. Two reasons - ridiculous busyness and little to say. Weighed in on Tuesday at 18st 2, which was actually down on the week before, but not by any particularly great amount. Miss the vague sense of triumph of being in the 17s, that's to be sure, and every now and again, it hits me that I'm only 4 stone away (56 pounds, Americans) from what I was at my lightest in this Disappearing Odyssey. Not even that, in fact - if I got to 14st 2, I'd be five pounds lighter than that lightest.

All told, that really doesn't seem like it should be too hard. I certainly need to redouble my efforts though, refocus my discipline, get back in the groove. Still technically have the blister that stopped me doing the walking that worked well to push me down the Stone ladder, though have rather taken to creamy Starbucks drinks again, the elimination of which could also only help my cause.

I guess the point is if you said to me - Lose four stone or run a hundred miles, I'd choose to lose four stone, because although it's a bit of a bastard, it's a liveable bastard, whereas running a hundred miles would by contrast be a dieable bastard - fairly convinced my body would give out if I asked it to run for an hour, let alone for a hundred miles.

Am starting to walk again Sunday - there. A decision. Hallelujah. Another line in another piece of sand. The blister's still there, but it's by no means interfering or painful any more. Time to get back into my boots and push the hell on.

UPDATE: Wrote this while Sian's run was ongoing. She finished in just under 25 hours. 100 miles. In fact she was the ninth person to finish, and the 'First Lady' - in fact, the only woman to complete the gruelling bastard. How inspiring, and yet and at the same time, how mad-as-fuck is that?

The Next Stone

OK, so things are not going as well as I’d have liked. Two weeks of relative disciplinary looseness mean that this morning I weighed in at 18st 2.75. V Bad, as Bridget Jones would say.

On the other hand, there’s a slightly grasping-at straws symmetry here that I intend to grasp while the grasping’s good. I started at 19st 3. Got down over a stone, faffed about a bit, and have bobbed back up to just over a stone of loss. Dedicated non-faffery for a few weeks should now push me down another stone, as my system, which will have grown slack again, tightens up and cottons on to the idea of that non-faffery being a fact of its life. I got back on the bike last night for the first time in some time, and intend to get back on it again tonight. Then to walk tomorrow morning before work…annnnd so we go back to a pattern of non-faffery in an attempt to conquer the next stone. 18st 2.7t may be v bad, but it feels like a good jumping off point to be v good for another fourteen pounds of fun. If I can push on down and conquer the 17 barrier, to bob back up to 17st 3, it will bring more dividends with it, and this might be a way of beating the plateau effect of the overall downward push. Could be nonsense of course, but might not be. Let’s find out.

The Ultimate Monday

Well - that was a Monday.
In fact, in Mondayrific terms, that was a right old, 24 carat, stove-your-own-head-in MONDAY.

Went out for lunch yesterday with d and Ma. d had pate for starter, took three bites and sent it back as 'bitter.' Apparently it was made two days earlier, and 'no-one else had complained' but generally, there are things in which bitterness can be a good thing. Beer, I'm reliably informed by people who like that sort of thing, is one of them. Pate - notsomuch. Rolling stomache upset has followed.

Our sink also pretty much died three nights ago. Running water down it was not happening. Also, running the washing machine meant a backflow that filled it with soapy, vaguely underweary water. Not good. Called five plumbers in a row Saturday morning, all of whom pretty much told me to do one, didn't I know it was the weekend, mate?

I did, as it happened. Strange to relate, when I tried telling the sink to pull itself together because after all, it was the weekend, mate, it had precisely buggerall effect.

This morning brought phone calls and assorted clueless Council bods, some in high-viz jackets (after all, you want to be clearly seen when investigating a sink), some in contradictory black jackets. They did the plumbing equivalent of kicking the tyres - running taps, stroking their chins, and in one peculiar instance, cupping the U-bend as if it were a treasured part of their own person - then announced they'd have to get the boys onto the roof to plunge things down the big drain.

That, apparently, could take some days.

Are we having fun yet?

Don't know what tomorrow brings (apart, possibly, from the delight of transporting a stool sample to the doctors by...erm...hand). Almost don't care. Just blech, whatever, next week, yadda yadda yadda.

The Dreadfulness Quotient

I'm currently being affected by an odd thing - a kind of bizarre point at which which mathematics and lemmings intersect. I call it the Dreadfulness Quotient. I weighed in on Tuesday, and was up a couple of pounds - 17st 13.5. But to be fair on Wednesday, I hadn't productively employed a bathroom in about five days, and was walking around like a human recycling bin, slowly composting my entrails...as ya do.

Since then, I've been on something of a...well, not exactly a 'fuck-itfest' as a kind of 'whateverfest' - not exactly burning my world down, but not doing anything meaningful in the way of exercise, focusing on crazy deadlines, and eating more of what I want than I should. Result? Meh - weighed informally this morning and I'm back in the 18s, which sucks. Am I going to worry about it? Probably. Am I going to do anything productive about it? I'm not at all convinced, to be honest - d just asked me if I'm going walking tomorrow morning before going to Starbucks for another whole day of working. The idea pretty much horrified me. And I have an idea that I'm about to take on another project for which I may or may not realistically have time. Sooooo all in all, my life makes spectacularly little sense right now, but sense is possibly just a little overrated - as far as I can see, I'm pretty much screwed till Christmas or beyond. Disappearing will happen during this time. I actually want to get beneath 16 stone by early January. But am I fucking my brain over right now, trying to juggle everything? No - I'm in a To-Do List mentality, and I'm slamming through things at just about as as fast a rate as I can.

Which means I'll catch you tomorrow - got to go do stuff.

The Tentative Optimist

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the moment you relax into the certain knowledge that everything will be alright is the the moment you get splatted by something sideways of out left field. So it is with a due sense of dread that I report that things seem to be going vaguely in my direction - scarily, without any notable work on my part to ensure that this is the case.

I seem to be losing again, despite not having done any proper exercise in days, due to the wretched foot-blister and my capacity to turn any damn thing into an excuse to do precisely nothing.
Independently, two friends have told me either that I'm looking good, or that they can tell I'm losing, which is proof, if proof were needed, that I have cool friends. And this week I had a diabetic checkup, of which I won't know the full result till my blood comes back from its centrifuge, but at which the nurse was complimentary about the weight I'd lost since the last time I had a checkup. What I didn't tell her was the last time, I weighed without shoes, and this time with, meaning the real results are probably even more encouraging.

All of this, as I say, when I haven't done any real exercise in days, when I've been known to have an occasional full-tilt kickass frapuccino in among my general diet of pleasure-light concoctions, and when, for instance, just yesterday, I had a pizza lunch (damn you and your oven, Plas Coffi!), and a largely toast-based evening meal. Something may well be afoot here.

Nevertheless, let's grab fortune by the scruff of the neck, as it were, and stop typing in favour of getting on the bike for a while, for the first time this week. Can't do any active harm to this bizarro luck...right?