A lot of people have been asking for before and after photos form my weight loss efforts for the last year.  To be dead honest I’ve been quite hesitant to post these photo’s because I still want to lose another 3o kilograms. So, below are the before photo’s and a halfway to my goal photo. The first two were taken last June, around the time when I decided to run Comrades. I was 165kg’s and I’m sure you can understand why sports physician was not to keen on me giving Comrades a bash. The last photo was taken last on Thursday the 10^th of June in Soweto for the Fifa 2010 Kick Off Concert. It was taken exactly a year, to the day, after the picture at the Confederations Cup warm up game.

June 2010 - 165kg's

Confederations Cup Warm Up - Italy vs New Zealand 10 June 2009

35kg's lighter in June 2010

I had the funniest experience last night that I just had to share. I attended the Rockies Road Runners Comrades 2010 panel talk at the Zoo Lake sports grounds. The speakers had a wealth of Comrades experience and knowledge and I thought it would be good to go learn from them. Included on the panel was 9 times Comrades winner Bruce Fordyce, Dan Oliver who is a running coach extraordinaire (He has also completed 19 Comrades marathons himself) and well known and highly respected sports physician Dr Jon Patricios. Don Oliver opened the meeting breaking down his training programme and Bruce Fordyce wrapped things up with a bit of a what to expect session and opened the floor for a bit of a Q&A session which was very entertaining and informative.

The amusing bit of the evening was the talk by Dr Jon Patricios. I first met Jon in November when I had picked up a strain of the peroneal tendon in my left foot. His talk last night was about the adaptation your body will go through to finish a race like Comrades. Obviously one of the biggest changes in your body will be the strengthening of your skeletal system and your muscles and tendons. My injury in November was my body not being able to adapt to the stresses and strains I was placing on it.

To wrap up his talk Jon said it was important to be sensible in the build up and make sure the adaptation was gradual enough not to cause serious damage. In closing he used the following example to illustrate his point:  He said he saw a patient at the end of last year with an injury that was caused by a few things. This patient is a radio jock on one of the big radio stations and weighed about 145kg’s and was convinced he was going to run Comrades as part of their celebrity challenge (At which point the audience gasped). He went on to explain that this patient had broken down at the end of November and there was no ways that this guy was going to do it. I think the words he used were “reckless and irresponsible to think he could do this”. With that he wished everyone luck for their training and the race itself. At the interval Jon was chatting to one or two of the other runners that were using the opportunity to ask a few questions. I waited my turn, shook his hand (I could see he didn’t recognise me) and said that I was the reckless and irresponsible radio jock he was referring to. I corrected him and said that I was actually 160 odd kg’s when I started and that I was on track as far as my training was going. There is still a long was to go in my training and a lot of hard work to get me to the start line on 30 May but so far so good. I need to find out where his next talk is, that story he tells is just going to get better!

I had the funniest run yesterday. It wasn’t funny at the time but thinking about it now makes me chuckle. I guess that is one of the downsides of running with someone who is hectically fit. We decided that we would go out together but I would dictate the pace. Still being half a backstreet boy overweight I am trying to focus on getting through a run without popping a lung, never mind worrying how fast I am going. The pace was obviously way below what my running partner was used to, besides the fact he didn’t even break a sweat, he didn’t stop talking the entire 40 minutes we were on the road.  

I can handle the non-stop talking, in fact it is quite nice having some company on a run.  The problem was that for 40 minutes he wanted some company to. It was the questions he was asking that were the problematic. Craig, my apologies for not being great company on our run yesterday. I can handle closed questions while running it is the open one I battle with! I guess it’s better to respond late than never; The family is good, other that the kids having German measles. I don’t have much planned for the weekend other than my radio show on Saturday and Sunday morning and I think it will be a good idea to go the CMA’s road show presentation tonight at KHOSA. By the way it starts at 7pm.

As a runner I was never an over achiever. Far from it. If you know me you would know that I am built more for comfort than for speed. But that’s what I love about running. You don’t need to be a speed merchant to enjoy a run. Truthfully, I am about a Backstreet Boy overweight and have set some really lofty goals for my running career.

 I ran quite a bit in high school. In case you were wondering, Curt Cobain was still alive when I was in high school. In fact I was relatively fit, I had run a sub 50 minute 10km and comfortably done a half marathon. But then just got busy with life. And stuff. Before I knew it was 2009 and I was grossly overweight.

 In the time between Curt dying and me realising if I don’t change my lifestyle I’m going to die I had discovered the joys of smoking and beer. I was a 2 pack a day smoker and playing in nightclubs 5 nights a week didn’t help with my alcohol consumption. Gratefully I’ve managed to kick the filthy smoking habit and have cut down massively when it comes to drinking.

 The hard slog is underway to lose the excess baggage. Along the way I doubt I’ll break 50 minutes for 10km’s again but I’m looking forward to running some more half marathons. One of those lofty goals is also to run comrades. Maybe next year. Maybe not. But it will be run.