Just Keep Going

Last weekend I was out for my long Sunday Run. As I ran up a hill about four miles in to the half marathon distance I was planning, another runner was about one hundred yards ahead. As they reached the crest of the hill, they stopped. And I almost shouted out, “No, don’t stop!! You’ve done it, you’ve got the top, just keep going.” Why stop when you have achieved your aim, why not carry on?

The runner only stopped for about ten or fifteen seconds, and then they carried on with their run, but stopping is something I really try and avoid doing when I am out running, and this is what I want to explore. The reasons why we all sometimes feel the need just to stop. It does not mean we are quitting, but we are just pausing for a bit. Trust me, over the past year, there have been loads of times I have felt like giving up.

Now I think there are lots of reasons to stop when out on a run. Crossing a road, stopping to take pictures if the view is nice, stopping to chat to a friend who you happen to pass by. All of those things I do lots of the time, but what I really try and avoid doing is stopping for the sake of it.

Stopping to do these things is what I would call “conscious stopping”. I am making a decision to stop through my own choice. Stopping because I am struggling is more “unconscious stopping”. What I mean by that is that the reason I am stopping is because I feel I simply cannot go on any more. It is a choice almost being forced upon me. And it is one that I can also choose to overcome.

Running along the riverside later on in the run

That does not mean I do not feel like stopping a lot of the time. Oh good god yes. In the first twenty minutes of a run when I am still trying to get over that threshold of feeling like I am dying with every step. When I am tired and getting close to home I sometimes think that I could stop here and then just walk home, or use the distance home for a “warm down”. Or like the runner I saw last weekend, when I get to the top of a hill. But I choose not to.

This is something which only came to me as I became a more experienced runner – trust me I am no expert, very much just a hobby runner – but stopping, particularly when I got to the top of a hill began to really annoy me. I am not annoyed at other people, what I mean is that if I stop I really annoy myself. Because I know that if I just carry on, then I will begin to recover, that my breathing will get back into a rhythm, that the pain in the legs will start to subside, and that the sense of achievement at NOT stopping will act as a positive reinforcement to the effort I am putting in to my training. Just remember how quickly you recover when you finish a run, even one where you feel that you cannot give any more. Your body is an amazing thing.

An example of conscious stopping. Taking a picture at Aberdeen beach on another run

I felt exactly the same a couple of weeks ago. Long run, about a mile or so to the finish back at my house, struggling a bit with the distance, coming up a hill, which I knew was about to get steeper before I got to the top. And to add to the fun, it was also into the wind. Lots of thoughts ran through my head. Just get to the brow then walk a bit. Just get past this section then stop. It will be ok when I stop.

But I chose not to stop. I slowed down – still running but just a bit slower – and I kept going. I made it up the brow. I made it past the steep bit. Yes, my lungs were burning a bit by that stage and my legs were hurting but I just kept on going. And when I got to the top my thoughts immediately turned to recovring from the effort.

I took deep breaths. I extended my stride a little bit. I just kept going. And within fifty metres or so I began to feel a bit better. My breathing began to calm down but more than that, the sense of achieving at NOT stopping began to kick in. I had beaten the hill. But more than that, I had beaten the nagging doubt in my mind about whether I COULD get up that hill and keep going.

“a sense of how deep I am digging”

I have written many times before that running breeds resilience and I think experience also builds confidence. Knowing that you can get through tough times and come out the other end, only really comes from going through the tough times in the first place. I have had lots of running experiences over the past few years that give me a sense of how deep I am digging to keep going. That realisation that you can pull something out from deep within you that you did not even know that you had.

And that is why I think it is so important to just keep going when you get to the top of the hill. As long as you keep moving is the key part. You will quickly start to recover. You will begin to feel better. You will be able to keep going. All you need to do is convince yourself that you are capable of doing it.

“training your mind to cope”

Your mind has a tendency to give up long before your body does, so training your mind to cope is as important as training your body to get through the challenge you have set yourself. I am not pretending that any of this is easy, I know it is not, but what I want to get across is that if you can believe in yourself, then you can achieve such great things. Things you never believed were possible of yourself.

I saw an old picture of myself this week. One from around six years ago where I was in the background of a picture of some work colleagues at a trade show. A much fatter and unhealthy version of myself. But I remember that time very well and at that time I felt that there was little I could do to change my life. I was in my late forties and I was fat and that was just the lifestyle I led and that was how things were going to be. But I chose a different path and it has led me to where I am now, and I am eternally grateful I did.

• 

• 

The guy on the left could never contemplate what the guy on the right has achieved

There have been many times over the last year or so where I have felt like giving up. Things have been so scary, so crazy, so full of worry that it has been hard not to give in to the overwhelming nature of what we have all faced. But we have all carried on. We have all made that conscious choice to knuckle down, to do our best, to just keep going.

So the next time you think you are going to stop. The next time you reach the crest of that hill. The next time you feel like you cannot go on. Just take another step. Breathe. Then another step. Just. Keep. Going.

Rest

Running regularly is really important to maintain fitness and motivation – for me at least – but you know what else I find hugely important? Having a rest.

For the past few months I have been running very regularly, five times a week. Being at home and not travelling has given me the time to establish a running routine pretty much on a par with when I have been marathon training in the past.

Mondays and Fridays have been rest days with Sundays my regular day for a long run, all the way up to the seventeen miles I did a couple of weeks back. But I firmly believe the only way that I have been able to run these kinds of distances is because there are the days when I do not go running at all.

My weekly mileage has averaged around 30 miles a week since May – after cutting back in April due to the restrictions around Coronavirus – and I feel comfortable at that kind of range. At a minimum I have ran a marathon distance over the week, sometimes extending up to forty miles in total.

