28 Days of Pain - Day 14

By Jamie Hill

Reasons to lose weight #364 - When someone tells you that you look like a fat Alfred Molina.

I think I'm physically killing myself. My body is not liking me at all at the moment. In fact it hates me with such an intensity that I'm thinking of getting a restraining order against it.

I'm now halfway through this challenge and it's not getting any easier.

Today's five kilometre run was difficult. Really difficult. Within the first few hundred metres my legs, having just realised that I'm just about to put them through hell again, tried to seize up on me. I was out of breath and breathing like a sex-fiend by a thousand metres. By 2,000 metres, the stitch was going like the Psycho shower scene in my chest. At 3,000 metres I started to feel really light headed as if I was just about to faint. At 4,000 metres I thought I was going to be sick. And at 5,000 metres when I finally stopped it was all I could do not to collapse.

I thought by now, my fitness levels would have increased enough that I found 5,000 metres hard but not impossible. Definitely not like this anyway.

My recovery time is not improving either. After the run I then proceed to sweat out for at least half an hour. This is when my body turns into a walking version of Niagara Falls and I sweat like a bastard from every inch of my skin. This is the body cooling down after a workout. After the sweating, I then feel light-headed and a bit trance-like for the next half hour.

Apparently the recovery time and the length of time it takes is an indicator at how fit you're getting. Well, according to this then, I'm just as unfit as I when I started. Bonus. I think I'm a long way away from getting back from a run and being able to jump straight in the shower. At the moment it would be pointless because I'm a living, breathing, walking shower of sweat anyway.

I also don't think I'm losing any weight. I don't feel or look any different despite the fasting or the running or the lack of snacking.

I've attached a picture of me taken a week or so before this challenge began. You probably look at the picture and see a person with a slightly mad expression wearing a really cool Ocelot T-shirt (available for £15 plus p &p). All I see is one huge stomach. It's a belter of a belly and I don't think it's going anywhere soon.

Alright, it's my own fault. I substituted smoking for snacking a few years ago and now I can't shift the weight I've put on. But I have been trying, honest. I've made little changes to my lifestyle over the past few years like walking the kids to school in the morning (a total of two miles there and back) and swapping fat Coke for Diet Coke. I was on a six can of Coke habit a day so I thought that would have had an impact. It hasn't.

That's why I'm doing this challenge. Trying to wake up my body to the fact that enough is enough. This is the fight back. The bit at the end of Rocky II where a look of determination crosses his bruised and bloodied face and he starts hitting Apollo Creed back.

I've rambled on a bit this morning so I better let you get on.

Only 14 days to go until my 10,000 metre killer challenge.

To check out previous entries and see the rules of the challenge visit http://www.theocelot.co.uk