Slug blog

It's tough enough ensuring your children learn about proper nutrition and exercise, without other less well intentioned parents undermining your healthy eating objectives.

Whilst shops and vending machines display sugar, fat and salt laden snacks the one place you would hope to see healthier snacks is on the sports field. With the idealistic view of this arena being populated with fruit, yogurts and pure fruit juices, why is it that just the opposite is making many parents grind their teeth in frustration as their child downs another Krispy Kreme doughnut, or chocolate brownie.

Sunday will mark the advent of yet another London marathon. Potentially 46,000 runners, both serious and fun, will line up to start the gruelling 26 (and a bit) miles. Months of training will have been finely honed to culminate in the event of the year for many runners.

...not just the smoker. My earliest recollection of smoking becoming a lifestyle issue is at the age of 11. Up until that point I'd just put up with my mother and father smoking at least 20 a day each, in the house, car, garden, my bedroom, in fact everywhere.

As I've previously written, gyms have a great assortment of personalities in them (see day 49), and according to the racing snake I have a slightly evil sense of humour where categorising the regulars at my gym is concerned.

This morning I had the pleasure of Speedy Gonzales on the treadmill next to me. Now speedy gonzales is a regular, in fact every day of the week at 7.00am you'll find him abusing the equipment and his body.

...well no, actually they won't.

I know it's a great excuse isn't it. And the cold weather that we've been lucky enough to have over the last couple of weeks has provided the perfect excuse for many a reluctant exerciser, frozen lungs are not desirable so better stay under the duvet until it gets a bit warmer...like Spring.

My diet and fitness resolutions seem to have recently stalled slightly, and with a looming medical to pass things need to get back on track. I guess that starting a new business project on chocolate is not really the best topic to be involved with when trying to shift a bit of excess flab. But in reality it means that I'll have to limit the tastings, or exercise more, or both.

When I woke up this morning the sun was shining and the ground was white, yes, unexpected snow. What better way to spend Sunday morning than going for a brisk walk in the snow.

...doesn't mean that you can make the excuse not to exercise. The colder it is the more calories you'll burn trying to keep warm. So crawl out from under your duvet and get moving.

Gyms are interesting places. Full of the body beautiful and the body not so beautiful. If you're a member of a gym look around you on your next visit, you can see a multitude of different personalities and types.

For fun I like to give each of the regular participants at my local gym a name, for example we have the 'personal panderer' (privately employed personal trainer), the '60 year old thong' (yes she really does wear one at that age), the 'dominatrix' (I'll leave that one to your imagination), lurch (yup, he could have auditioned), the 'cardio junkie' (obvious isn't it), 'no.4' (has to have that locker number every visit), etc etc.

Now what on earth is a slug jar you're probably asking. Well you can call it many things, slug jar, fat jar, exercise fund, mileage pot. Whatever you want.

The important bit of this is that it's a 'pat on the back' fund for you every time you exercise. So this means that once the jar is full then you get to spend it on yourself, for example: jewellery, book, cd, dvd, makeup, luxury smelly stuff, or if it's a big jar: expensive jewellery, mp3 player, massage, pampering day at a spa/health club etc etc. I'm sure you get the message.

Owwwwwwwwwww owwwww owwwwwwwww..........that can't be right, pain, perhaps it'll go away, no it's not going away. Stop. Ow! Bugger.

This mornings good intentions seemed to slide away at 2.5 miles on the treadmill. A girdle of pain enshrouded my right knee, still short of my 3 mile goal. I walked for a minute then started to run again, owwwwwwwwwww, nope it's just not going to go away. Stop.

How many people do you see exercising, be it in the gym, running along the road, in exercise classes etc that obviously have an injury and are in pain. Quite a few.

Woke up this morning after last nights promises of snow, severe weather warnings and 'significant snowfall'.

Looked out of the window and what did I see, nothing, well virtually nothing, looked more like a heavy frost than snow.

By the time I got to the gym at 7.00am there was already a car stuck on the slope up to the car park. For goodness sake, 1mm of white stuff and most people lose the ability to drive.

So now I'm up to 2.5 miles at a time running. I've been reliably informed by many other runners that once I go over 3 miles I'll start to drop some weight. Oh yes please!

In my previous musings I told you how I prepared over October and November for running. Well now let's look at December.

It's all well and good me talking about myself and my exercise schedule, but how are you doing with yours?

Are you still making sure that you get that daily walk? On weekdays it's easy if you work fulltime, you simply go out at luchtime, before you eat. Then promise yourself when you get back that you'll enjoy your lunch all the more, plus it will digest better as you'll have given your metabolism a bit of a boost from the walk.

You'll also reduce the chances of having the post lunch slump, about 2ish when you start to feel a bit drowsy. Head nods a bit in a boring meeting? Snoring in the back of the seminar room? Been there, done that, so I know it's true.

Yesterday I confess I did not go to the gym, I don't really have a good excuse apart from the fact that I couldn't be arsed to get up at 6.15am, scrape the ice off my car and drive to the instrument of my torture.

I wanted an extra 30 minutes lie in. Okay so I'm not perfect, but nobody is, and as long as the days where I do get up at 6.15 outnumber the days I don't, I'm winning.

Today we're looking at a vital piece of sports equipment - sports bras.

It's surprising just how many women don't wear a proper sports bra when taking part in exercise, any exercise. Some wear their ordinary daytime bra, then dress again in it afterwards for work/daytime wear...yeeeeuk!

Others wear the sports tops with 'hidden' support. Well ladies, I've got news for you, it's called hidden for a very good reason. If you are anything other than flat as a board on the chest area it won't contribute hardly any support at all.