Last week I set out to run at least a marathon in the week as part of the virtual Race to the Stones challenge. That in itself was not too huge a test because of my current fitness level, but I ended up running the distance over three days rather than the full week, spurred on by great running weather and an eight mile run on Tuesday that morphed into a twelve miler.

“I was pretty tired”

With that run done I was almost halfway there, then a 10km with a friend turned into seven miles and I was only seven miles short of the finish line. Do not get me wrong, I was pretty tired after nineteen miles in two days, but running on tired legs is something you get used to and with only seven to go I felt I had it in me to get there with one final push on Thursday evening.

I did decide to run an easy course, downhill and flat so that I would finish at the beach area in Aberdeen, and it was a perfect night for running. Barely any wind, temperatures in the low 60s fahrenheit (around 15C) and so as I approached the last mile I could even manage a bit of a sprint finish to get there.

So the last mile of my marathon challenge was also the fastest mile of my marathon challenge – oh to be able to do that in a real marathon race – as I bust a gut to get it done and finish on the beach front with views of a flat calm North Sea.

One challenge done, I also received the reward from another challenge last week, for a run I actually did back in March, before the lockdown was put in place.

The London Landmarks Half Marathon was one race which was cancelled and then turned into a virtual event – the Local Landmarks Challenge – to raise money for the charities which would have missed out from receiving donations raised by runners taking part. Back in March I ran through some of my favourite Aberdeen locations and this week I got my hands on the medal.

As the London Landmarks race is not taking place, the medal that I received is the one which runners doing the race would have got and now it is hanging with pride among my collection

• 

  The excellent London Landmarks Half Marathon medal is the latest to hang on my wall

• 

After completing my marathon challenge, I took the decision to take things a bit easy for the rest of the week. I went for a run on Saturday with my friend Susan but this Sunday, for the first time I months, I did not go for a run.

Now this had a lot to do with the fact that on Saturday my wife and I had met up with friends who we had not seen for months and it was great to have a beer and a catch up, but it is also to do with knowing when my body needs a rest.

“Rest is as important as running”

I could have easily gone for a run on Sunday evening, but I decided not to, to give my body an extra day to recover. Rest is as important as running. It is the time your body gets to strengthen your muscles and also can help to refresh the mind. Becoming stale and jaded has been something I have been attempting to avoid these last few months, choosing different routes to run, going different distances and then, ultimately, just taking it easy.

I did, however, find it hard not to feel guilty at not going out. Part of me was craving to go and feeling bad that I was not. But that sense of guilt has to be balanced with the bigger picture. Will missing one run make any difference to my fitness or my ability to get out this week? No, it really won’t. In fact, missing a few runs will not have a huge impact, and in reality, I think the rest will provide many benefits.

So if you have days when you just cannot face going out, that is totally ok. We all have those days. And I know that when I do go out next, my body and mind will be fresher because of the days when I sat on my sofa.

Bodytalk

This is a blog that I have wanted to write for a long time, but for a variety of reasons I could never find the right time to do it. Now, maybe, is the right time. The subject? I want to talk about male body image.

In the early days of lockdown a friend of mine told me that he had seen something online that at “at the end of this, we are all going to come out of lockdown as one of three things. A hunk, a chunk or a drunk.” Like everybody else when I heard that for the first time I burst out laughing. It was so true and it set out one of the challenges we have all faced over the past few months. How to stay healthy when life has been turned upside down?

“more likely to be a chunk than a hunk”

While his story was light-hearted banter, it also set me thinking, about who would I emerge as. I did not think I would come out as a drunk (though I have had a few more glasses of wine during the week than I would normally) but more likely to be a chunk than a hunk. You see, I have struggled with my weight for most of my life. I have always been tall and was big for my age, but you do not get a nickname at primary school of “Tubby” unless you are used to putting away a few good puddings.

As I went through my teenage years I thinned out. I grew taller, my weight stayed the same, I played a lot of sport – five a side football, basketball, badminton – so I was pretty fit. That stayed the same until I got into my twenties then for various reasons the weight started to creep up once more. Life changed, lifestyle changed. Pounds were added.

“no desire to keep on going”

In my early thirties I did a bit more exercise, I began running, culminating in a few 10ks and the Great North Run in 2003 which, ironically, probably put me off running for the next fifteen years or so. Not because it was such a horrible experience, but more that it was the culmination of a goal and after doing that, there was definitely no desire to keep on going or to achieve something else. I really had not trained properly for it so while I went in thinking that this might be the stepping stone on to running a marathon, when I got to the end the prospect of turning around and running back put me right off. The habit of regular exercise faded away as it had in my twenties.

Into my late thirties and forties and a job where I traveled internationally almost every week so staying in hotels, eating out, enjoying the delights of airline lounges and before I knew it I was the heaviest I had ever been, was heading toward fifty and there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop it.

“it has transformed my life”

Thankfully, about four and a half years now I resolved to make a change. I lost weight, I began running again and this time I believe it has transformed my life. In the last couple of years I have become fitter than I have ever been in my life and all of my best times for running distances were all set last year. Times far quicker than anything I achieved when I ran previously.

But even after all of this, whenever I look in the mirror, I still see a fat guy staring back at me. You may think this is stupid. I have managed, since 2016, to keep fit and healthy. Yes my weight has gone up and down a bit since I got to my lowest weight in around June of that year, but it is nowhere near where it was at the end of 2015.

