To stay fit or not to stay fit, that is the question....

As I sit here and chomp away on another McVitie's chocolate digestive, piling on yet more pounds, I cast my mind back to the days when I was absolutely mad keen on fitness and sport (yes really! see picture above.) It wasn't so very long ago either. Don't get me wrong because I still have my moments now but the trouble is that every attempt to kick start my New Year fitness routine seems doomed from the outset. I've invested in a new wrist watch/heart rate monitor in the hope that a bit of sports science will incentivise me to get out running. Indeed my Suunto X3HR really has helped; trouble is my legs, and more specifically my calf muscles haven't. One member of my family tells me that I need a decent pair of trainers if I'm going to prevent this sort of injury; he should know because he's been running for a few years now and is one of these people who did sod all sport for most of his life but seems to have taken to the half marathon scene like a duck to water. I've tried several different pairs of old traing shoes so far and always with a similar results. I run down Quarry Hill, past Tonbridge Railway Station and on to the park. Heart rate limits set between 145 and 175 bpm and going quite happily, not puffing too much, if anything holding myself back. Onto Tonbridge park, usually on a Sunday morning the scene is quite lovely, and makes you glad you made the effort instead of just rolling out of bed and watching Andrew Marr on the Politics Show and very little else for most of the morning; there are football games being played out, mini rugby, people flying kites, dog walkers, boats and ducks on the river, canoeists, hikers, other joggers, cyclists getting in my way (sorry forgot it is their cycle track!) etc etc. Just when I'm really going strong I feel a twinge in my calf, ignore it, then slightly further on, a slight strain, slow down a bit, sometimes walk for a while, then around about Barden Lake (about two and a half miles in) it goes, mostly the right but last weekend my left calf and most recently a real spasm down the muscle which told me to stop there and then. I mocked my brother in law for carrying a mobile when he goes out running, but by God I wished I'd had mine on me when I realised I had a 2 mile hobble back home with my watch heart rate alarm beeping away to signal that I'm under my lower limit, as if mocking my injury! I'll have to get those new trainers; apparently you can get a gait test done these days at serious running shops, but of course Kent Running and fitness have sodded off to the Pantiles the moment I become intersted in running again. (Something to do with cheaper rents £27,000 versus £9,000, you'd have thought that it would be the Pantiles which would be the extortionate one, but not so.) This so I'm told can determine whether my feet go straight out in front when I run or whther they roll from side to side, oh yes there are different types of sole for these varying styles. Maybe I should wear some of those long socks like Paula Radcliffe wears, but then you do have to consider whether or not you look a prat as well! Then there's cycling, this time it's not my legs but the cycle wheels which keep buckling; I've got one of those 'hybrid' bikes, which means town-bike with thin rimmed wheels and knobbly tyres. These bikes are really built for the road and I hate the road if there's a dirt track to be ridden on. Result: buckled wheels. There's an art to trueing a wheel and I always manage to muck it up; This time I've given up and taken it to Halfords, but not before knackering all the spoke nipples and making the buckle even worse! Now there's an up and down buckle as well as a side to side one, I give up. I need to be able to ride my bike as I never seem to be able to go swimming either (that is to say proper swimming when you can swim 70 or 80 lengths without the kids screaming they're bored or without some old lady blocking the fitness lane doing slow motion breast stroke.) Cycling is the only option left to me until my calf muscles are properly rested. And you thought that I just sat here blogging and reading books. Rant over (for now)....