Couch Potato with extra Mayo

Summer is rapidly approaching and my trainers are starting to become noisy. They sit there on the shelf glaring at me and daring to suggest that just perhaps, once again, you ought to shift some of that lard from around your midriff. They are cruel but accurate. I swear my body still thinks it runs 35 miles a week and is storing this largesse in case of an impending famine. It isn't as if I don't feel guilty - I do and every night as my eyes try to find my toes I tell myself - I will run, I will get fit, I will shed this mysterious five stones that somehow has attached itself to me. Somehow ! I know how, the anchor that tightens my trousers seemingly by day and night, is a terrible disfiguring disease. Found more often in the United States it has nevertheless made its way to South Yorkshire. Fatbastard's Doughnutitis is a creeping sort of virus that sneaks up on you in the lunch and tea breaks of Test Matches - those 5 days you spend pinned in the armchair admiring the battle between bat and ball. And subtly, gently, session by session, you turn into a ball.

One is still able to appreciate Athleticism simply not perform it. I remember that first great sentence of "The Competitive Runner's Handbook" which said "You are an athlete" and at that time I believed it. Nowadays those PB days of 1.34 are long gone. In the last Sheffield Half Marathon I ran in it was over 3 hours until I finished. The stewards were dozing and failed to point me into the stadium, the medals were all gone and the following sweep bus spend the whole race trying to overtake me.
And now I want to run again. I have considered retirement but the thought of developing larger breasts than my partner is distinctly disturbing. After my kidney transplant I was so keen to run, presumably just because I always had done and was now not allowed to. I counted down the 90 days until I could run and I then did. Slowly. And I got slower. And I got fatter. Until now.

Now I aim to change this. To change the worst excesses of my debauched lifestyle. To cast away champagne and oysters, foie gras and melted toblerone (on cornish ice cream); I have divorced my doughnuts, discarded my Dime bars, pole-axed my pork scratchings. I know it will be difficult and I will not lament my pre-transplant times (1995) but set up a set of new criteria. I will run to smell the roses, to feel the wind on my face, to face the oncoming traffic, to fit into a size 38 waist once more. I will let you know how I get on.