So why then am I talking about it now? I think there is a huge – and totally unnecessary – focus on the issue of weight and body image in women, but I think there is similar, yet understated, pressure on men. It is less obvious, particularly for middle aged men, yet as important. This recent period has seen a huge focus on mental health issues and for me, this is about self-esteem.

I am never going to be a guy with a six pack or bulging muscles from doing the weights at the gym, and to be honest, I do not want to be that guy either. I just want to feel healthy and fit. I think, in my case, it is pressure from within.

“it is a fear”

It is a desire not to go back to being that guy who could barely walk up a couple of flights of stairs without feeling seriously out of breath. It is a fear of returning to the days when I would be embarrassed to try on clothes in case they did not fit me. It is not wanting to turn down invitations for events because I am worried that I will meet someone who knew me before I got fat.

Now I know full well that in comparison to where I was in 2015 I am not fat, but I equally know that I am not as thin as I was at this point last year. Since lockdown I have continued to run regularly, usually five times a week, but I fear that is masking the additional eating and drinking that I have done while in the house. The temptations are always there – peanuts, biscuits and cakes are my big downfall – and ironically NOT being away has meant that there have been no breaks from the routine. Usually when I travel, I am really strict about what I eat and drink but that is, of course, not happening, and there is no short-term prospect of that changing either.

“Does that really matter?”

So all of this has made me worried, I am not going to lie. That is why, on top of my usual running routine, I feel the need to re-focus on my diet and my weight once more. Because if I am lighter than I will be quicker, right? And if I am lighter than my running will be easier, right? Does that really matter? I realise people are much more occupied with their own health worries and concerns than about what I look like or how fast I run so if no-one else cares why should I?

Well it’s because I do not want that fat guy that I see staring out at me when I look at the mirror to actually be the guy who is staring in. I think I will always feel like I am that fat guy, I do not know if that will ever change. What can change is that I can know that I have done all I can to be the healthy and happy guy that I hope others see. And if I know that, then what others think is irrelevant. It is about the inner voice, the voice that can bolster you up or take you down. It is about being positive about who I am and what I have, and can, achieve.

“I believe that this is is a dip”

Everything is wrapped up in how I perceive myself, not what anyone else thinks or believes. I have run marathons, I know, really know, deep down, how hard things can be at low times. I hope this is not one of those times. I believe that this is a dip. But it is a dip which has come at a low time for many of us.

For anyone else who thinks that “this is it”. That things are as they are and they cannot change. For anyone who doubts themselves. Know that you are not alone. I have gone through these thoughts so many times in my head over the years. Have the faith and belief in yourself about what you are capable of, because I can assure you, you are capable of far more. I need to find a bit more of that faith right now.

And if we all believe that, then we can all understand the struggles we all go through, the challenges we have to overcome and how much stronger we all will be having emerged to the other side. These are tough days, yes, but these are great days, because these are your days. They are the only days we get.

Alone

Running has done many things for me. It has got me fit. It has got me out to see sights I would never have otherwise seen. It has given me motivation in ways I could not have imagined. But I continually find it does one other thing too – it helps combat loneliness when I am away from home.

This is not a “woe is me, look at how tough my life is” post, not at all. I have a great family. I am incredibly lucky to have had a job which, over the past twelve years, has seen me travel to many incredible places. But in truth, many of those trips are made on my own. And many of those trips involved lots of nights staying in a succession of hotel rooms and lots of time on my own.

That kind of lifestyle – lots of flights, eating on planes, eating in hotels, drinking in hotels – was what saw my weight balloon until I got to the stage almost four years ago now when I realised I needed to do something to get back on an even keel and restore my health. Running was not really part of the plan initially but as time has gone on I have found it is essential, providing a positive impact for both my physical and mental health.

One of the images of me I felt embarrassed to view

Loneliness is not always about being on my own. I find that I can feel alone even when I am in a room surrounded by other people – whether that is a meeting room or a restaurant. It is a sense of separation from those I love and care about and while people are, of course, generally friendly, it is simply not the same feeling as being inside your own house.

Time spent on my own can be therapeutic of course, but too many hours spent in hotel bedrooms watching a succession of twenty four hour news channels – often the only English language channels which are shown in hotels – or doing work until late at night, or scrolling through my phone looking through social media posts is not conducive to long-term healthy habits. I rarely turn the TV on in hotel rooms now. And allied to the ready availability of room service or hotel restaurants that temptation to comfort eat can also become overwhelming as a way of compensating for being away. Running takes me away from all of that.

” That is not “alone” time.”

I am in the middle of a really busy spell of traveling right now, a spell which in the past might have seen me endlessly whiling away my time doing the things I have outlined above, but now I use that time to get out. I use it to plan when I am going to run, where I am going to run and how far that run is going to be. Yes, of course, when I run I often run on my own, but that is not wasted time on my own. That is not “alone” time. That is time when I know what I am doing is helping me in so many ways.

I do try and run with colleagues when I am away with work, but often that just does not work out, so, like it was over the past ten days or so, I find myself out running solo in darkened streets.

My recent work trip was to Amsterdam to attend a trade show. With the Glasgow half marathon coming up next weekend, I wanted to maintain the progress that I felt I had made in recent weeks and get in some consistent runs. So for five of the seven mornings when I was away I set my alarm early, I got out the door of the hotel long before it was light, and I pounded my way through the quiet streets.

• 

• 

Amsterdam is, of course, very flat, so it was a nice contrast to my usual hilly runs at home and there is something magical about that feeling when you know that you have motivated yourself to get out and do something that very few people are doing. With the desire for a long run to get done, I even found myself in bed before 9pm on Saturday night so I could get out just after 5am on Sunday morning to get in an eleven mile run. The difference between me now and me four years ago in terms of motivation is like night and day (if you will excuse the pun).

