Climbing Mont Blanc

We’re walking in the air.

I missed my 5 mile walk on Monday because I forgot the wife was having her hair done after work so I did it yesterday instead. I had some errands to run so I walked them. I’m sure that I walked further than 5 miles but I haven’t checked using Google Maps – yet.

I decided that I would do my 20 minutes jog/mince this morning and I managed it with great difficulty mainly because I was going at a faster pace. I managed to do the same distance as last Wednesday’s 20 minute jog in under 18 minutes.

The GPS on my Alcatel Android phone is rubbish. It won’t get a signal on cloudy days or if there are cars around. So the most excellent Run Keeper can’t give me the vital stats on how fast I was going. So I know were I ran and I know how long it took so time to fire up Google Maps and plot the course. And I did 2.1 miles in 20 minutes which is 6.3 miles an hour. Not bad for a fat bloke who sits in front of a computer all day.

My weight this morning was 81.3kg’s. Back down again after Binge Saturday and going in the right direction. I’m not sure how much is down to water loss as I didn’t drink as much liquid as I should have yesterday. Today I have drunk 3 very large cups of peppermint tea and two pints of water. Although the water is giving me indigestion.

The other thing I noticed on the jog was my lungs tightening up a little. When I came home I had a moment where I felt very short of oxygen. The last time I felt like that was after I walked up from the Nid d’Aigle to the Tête Rousse hut and then back down again. As I waited for the Mountain Train I felt as if the oxygen had left my body. I was at altitude, I had been up to 10390 ft / 3167 m and then back down to 7782 ft / 2372 m. Today I have not been any more than a couple of meters above sea level. So maybe what I felt at the Nid d’Aigle was just plain old fatigue, the same I felt this morning.

I was being a little self indulgent with my run. I was listening to a track that I have nearly finished on my iPod. When it finished I pressed a button on my iPod and a dance track came on followed by another and near the end of the run Aled Jones starting singing “We’re walking in the air”. Bizarre but the songs were played in alphabetical order. Next up was Alison Hinds, not really the weather for it so I self indulged in my fatigue and put my track back on.

Always a reason.

When I finished my job/mince on Wednesday I was the other side of my local park and had a bit of walk home. I was high on endorphins and the fact I had actually done 20 minutes and a thought came into my head – why not jog back to the house? I felt I could do it quite easily and I was sure that exceeding my training regime would be a good thing. Another part of me said “no” and I walked back, which is a good job because yesterday I was very very stiff.

If I had jogged back I could have done some damage to my under developed muscles that might have taken a while to get over. The people who came up with the training schedule knew what they were doing, it was designed for those who don’t really exercise. Who am I to argue?

I managed to get a lot of walking in yesterday. Well a lot of walking for me and it has been reflected in my weight. This morning I was a mere slip of a thing at 81.3kg, down 4.5kg’s from when I started the TIm Ferris diet. And I was naughty yesterday as well as I had a very large Twix. It started off tasting really nice, so much so I stepped into a huge pile of dog crap, a feature of East London. I was enjoying the taste so much I didn’t mind, in fact I would happily have done “Singing in the Dog Shit” at that point where I take the part of Fred Alastair and dog shit takes the place of rain, the taste was so good.

By the time I had finished the first finger, the feeling of sataity was welling up and my delirium was fading. I ploughed on with the second giant finger and by the time I was finished I felt ill. Too much sugar and chocolate. I trudged on leaving increasing faint dog shit footprints.

I’m not sure what the dog/Giant Twix Story should tell me – you can draw your own conclusions. 5 mile walk tonight.

Weight Loss.

I set myself two targets for the year, read 100 books and lose 10kg in weight. So far I have read 6 books and lost 3.8kg in weight. My target weight is actually 75kg’s and I started at 85.8kg’s so I’m hoping to lose 10.8kg’s. So far I have lost 35% of the total so I’m more that a third of the way there!!

I’m following the Tim Ferris 4 Hour Body diet which entails eating lots of protein and veg, but no fruit or anything white – except cauliflower. You only do this for 6 days and then you binge on day 7. And when I say binge I really mean it, you gorge yourself on whatever you want and really enjoy it. Except that you don’t really enjoy it. Cakes, crisps, chips and other assorted rubbish isn’t really that nice and you can go through another week without them.

The binge is both psychological and physiological. When you start getting cravings for bread and rice you can tell yourself that it will soon be binge day. The idea that you could never eat rice, bread or potatoes again is unsustainable, you would never do it. But knowing that in a few days you can gorge yourself stupid makes going without bearable. Then the actual eating confuses your metabolic system – it has just got used to slow-burn carbs and veg and then it gets hit with fruit, pasta and fast-burn carbs.

And the beauty is – it works! I can attest to that. I have two fried eggs for breakfast with lentil, black olives, lettuce, cucumber and carrots. For lunch I have more lentils and salad and for tea I have more lentils/beans curried with curried veg.

The book is well worth a read.

Weight loss is important as I don’t want to be dragging anything unnecessary up the mountain, and that includes kilograms of fat stored around the middle of my body.