A LITTLE ABOUT MY PAST

Well where do i start?

Today Mattthew, i'm going to be Geoff, 45 years old, 5'7" and feeling a complete useless wreck of a human being.
but I do have a vision and a goal, to get myself a lot healthier than i currently am. I'm 220lbs in weight, I've used the american format of lbs as nobody will know how many stones that is.

its 15st 7lbs for those who wish to gasp in horror, at my worst i think i tipped 16st on the scales, yes i had to go to a public weighbridge to weigh in.
The picture on the left is how i feel i look, lazy, sedentary and depressed I've let myself get into this state again, just imagine that body and the head of George Clooney and that's probably a good description of me.




As a child I was always active and outside, football in winter, cricket in the summer and tennis when Wimbledon was on, i didn't have a bike until i was about 12, my parents moved 3 miles from school and i didn't qualify for a free bus so i cycled there and back most days after doing the longest paper round in the world going up one of the steepest hills in Cheshire up to the farm by Delamere Park and back home, used to hate Wednesdays and Sundays(not the ice cream sundaes) as the local papers and Sunday supplements were a bit heavy to say the least, look at the paper boys and girls of today, they get mollycoddled with trolleys and hi vis bags, wimps, and their bags only have about 3 papers in!!


when i left school i immediately joined the British Army, more fitness than you can shake a camouflaged stick at, i was never any good at running but you were forced to do it and it did improve my overall fitness. i can remember doing a cross country run once a term as one company against another, A company was mine, B company were just useless, we had 4 terms and on the first one i was a young NIG(new intake group) think i came in 123rd, by the end of term 4 just before i passed out(something i do now thinking of running!) i came in 45th, yes they don't give medals to 45th place but i felt really good and even managed to sprint Usain Bolt style in the final 50 metres.
i spent 5 years serving my Queen and country, as well as doing 8 mile runs with full kit on there was always the football to keep me going but even then discovering beer and my diet was taking its toll on my fitness, i was starting to struggle with runs, this was a combination of being hungover most mornings and starting to put weight on. at the time i didn't think i was overweight but i did get many comments from the fitness geeks, wish id taken notice or had someone to put an arm around me and say "come on lets get you fitter", i found i was left to my own devices and went backwards. 
i did manage to do the Ripon half marathon in a very respectable time of 1 hr 40 Min's, wish i could do that now!!


on leaving the army, i was back in my home town of Northwich in Cheshire, not the leafy Cheshire of footballers but the industrial scar on the landscape of Cheshire, ICI decorates the skylines around here. i eventually managed to play in a football team on a Sunday morning, a few Saturdays and the odd evening 7 a side game but that was it. having sustained a few injuries the final straw was a torn ankle tendon which still plays havoc with my ankle now 22 years later so i packed in playing.
i did do some running prior to my wedding but that soon faded out a bit like the marriage really, guess i just didn't have the incentive back then. 
in 2008 in mid depression i decided i needed to do something, i do my best for charities and decided to search the Internet for something exciting to do, being an ex soldier one thing stood out for me, a new charity to provide rehabilitation for our wounded boys and girls had been set up and they were doing a cycle ride from Portsmouth to Paris, i signed up, 320 miles of french countryside it was advertised as, £2500 was needed to raise individually and that was daunting, in fact it was harder than the ride itself! i had bought an old racing bike off eBay, drove to Buxton to pick it up and got on it straight away, i enjoyed the training for the ride but was worried id struggle to do the 70-80 miles a day they said we'd be doing, so i decided to do 70 miles in a day. for anyone thinking of doing this you'll say to yourself "where the hell do i go?" i just hit the A49 and rode down to Shrewsbury got to about 35 miles and turned around, i took 2 bananas and a bottle of energy juice, that is never enough to keep you going, by the time i hit Tarporley about 5 miles from home my legs fell off, i had to stop to try and get some feeling back in them, i had no energy whatsoever, i searched in my back pack and found £2, my immediate thought was "CHOCOLATE!!!!" I summoned up some mental strength and rode the next 2 miles to a petrol station at a snails pace, how i managed to walk into the shop still amazes me, £2 worth of chocolate and i was boosted enough to get home. covered in sweat i thought to myself that France was going to be very hard indeed.

the ride in France was a fantastic experience and id recommend it to anyone, yes anyone, there were people in their 70's doing the ride, some even bigger than me belly wise and we all made it around as did the inspiring lads who had lost limbs on active service in Afghanistan, you couldn't not finish when they are so determined to do it with half a body!!
i liked it, no! loved it that much i went back in 2011 and did it again. 


in between the rides i took myself away again to escape from married life and went to the island of Malta to do the half marathon there again with the soldiers charity help for heroes. being a bit depressed again I decided it was a bit of a holiday and ended up drinking too much and having a good time in the sun instead of preparing for the run. this took its toll and i pulled my calf muscle after 15 Min's of running, being the old soldier that i am i carried on and finished the course in a very sore and disappointing 2 hours and 30 Min's, carrying on tore my calf muscle and i was in agony, i am still suffering with this injury today 2 and a half years later.


so apart from the cycle rides and the half marathon i have done very little exercise for around 15 years, i still have a road bike and on the 29th of July i am cycling from Manchester to Chester which is around 48 miles for the charity BREAKTHROUGH BREAST CANCER i haven't done much training apart from  a 10 and a 20 miles ride a few weeks ago but I'm quietly confident of completing the task.


that's just a little about me, i hope you'll tune in again and follow me on my challenge to get fitter, healthier, reduce my BMI of 34 and waistline of 40 and hopefully this will enable me to live a bit longer, thanks for reading, Geoff