Returning from Amsterdam on Tuesday night, I was only at home for less than seven hours before my next trip, over to Madrid. Again, this was another night in another hotel, this time in an industrial estate area on the outskirts of the city. My first thought when I was unpacking and repacking? Get the running gear in and get out and explore.

As it was, there was a running/cycling path very close to the hotel so once again I was out before dawn to get in a 5km run before going to work.

• 

• 

You may also think, “does all that running before work not mean that you are tired at work?”. Well the simple answer to that is no. I find that the positive feeling I get from a run carries me through the rest of the day. The run helps kick start my metabolism and that continues into my daily routine. One thing I would like to do a bit more of though is sleep a bit longer and more soundly. Constantly sleeping in different beds does not really help either, nor does having to take very early or very late flights. Speaking of which, I fly to the United States in the morning for a short business trip – not exactly ideal preparation for a half marathon.

Running has helped me get through things in ways that I could not really have believed a few years back. Unfortunately I picked up a bit of a cold towards the end of the Amsterdam trip so I am taking things easy this weekend and taking a break for a few days. I am in good shape for Glasgow and missing a run or two now will not really make a huge amount of difference. As I have said many times before, I am a hobby runner, it is just something I do for fun and I need to remember that more often. Hence why I am also chilled about the transatlantic trip.

There is no doubt that running has had a hugely positive impact on my body and my mind. I am not trying to preach here. I am not trying to say that everyone has to get up get out and run marathons to make them feel better about themselves, absolutely not. What I am saying is that the next time I go away and feel a bit down or alone, I know that I can put on my shoes, go outside, run some miles, enjoy time in my own company and soothe the stresses of life.

Everybody Hurts

Training for a race can be straightforward. You get a plan. You stick to the plan. You run. This week I have faced a more challenging issue. I have picked up a bit of an injury so now I am having to work out when NOT to run.

Now again, you might think this is easy. Just stop running. Give things a bit of a rest and a bit of time to recover then get back into it once more. In many ways, this would be the right approach, but for various reasons, I am terrified about not running.

I began to feel a bit sore a couple of weeks ago after a hard seven mile run, it feels like a strain in my groin on the left hand side, just below my stomach. It is not hugely painful, just a dull ache, but it is quite sore if I am lying down and then sit up. It probably was not ideal that I picked this up just before I did the twenty one mile Brewdog Run last weekend, but you cannot plan these things. There was no way I was not doing the run, and to be frank, the injury is not so painful that it prevents me running. It is just a constant niggle.

During the run itself, generally I felt fine, though as the distance mounted up, the injury became steadily more uncomfortable and stiff. Mind you, what probably did not help was basically a six mile hill in the middle part of the run itself, which you can see in the image at the top of the blog. The incline was very gentle – the run is mainly along a former railway line so it is not exactly the north face of the Eiger – but it did go on for what felt like a very, very long time. It was also quite exposed and was probably the worst of the weather that day, with a bit of a breeze across and against and rain.

• 

I did the run with a friend from the JogScotland group and that made it really enjoyable, plus with a couple of stops along the way, there was also the opportunity to sample a couple of beers to keep me going. Before a pile more at the finish at the Brewdog Brewery of course!

Just as the rain started, the first beer of the day after 10km

Normally I would not even contemplate having anything other than water or the electrolyte drink I usually take on a long run such as this, but as this was very much a fun run rather than a race I had made up my mind beforehand that I was going to enter into the spirit of the event. Far too often, I take this far too seriously, so this was a good chance to relax and have a bit of fun. I did find it strange to have the two stops, and it was quite a challenge to get back into a rhythm after stopping for ten minutes or so to grab a drink and some chocolate. I guess for trail running, if I ever get into that, then this is another skill to learn.

The Brewdown Run medal may be paper but it means as much as my others

After the run was finished, I definitely stiffened up and while my legs felt fine come Sunday, my groin was pretty painful. So much so, that I decided to have a few days rest, even eschewing my usual Tuesday night JogScotland run, and I also put some Ice-cold healing cream that I got as a freebie at the Barcelona Expo to help things along.

This brings me to the point about being scared of not running. This will sound a bit irrational, but I fear if I stop running, even for a short while, I will lose all of my fitness, my motivation to run will go and as a consequence I will begin to put weight back on again. Three years ago I bought a Fitbit, went on a diet, started walking and lost around fifty pounds in weight and I am determined never to go back to those days and while I have put on a bit of weight since my run in Barcelona I really rely on my regular running regime to help me keep the pounds off. This week I received a Shooting Star badge from Fitbit for climbing twenty thousand flights of stairs since I first started logging my exercise with them back in 2016.

A Fitbit on its own is not going to help change your lifestyle, but for me it has acted as my digital nag through all these years to keep me going. While I do watch my diet now a lot more than I used to , I still feel that it is the running that helps the most to burn off the calories. Over the best part of nine months now I have run at least three times a week, normally four, sometimes five and occasionally six. It feels like such a wrench to sit on the sofa and not do anything, particularly as the injury does not totally stop me running, it just feels uncomfortable when I do.

On Thursday night, I was back out with my JogScotland group, though I stuck with the six and a half mile group, rather than the seven mile group to take things a little easier. Then on Saturday, I went for a solid Parkrun rather than trying to really go for it. I was delighted to once again get sub-twenty five minute time, particularly as I felt that while I was working hard, I was nowhere near going full out. To get to a point where running sub-twenty five minutes for five kilometres feels straightforward gives me so much joy and confidence.

