Chocolate brownies and marathons.

Yo whats happening my peeps?

Ag not much excitement from my side hey! I'm on my lunch break now, a rare peaceful one these days! I've been out the whole morning and most of yesterday doing departmental section audits at Groote Schuur hospital, you can't believe how insanely huge that place is! And so far I've only done the old main building, the old hospital. According to my new pedometer (the larney little step, distance, speed, time counter I bought along with a new sports watch last weekend) I have walked around 17km, about 20,000 steps, just at the hospital the last 2 days. And I'm far from finished, I still have to do the NEW main hospital, which is like a city in one building, which is likely to triple the amount of walking I've done so far!

All this along with the running I now do at the gym almost every day, usually 3km lately, and a circuit workout and an hour of squash, is contributing to a pair of constantly stiff legs and gradually increasing fitness levels. I have upped my game with the fitness mission because I recently signed up for next years Two Oceans half marathon of 21km and in the interim registered for loads of short runs, starting with a 10km this coming Sunday up Chapmans Peak. So apart from the fact that I AM gonna kak off on Sunday, I've been putting in the effort to train as hard as my endurance can handle, which isn't much yet! My body is certainly building up the strength quickly, but my lungs are not handling and feel like they are going to explode out of my chest at times in an effort to keep up the oxygen supply to my body. So my next mission is to quit smoking, and soon, but I've decided I like smoking too much so I can't do it on my own as in just quit cold turkey style, and I'm not interested in drugs and nicotine replacement gimmicks. Therefore I have decided to go the Allen Carr route, via one of their half day clinics which apparently has a 90% success rate on the first attempt. Go to the website and see what it's all about, I'm not going to explain it here, but basically it looks like a system that may have a chance of defeating my smoking addiction. Only problem is it's so popular the next free spot on one of the clinics is mid January next year. So I sigh a sigh of relief as I get to enjoy my fags a bit longer!

Meantime I will have to bear the consequences in my new athletic endeavours, but I'm sure I'll be ok, albeit not posting any record times and probably barfing up chunks of blackened lung along the way!

This weekends run is a road race up a mountain, then the next two weeks I'm doing Trail Runs of 10km and 6km which are off-road runs through the wine lands along country paths through vineyards, forests, mountains, etc. These will be a fair bit tougher, but I'm looking forward to the idea of the fresh air outdoor adventure aspect of the sport.

The other reason I'm boosting the fitness now is that my weight loss took a knock over the last week and a half (spit braai last weekend, lots of junk food this weekend including steak, bacon, eggs, pate's, chocolate brownies, etc, and 2 weekends of heavy drinking), and until the last weekend I was not losing any weight, actually gained a bit, unable to break the 91.6kg mark which I reached 3 times in 9 days,  and as such have gone over the red line on my graph depicting my daily target. So now I have some catching up to do to make the 80kg mark by Christmas, and so far it's working, this week I've lost 2kg in 4 days already. This morning I was 90.9kg. By Sunday morning before the race I want to be at most 90kg, just so I have that little bit less to have to lug up the mountain with me!

There are a few potential hiccups between now and Christmas, as can be expected at this time of the year, starting tonight with Liezel's company function, the Party in the Park, which is likely to include something unhealthy. I will refrain from too much beer and junk food, but admittedly the delicious salad I had for lunch didn't totally fill the gap, and after the walking I'm going to do the rest of the day I will probably be hungry enough by the time of the party to be tempted by a boerewors roll or something equally delicious with an ice-cold brew!

Then I have 2 work Christmas lunches and a few other functions involving nice food along the way.

So it will be hard work keeping ahead of the target, once I'm back on track, but watch me I'll do it! I will impress the least believing of you!

And someday soon I'll get back on track with the photography too, which I haven't had time for lately. I do miss it, and I will get it going again in earnest as soon as I've reached my weight loss goal, which right now takes up a lot of my spare time.

But for now I'll leave you with the menu I created for my office Friday tea last week: Home made very Chocolate brownies (with extra chocolate chips), ice cream and a hot chocolate sauce I made using 5 large Bar-One chocolates, a tin of condensed milk and a pot of cream. Then for savoury I made 3 pate's to go with a biscuit selection: rich, spicy chicken liver pate with brandy, smoked snoek, cream cheese and parsley pate, and an avocado & garlic hummus. For extra's I bought coconut cookies and Christmas mince pies. See the photo below for a conservative idea of the feast that my colleagues stuffed themselves on delightedly! Once again I am the undisputed Friday tea King! And, I'm a fucken boy outperforming the old tannies!