Having my blog at Onefatman08 made complete sense when I ran last year’s marathon.
Apart from being a weak bingo joke, I was fat and it was 08.
But many have suggested that as it is now 09 I should update the title, even though as they have kindly pointed out I am still fat.
I think they are missing the point. This blog has nothing to do with accuracy; witness the fact that elsewhere I describe myself as a ‘runner’. Hah!
The day of London Marathon reckoning is ever closer but the ‘what happens next?’ phase that begins immediately afterwards is posing more of a dilemma.
Turning myself from a 15 stone lardy lump into someone who looks like they might be remotely capable of running a marathon has generally not been a lot of fun, involving loads of healthy unpleasant stuff like fish, fruit and vegetables, and of course, hundreds of miles of running.
But the one saving grace has been the kind things people have said: ‘I can’t believe you’ve lost so much weight’, ‘you look so different’, ‘I hardly recognise you’ (although the latter was said by someone I barely know so doesn’t really count) and this has nearly made it all worthwhile but then they all ask ‘what happens next?’. What they mean is are you going to to revert to your fat git on a sofa ways or is this the dawning of a new you.
Now while I can’t deny I feel full of vitality and life, and that hangovers are but a distant memory, the truth is that the actual healthy living bit ain’t a huge amount of fun. For God’s sake I don’t even like running. And of course, there is only so much weight one can lose. Once people are used to me being human shaped and relatively fit the only comments they will pass will be about me looking older or fatter. Not a comforting thought. And even to stay in this health hinterland I will still have to forgo beer and chips, and it will undoubtedly require more bloody running.
So there has been reward in getting into shape, but staying in shape sounds like purgatory in trainers.
On balance I think I’ll let myself happily go to seed. After 30 years of sedentary living it has taken me three months to get fit for a marathon, so I plan on another 30 years of pies, pints and chocolate, and then I’ll think about doing it again.
Yesterday I was staying in London and on a whim decided to undertake my training run in the hotel gym rather than pound the streets.
After an hour of the most profoundly depressing experience of my life I could only ask: why? Why does anyone subject themselves to this horrendous activity?
I spent an hour opposite another fat man, an excessively sweaty fat man, and despite running for an hour neither of us moved, and consequently never got further away from each other. The room stank of bodies, the noise was horrendous and the atmosphere grim.
When I jog outdoors, I travel. I hear the birds in the trees, I splash through puddles, the wind blows on my face and I feel alive. In the gym I just ran and ran in the same place with my eyes focused on the seconds very slowly ticking away on the LED display in front of me. The only puddles were caused by other people’s sweat on the floor. The only wind… well you get the idea.
And we spend millions between us for the privilege of enduring this torture?
Show me another gym and I will run a mile – or maybe 26.
This week someone asked why my blog was called One Fat Man 08. I explained that it was rooted in bingo callers’ rhyming slang for 88 being two fat ladies. As there is only one of me I am obviously One Fat Man 08.
‘But you’re not fat,’ she said. And there is the not unpleasing dilemma. Through a diet of pavement pounding and broccoli, I have managed to shed just 3lbs short of 2 stone since January 2nd and while I’m still in no position to show off a six-pack, I’m a lot more human shaped than I used to be.
I have two choices: I either go back to the bingo callers’ lexicography and find a more suitable sobriquet: One Man 31, for example, meaning Get Up and Run, or perhaps more aptly One Man 43 meaning Down on Your Knees or even One Man 75 meaning Strive and Strive.
Or there is always the second choice which is to is to eat lots of pies and drink lots of beer so I fit my name again.
I think I know which I prefer.
Thanks to those who have pointed out that this blog is the number one search result in Google for ‘one fat athlete’ as well as ‘highly tuned athlete’.
I will leave those who know me to decide which is the more apt.
The last time I broke into a sweat through sporting endeavour was when I waddled enthusiastically from the sofa to the front door to greet the pizza delivery man.
Therefore you may well ask why my somewhat corpulent frame will be gracing the starting line of this year’s London Marathon. (Whether it graces the finishing line is open to speculation and those who have speculated are firmly of the opinion that it won’t).
It is a good question, and one for which I don’t really have a good answer. At 46 years old, and weighing just under 15 stone, the odds are stacked against me but I suppose that is the challenge. There is a Rocky in all of us. In my case there may be two.
Can I manage in the next three months to achieve the levels of fitness I had in my youth so that I can complete the 26.2 mile course on April 13th?
Actually I need to achieve greater levels of fitness than I had then, as my only previous marathon attempt in my early twenties ended in failure around the 20 mile mark, mainly due to a complete lack of training, and my presence in a nightclub until 4 a.m. the night before.
I am both older, wiser and fatter now and shan’t be making the mistake of underestimating the marathon again. To have any chance of completing the demanding course I will need to use all the time I have got to get into shape.
The marathon requires effort, sacrifice, dedication and then more effort. Just tying the laces on my trainers make me puff but my doctor has given me the thumbs up to compete so the hard work begins now.
There is a very long way to go. And then I have to run 26 miles.