Something else which gave me joy this week was receiving my medal for the Miles for Mind Challenge I did throughout May. This is a virtual challenge to run as many miles as you can in the month to raise money for a mental health charity. While I pledged to do fifty miles, I ended up doing one hundred and twenty five, an indication of how well I felt in the month (and maybe why I am so anxious about not running now!).

The Haribo was an added bonus from the race organisers, the company RUNR

But back to the injury. Next weekend I have two runs planned – the first is the Aberdeen Runway Run, very much a three kilometre fun run with my daughter, and the second is a local 10km race at Westhill near Aberdeen. For the 10km race, I fully intend to take things pretty easy. Then after that? I have no more races until the end of August. The challenge I have then is can I really ease things off? This week I have run three times and I feel so lazy and so unfit. I guess I need to confess that I am addicted to running and giving it up, even for a short while, is going to be really tough to do. With that fear in my head about heading back to the fat days, it is such a hard decision to make.

Lost in France

I like to think that I am an optimist. I am generally a pretty positive person. This would appear to explain a lot. Particularly one aspect. When I am in a city I do not know particularly well, I am perfectly capable of looking at Google Maps, working out a route, then switching Google Maps off, going out for a run, and then getting completely lost by my over optimism that when I am out running I can just, kind of, work it out.

Not for the first time, my optimism saw me hopelessly off course, struggling to work out where I was and how to get back on track. What made it worse, was that I got lost while trying to find two of biggest tourist attractions, one of which is almost impossible to miss and visible from virtually everywhere!!

“Heck, I have been here loads, it will be fine.”

This week work took me to Paris. It is a great place and I have been lucky to visit it many times, both for work and for pleasure. So maybe it was this sense of over confidence that partly led to my downfall as I thought, “Heck, I have been here loads, it will be fine.” To be fair, on Google Maps it looked like it was a straight road from my hotel to the Arc de Triomphe, and from there it is just a short extra hop to the Eiffel Tower. The reality proved slightly different.

I was not intending to run too far on Monday because on Sunday I had managed another long run. In fact, at seventeen miles this was, again, the furthest I had ever run after my fifteen mile effort last Sunday.  I was super pleased with this, particularly as it was a pretty wild day with a lot of wind and a bit of rain. Luckily for me, the part along Aberdeen’s beachfront was downwind!

Thank goodness this part of the run was wind behind

(As I am training for a marathon in April you might wonder why I am running so far just now, but I will come back to that later).

Now after seventeen miles, as you can imagine, quite a lot of things hurt or are pretty stiff, so my plan on Monday varied between stay in hotel, go to hotel gym, go for a short couple of miles or do the 10k to the Eiffel Tower and back. Having had to get up at 4am to catch my flight to the French capital and then gone straight to work before getting back to the hotel around 7pm, I really was not feeling up for the long run, even though I planned to take it really, really easy. It was also a bit of a damp, cold evening with drizzle in the air. But once you’re out, you’re out, right. So after convincing myself to eschew the delights of the hotel bar and gym (in that order), I thought I would see how I felt but aim to make it all the way to the Eiffel Tower and back to rack up another six miles.

“… as the route went uphill, things went downhill.”

Things started off well. Got out. Took it easy. All good. But then as the route went uphill, things went downhill. I seemed to arrive at a variety of big junctions, with loads of exits. None of this seemed to resonate with what I had seen on the map before I headed out. And this is where the over-optimism kicks in. “Just keep going Craig, I mean you can see the Arc de Triomphe from miles away and if not, then you will always have the Eiffel Tower to fall back on.” Wrong. As you can probably see on the map below, things began to fall apart shortly after the first mile where I rather veered left when I should have gone right, and then all bets were off. Not only was the Arc de Triomphe nowhere in sight, neither was the Eiffel Tower. In fact I was so off course I was probably more likely to find Blackpool Tower if I had kept going!

My rather wonky route to the Arc de Triomphe

To be honest, I am still not entirely sure how on earth I actually ended up AT the Arc de Triomphe, because come on, was I going to do something sensible like stop, open up Google Maps on my phone and work out where the hell I actually was? Let’s not go crazy now. Oh no, I was going to keep on running and find it eventually – and I did. So I was not really lost then was I? It was just at that point I had no idea where I was. When I did actually turn a corner, run up a tree-lined Avenue and happen to stumble upon the Arc I could not quite believe it. Hence the grin in the picture. I simply could not believe I had actually got there!!

The smile is of total relief

Now once you get to the Arc de Triomphe, well you can see the Eiffel Tower so getting from one to the other is pretty straightforward, though even with this I managed to take a much longer route than I needed to as I was about to discover. Anyway, I did make it there and ventured up to the Trocadero to get some nice pictures. In total, my run to there was almost five miles.

It was at this point I actually DID take out my phone to work out my route back to the hotel, again via the Arc de Triomphe and discovered that, rather than it being almost five miles as it had been on the route out, it was almost exactly three miles to make it back – if I followed the route and it was basically a straight road from the Trocadero back to the Arc and then from there to the hotel. Though this time, I kept my phone in my hand and kept checking it to make sure I got back with no unintended detours. Want to know how straight it was? Take a look.

My return route was a lot shorter than the outbound leg

I can think of far worse places to get lost in than Central Paris, and the fact I worked things out for myself, found the places I was after, got some pictures, got in some extra miles – turned out to be nearer eight rather than six – and made it back safely to the hotel is a positive, right? Will I learn my lesson and not do something stupid like this again? Probably not.

But while I dwell on my lack of a sense of direction around one of the world’s great cities, let me also highlight the real glamour of my travelling life.

