![\"IMG_1584\"](\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/IMG_1584-500x386.jpg\")
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A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with my twin sister, Anne. I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but the conversation came on to the subject of being healthy at our advanced age.<\/p>\n
‘Well, at least I’m not fat,’ I said.<\/p>\n
There was a pause. Quite a long pause. This wasn’t good.<\/p>\n
‘But you have a belly,’ she responded eventually. I was gutted. It was true!<\/p>\n
You see, these things don’t just happen. You don’t go to bed one night and wake up in the morning with a fat belly. You get fat in increments so small that you hardly notice it. And you deny it whenever you see yourself in the mirror. I lost quite a bit of weight a few years back, dropped down a waist size, and have hovered around the same weight since, until fairly recently, it seems.<\/p>\n
Travel has done it. When you travel in my job you eat more and exercise less. Also: I love food. I love wine. I hate the thought of dieting. So exercise is important. I ran the Marathon du Medoc in 2013<\/a> and 2014<\/a>. But since then, without the focus of training for a long run, I have been exercising less. So the dreadful realisation of my belly has prompted me to decided that I need to get back to running properly. Maybe I need to do another long run?<\/p>\n Back in 2013, I really loved the whole experience of taking up running, with a goal in mind. And although I have done sporadic runs of late, I’ve not been running long enough distances. So it’s like starting again. At first it seems too hard: the body isn’t used to being punished this way. But it gets better. The big difference about coming back to running is that I know I can do long distances. And running is very psychological. It’s about deciding to keep going even if it would be far nicer to walk.<\/p>\n Even when I was running marathons, though, I was a little lazy. I ran the second marathon a bit overweight and a bit under-trained. I took it really easy. I would love to get to the stage where I’m running at a good pace, like my buddy Greg Sherwood. We’ve run together quite a bit, but he’s just that much faster than me. It probably helps that he runs most days, something I’ve not been able to commit to.<\/p>\n It made a big difference to me to run the first marathon. It showed me that I could be self-disciplined enough to train, and brave and strong enough to get round the 42 km course only 14 weeks after starting running. It showed me I had the potential to do better than I’d have imagined at something I’d always believed myself to be poor at (at school, I used to loath cross country runs, and would be one of the stragglers at the back of the pack).<\/p>\n In my job, at my age, it takes quite a lot of discipline not to become fat. I guess it’s biology. I’m grateful, though, to my sister for her honesty. Having a belly is a big risk factor for blokes my age, and I have lots of plans, there’s lot’s to see and explore, and I want to be around for a while. So I shall be running regularly.<\/p>\n If you are thinking about running, I’d recommend either downloading a running app to your phone (I use Runkeeper, and a shift to the iPhone SE which is smaller has helped make strapping the phone to my arm easier), or buying a GPS running watch (I had a Garmin that was pretty good). Keeping track of your distance and pace is a good motivator.<\/p>\n And if you see me packing on the pounds, help me out of my denial by pointing it out. But do it gently, please.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with my twin sister, Anne. I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but the conversation came on to the subject…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15504,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15502\/revisions\/15504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}