By Jamie Hill
I’ve become a Dalek.
That’s not to say that I’m going around shouting ‘exterminate’ at everybody (although there was a rather ignorant bloke in the cinema the other night who I would very much like to have shouted ‘exterminate’ at in a high pitched Dalek voice).
No, it means, like daleks, stairs are now my biggest problem. Every stairway is now a mountain to climb.
A nigh-on impossible task that faces me about 15 times a day. I actually prefer going up them.
Okay, I do it quite slowly and gingerly as if I’m climbing up the north face of Everest but at least I can do them. It’s going down them that causes me a problem. The descent is the worst. I have to do it crab-like, making sure I do it sideways. And I have to tackle them quite slowly.
This is because of my legs. I might have reported in recent weeks how my legs have been playing up. But this week they gave up altogether. Meaning by Friday I could hardly walk at all. I blame my wife. I went for a run with her on Thursday evening. It was only two miles but I stupidly tried to keep up with her and ended up doing two nine minute miles.
She still beat me by loads even with that time. I know it wasn’t a race but I didn’t want to look bad. It’s why I like running on my own! She’s a lot fitter than me. She ran the Brighton Marathon last year and is a naturally fast runner who seems to have limitless energy.
But it meant on Friday, I could hardly walk. My knees, especially, the right one have been causing me the stair problem. I couldn’t bend them without being in pain. They seem a bit better now though. Which is good. As I was a bit worried there for a minute. It’s now five and a half months until I have to run the Birmingham Marathon in aid of ICP Support and I’m bricking it. So leg problems did get me worried. But I’ve just got to learn to pace myself and worry about distance at this stage and not time. 
Basically on Saturday, I did half an hour of stretching exercises and this seems to have sorted them right out. Then, get this, on Sunday I ran 3.25miles and now this morning I just ran 4.5miles. Both of them, I found extremely difficult. But I did them. I didn’t stop. I just kept running.
They were both quite slow in comparison to other runs but that doesn’t matter. It’s the fact I did them that matters. I feel completely light-headed now though and am glad that the Nike+ training app is giving me some time off until Thursday to give my body a bit of time to regenerate (a bit like Doctor Who, except I won’t wake up a 55-year-old Scottish man).
It’s now May 1, which means I’ve now got two months of calorie counting to try and get down to a good weight to make this all a tiny bit easier. I currently weigh 17stone 3pounds.
Which isn’t bad seeing as I’ve done no dieting since February and started the year at 18stone 4pounds.
I want to get under 17stone this month and see 16stone something on the scales, which is something I’ve not seen for a few years. I’m not allowed to exceed 1500 calories of food and drink intake a day. I’m not going to be completely strict giving fruit and veg a bit of a free ride but let’s hope it makes a difference.
Today, I managed to burn 848 calories from my run giving me a bit of a surplus which is lucky as we’ve got friends coming round and we were going to order Dominos! So starting well then! Anyway, I’m tired but happy, Yours achingly Fat Jamie