The real glamour of training and travelling

This is what trying to combine training with travelling is truly like; drying stuff out on a hotel room washing line. Another occupational hazard is cancelled or delayed flights, and though this week was just my second work trip of the year, I also suffered my first cancellation. The night before I was due to go home, my flight out of Paris was binned. It is so frustrating when that happens when all you want to do is get home.

Tuesday and Wednesday had been rest days (though my blood pressure went up on Wednesday evening when my flight got canned I can tell you), before I ran again on Thursday night once I made it back home. It was another six miles up and down the hilly streets around the house. I could not train on Friday as I was down in Manchester for the day, but I hope to get a long run in on Saturday. However, I have a lot to do as I am travelling again on Sunday, this time to Asia.

I mentioned earlier that I would explain why I am doing such high mileage just now as my marathon is still quite some way off. The main reason is that for the next three weeks I am going to be at the Winter Olympics in South Korea. Now this will be a pretty full-on experience – I have been lucky enough to be at the Games in London, Sochi and Rio – but also the temperatures in Pyeonghchang have been as low as -21 with a wind chill factor of -31 lately, so my outdoor training opportunities are, I think, going to be pretty limited. Come mid-February when I get home, then it will be full-on with preparations for the run at the end of April, until then, I hope to keep things ticking over. First? A twenty-four hour marathon journey to get there. And before you ask, no, I am not competing.

2016 – Reinventing Me (Part 4)

I reached my target weight on Saturday, May 14. Having started in January and given myself until the end of June to reach 15 stone, I had reached my milestone a bit earlier than I had anticipated. All the walking, all the hunger pangs, all the times I had foregone something I really fancied to eat had been worth it. I had got to the goal I set. What now?

For me, it was a simple decision. Let’s continue. As I have said before, the whole point of what I have done this year is to do something that is sustainable. I really do not want to go back to the weight I was before, so it seemed natural simply to persist with the routine I had established back in January.

In total I have lost around 55 pounds and currently I am about half a stone under the 15 stone target (approximately 200 pounds or 92kg)  I set myself at the start of the year. I have now reached the stage where I do not want to necessarily lose any more weight, I just want to maintain it and this, I find, is a challenge in itself. Just what is healthy eating and living once you no longer want to lose any more weight, but not gain any either?

I have even had apple crumble with custard again (Oh my God, it was sooo good!!)

I think it is important to say what I have been doing I do not necessarily consider to be dieting. What I have been doing is attempting to make a lifestyle change to which I can stick. There is little point in making the effort I have made over the past ten months for me to revert to my previous ways. This why I chose when I started not to radically alter my diet, just reduce the portion sizes, be more careful about what I eat and drink and do some exercise. I am still careful about what I eat. If I eat out, I try and avoid dishes with chips. I still avoid beer, except on special occasions. Sometimes I have a cake with my coffee (no latte though), even the odd chocolate biscuit  and I have even had apple crumble with custard again (Oh my God, it was sooo good!!). I might now be thinner than I was, but I certainly do not want to be thin and miserable, feeling I am missing out on things I enjoy. Simply denying yourself every treat is not going to be practical or realistic, but I find now I do regard them as that – as treats, rather than something I have all of the time.

For me, the Fitbit has been a brilliant motivator and I continue to wear it every day.

So what role does the fitness tracker play in the progress I have made this year? In my view, on its own, a fitness tracker is not going to help you lose weight, absolutely not. If you set a steps targets and then think, when you achieve it, “that’s great, now let’s get stuck in to this extra-large piece of cake/pizza/chocolate (delete as appropriate)”, then I do not believe it is going to be of long-term benefit. Well not a significant impact anyway. It may have some short-term impact, but for the long term, and that is what I am interested in, it alone simply will not help. It needs to be one part of a bigger picture.

I found the Fitbit a digital nag. A constant reminder on your wrist to get out and do stuff, rather than sit in the house and watch TV or do stuff online. For me, the Fitbit has been a brilliant motivator and I continue to wear it every day.

I am not as totally obsessive about it as I was a few months back

After starting to go to the gym after a few months of walking, I slowly increased my exercise through the course of the year, getting to the point where I now run three to four miles a few times a week and will actively seek out the gym in the hotel when I am away for work. I still attempt to get my 10,000 steps in every day, though I am not as totally obsessive about it as I was a few months back. I still have Saturday off, but again, ensuring that Saturday is a special day and not EVERY day is part of the ongoing plan. Something else about Saturdays – I continue to weigh myself every week. If I put on a couple of pounds one week, I aim to lose them the following week. My heart-rate also now sits in the low to mid-50s, a huge change from back in January when it was in the 80s and further evidence of the health benefits I now feel.

My resting heart-rate has slowed significantly through the course of the year

One of the nicest things about losing weight and getting fitter – other than the obvious things like feeling better and looking better – is that other people begin to notice. This can, however, be a double-edged sword, as I have found out.

Oh my God, you’ve not been ill, have you?

When someone you have not seen for a while meets you, they often open up the conversation with a comment like, “Craig, have you lost a bit of weight?”. However, I have realised that I have now reached the age in life when this complement is often accompanied by a follow-up question. That question being, “oh my God, you’ve not been ill, have you?”. So no, I have not been ill, I simply resolved to make a change in my lifestyle, lose some weight, get fit and feel a hell of a lot better about myself.

One unexpected aspect of my weight loss this year has been that I feel my mental health has improved. I am more positive about life generally and I feel more motivated to get out and do stuff. There have undoubtedly been social gatherings that I have shied away from in the past for fear of people commenting on my size. This may seem ridiculous but it was true.

