Flab ...enough is enough.

Al Humphreys talks about there being three stages of flabbiness. The first being physical, the second being mental and the third being the worst of all moral.

Since the SIPR, I have without a doubt embraced all three ...which has pissed me of somewhat. It is an insidious creep - the initial decline was due to injury. On the tail end of the SIPR I had a nagging pain up the front of my left shin which later turned into full blow Tibialis Anterior Tendonitus and even walking aggravated it. With rest being the preferred solution, I more of less stopped doing everything ...and the first stage kicked in with the result I am now heavier than I have been in around 6 years. Getting out of the "habit" of excercise, training and adventure led to reading more (good) and sitting on the sofa watching the TV (f@ckin dreadful). Fairly quickly, I could actually tell you the times when certain programmes were on !

Despite the injury being healed, I was slow to get back to living the life which makes me happy and the guilt of not doing what I used to had been replaced a less ideal (and certainly unsustainable) lifestyle. Thankfully, a scan through my photograph collection created a call to arms.

The weight is proving difficult to shift (much harder than shifting a bag or chips, cakes or pints of beer) but it is going. The passion of hill racing and being amongst mountains is back and it was time to get the vest back on (which is a bit tighter around the belly than it should be).

The return to racing was Maddy Moss - one of my favourite mid-week hill races. The climb was sore (given I had to carry the extra gut to the summit of Ben Cleuch) but the descent was ok. Crossing the line, I had dropped six minutes since last year which was exactly the boot up the arse I was needing to show the impact of flab !

Next up was a trip up to Skye and the Glamaig race. Decided to take in some Corbetts on the way up and had a slow run into Iron Lodge before a high level return to the van over Aonach Bhuide, Faochaig & Sguman Coinntich which gave a 30km round. Glamaig was great but again the climb was seriously slow and I crossed the line at this one a full five minutes slower than my 2009 effort.

The third race is a bit of a benchmark event ...the Glasgow 5k ParkRun. I have found it a good measure of where my fitness is - unsuprisingly, I recorded my slowest time ever !

The road to recovery continued today with an early morning run up Ben Lomond which was brilliant fun - descended in time to miss the bad weather and the inevitable crowds which makes the descent awkward.

Stange as it may seem despite the terrible race times, they have been great times and a rediscovery. Roll on the Dufftown Highland Games and Ben Rinnes next weekend !