Feeling more positive about myself has been an unexpected bonus

Losing weight did have other consequences though. For a start, hardly any of my clothes now fitted me. As my wife said one day, “you look like a teenager who is wearing his dad’s clothes.”. And she was right. When I looked at myself, everything I wore seemed out of proportion. So losing weight not only cost me pounds off the scales, it also cost me pounds out of my wallet as I had to renew my wardrobe and buy new trousers, shirts and belts.  A price worth paying.

One funny moment was when I put on a pair of cut-off trousers I had bought last year. Now, in 2015, the popper on these trousers would routinely pop when I sat down as I squeezed into them. This summer I put them on in the house and walked to the kitchen as I had left my belt there. Before I got there, the trousers had fallen down around my ankles! I also wore these cut-offs when I was in Rio for the Olympics. I had a few close calls after I had to remove my belt to get through the airport-style security screening I can tell you!

In Rio wearing the cut off trousers (here worn with a belt, thankfully) that had fallen around my ankles

 

Can I say for definite that I will never put weight back on again? No I cannot. But what I can say is that my next target is to aim for a 10K run next year and the only way I am going to manage that is to keep on exercising, maintain my weight and watch what I eat and drink. Setting another achievable goal is going to help me on my way, just like the goals that I set way back at the start of the year.

Do I think I have cracked it and can guarantee that my weight will not be a problem in the future? Absolutely not. This has to be a sustainable lifestyle change, and one which, in the long term, will continue to give me health benefits long after 2016 has come and gone.

Genuinely, if I can do this anyone can. I was firmly of the mind that I would never get fit again, that things were going to be as they were and saw little way back from the size I had become. I lived an unhealthy lifestyle and that was all there was to it. But that was not it. That was not it at all. I chose to stop making excuses and do something for myself. And thank goodness I did.

 

 

2016 – Reinventing Me (Part 2)

So once you have spent five years basically doing nothing but slowly gain weight until you believe you are by far the heaviest you have ever been, how do you even begin to contemplate getting back to a reasonable weight and level of fitness?.

Seeing pictures like this of myself – taken on Christmas Day 2015 – made me feel almost ashamed. How could I have got to this stage? How do I get back to where I want to be?

Christmas 2015 – Another picture I was embarrassed to view

 

For me, the fundamental question was how to get started. I had been fit before. In my teenage years I played loads of sport and that continued through my 20s where I played five a side football regularly. In my early 30s I had run a few 10k races, even managing to do a half marathon once, but that was a long time ago and as I explained in my previous blog, since the age of 42, the scales had simply gone up as the food and drink consumption rose and the exercise level decreased to zero. And in fact, the scales had been going up long before I was 42. This was not an overnight transformation.

It is very easy to simply believe that you live an unhealthy lifestyle and that is the end of it. I certainly did and I think I used that as a reason to excuse my size. My life of significant international travel, staying in hotels, eating out regularly, free food and drink in airline lounges, free food and drink on planes had led me to this point. My lifestyle was unhealthy, and that was it. It was like I was trying to absolve myself of blame.

I had wanted to change for years.

But I did not want it to be that way. I wanted to change. I had wanted to change for years. But if I had wanted to change why had I not done it? Simply put, just putting my feet on those scales to weigh myself was such an off-putting prospect that I had deliberately avoided it out of embarrassment. Why would I want confirmation in numbers of what I knew to be true?

But those pictures finally got to me. Towards the end of last year I resolved that, come the New Year, things would change. I had made that kind of pledge before and nothing had happened, so why now? Well, I had decided to get myself a fitness tracker – and that was before I won a £75 voucher in our office Christmas raffle which gave me a bit of added impetus. So the week after New Year, I got the tracker (in my case a Fitbit Charge HR). This measures steps, calories burned, floors climbed and distance traveled. It syncs to an app on your phone or your laptop (I would come to use both) and you wear it on your wrist. You can also set yourself a weight target and then track your progress. The one I have also measures your heart rate, and shows you what your resting heart rate is. This was the output on the third day I wore it.

Seeing my resting heart rate sit at 84 almost gave me a heart attack in itself. Over the next few days my heart rate would remain doggedly around the high 70s or low 80s. This was serious. When I had been fit before my resting rate was in the 40s, now it was almost double that. If I needed more motivation, this chart also provided it. (Now I know you can be sceptical about how accurate these trackers are, but these figures were pretty consistent and it had the desired effect of me.)

Another significant act – I got on the scales. Now that was a horrible moment. Seeing the numbers, go up and up, way beyond what I had feared before it finally nestled at a shocking 18stone 4 pounds (256 pounds or 116kgs) was grim. It made me even contemplate stopping before I had even started.

This was all going to be down to me

Then the thought enters your head, “well, what am I actually going to do?”. It is easy to think about cutting down on food consumption, maybe doing a bit of exercise, but actually putting it in to practice and developing a new routine (breaking out from thinking “I have an unhealthy lifestyle and that is that”) is a challenge in itself. I had considered joining weight loss groups, but because of my travel schedule it is very difficult to commit to regular meetings or events, so that was out. This was all going to be down to me. And, for me, this is where the fitness tracker kicked in.

Setting some achievable targets was the first thing.

• Setting a weight target that I felt was difficult but not impossible (in my case to get down to 15stone/210lbs/95kgs).
• Setting a timescale to reach that weight that I felt was reasonable – in my case six months, though on reflection maybe that was a bit extreme.
• Setting a daily steps target that was stretching but not out of reach.
• Setting a goal to exercise at least five days a week that I believed was attainable.

All of these were set, but, crucially, I decided, in order to get started, that I was going to meet my exercise targets by walking. This was, without doubt, the single best decision I made. I was not going to start by going to the gym. I was not going to break out my trainers and try and go for a jog. All that would have done was confirm how unfit I was, depress me further about how unfit I was, and more than likely, make me want to give up and fail. All I was going to do was to go for a walk every day and that was something I knew I could do. Just go for a walk. That was it. All of these targets seemed realistic. If I was determined and focused, then I thought I could achieve what I wanted.

I resolved to do simple things

But I also realised that my eating and drinking routine also had to change. I am not into food fads, and I also did not want to radically change my eating habits because I did not believe it would be sustainable in the longer term. So I resolved to do simple things. I would cut out the cakes and the biscuits with my cups of coffee. I would switch from a latte to an Americano or filter if I went to a coffee shop and I would forego the muffin. I would reduce the portion sizes of my main meals and I would cut down the amount of alcohol I drank; specifically cutting out beer completely. When I mean cut down portion sizes, let me give a simple example. Lunch at home may have been a tin of soup, a sandwich and some crisps. Lunch would now become half a tin of soup, maybe a slice of bread and no crisps. This is not a radical approach, this is just being sensible.

When at home, all of this seemed entirely achievable. When travelling, all of this can be exceedingly difficult to do, so I will confess I made a decision to skip meals, on occasion, simply to avoid having to eat something. When I was in the United States, I resolved deliberately not to eat anything for lunch, just because I found the portion sizes too large. As a boy brought up in Scotland to finish everything on his plate, I hate to see waste, so better to avoid it than to leave something and feel guilty about leaving it, but I knew that my travelling schedule would pose some of the biggest challenges.

2015 was not an unusual year in terms of travel

The image below shows my travel schedule in the last two and half months of 2015, showing where my journey started and ended, distance traveled and the number of flights, building to a total of 116 flights and more than 130,000 miles during the year. 2015 was not an unusual year in terms of travel. When you see figures like that, you can understand why sorting out my approach to the lounge and eating and drinking on flights was also pretty important.

My travel details for October, November and December 2015

I had set the targets. I had resolved what I had to do. I had decided to cut down on the food and drink. I had made up my mind I was going to start walking regularly and get in my 10,000 steps a day as a minimum. All I had to do was do it. Yep, that was ALL I had to do. But that was all I had had to do for years and I had never done it previously, so in my next blog I will detail how it went.

 

 

 

 

2016 – Reinventing Me (Part 1)

I distinctly remember when I stopped exercising. I was on a business trip to the United States, staying in a hotel, near Washington D.C. and had just been to the gym. Though I had been pretty fit when I was younger, going to the gym had already become a fairly rare occurrence, but on that day I saw a small article in a U.S. newspaper which said that the age most men gave up exercise was 42. I had just turned 42. A rare occurrence was about to become a non-occurrence.

Now whether this was just confirmation of what I had thought for a while – that I was heading into comfortable middle age – or whether this was some sort of psychological trigger, I still do not really know. But it played on my mind, and I duly stopped any kind of physical exercise. 42 – the time to stop exercising. It was true, the paper had told me.

Now I work in a job in the media technology industry where I travel internationally on a regular basis, so over the next few years my gym kit became the best traveled least used kit in the world. I was living an unhealthy lifestyle and my routine was becoming increasingly sedentary, even though the opportunities for me to exercise were right there in front of me.

Easy access to free food and alcohol

I live in the UK but my job involves regular air travel. When flying, I would start my trip in the airline lounge, with easy access to free food and, when appropriate, alcohol. So if it was an early morning flight, I would eat some breakfast in the lounge while waiting to board, then I would eat breakfast on the flight. Then when I arrived I would get a full fat coffee, maybe with a muffin, at the place I was visiting. After that we would go for lunch, and even then a sandwich would not be enough, there would perhaps be some crisps or a bit of chocolate, oh and how about another latte? But things would go seriously downhill at dinner, often late at night and often accompanied by some beer, or some wine, or some beer and wine, and oh, let’s just take a look at that dessert menu. And what about taking advantage of the gym in the hotel? I guess my rational was, “Oh no, I’ve stopped doing that, I’m older than 42. And that’s the age you stop.”

The airline lounge, when it was not for breakfast, well that was a place for a free lunch or a free dinner (as well as having the lunch or dinner on the plane). I took advantage of the free stuff that was on offer and thought little of it as my waistline expanded and my belt loosened a little bit at a time.

The cakes, the scones, the biscuits, the chocolate biscuits

When not travelling, I would work from home. Essentially after getting up and eating breakfast, I would walk into my office in my house and sit in front of a computer for the best part of eight hours, only moving to go through to the kitchen to make cups of coffee and with those cups of coffee came the cakes, the scones, the biscuits, the chocolate biscuits. Then of course there was also lunch to be had. While I would not drink alcohol during the week, when it came to the weekend well let’s just have that extra bottle of wine, and have some cheese and hey, let’s have some of those salted peanuts as well.

Bad habits are easy to get in to, less easy to get out of. So over time, my weight increased and I did nothing about it. And the worst of it was, I knew all of this was happening but chose to ignore it. I knew I was become increasingly unfit, I knew I was unable to fit into clothes I had worn previously, I knew I was having to buy larger clothes than I had bought before, but knowing it and doing something about it had become seriously disconnected.

My god, is that really me?

But then through last year a few things began to crystallise. I had some big work trips coming up that I thought I would find physically challenging unless I lost some weight. There were some family events coming up where I wanted to look good when meeting relatives I had not seen for a while.

One of the images of me I felt embarrassed to view

I had become embarrassed at seeing pictures of myself, particularly pictures of myself with family or friends, such as the one featured here from Christmas last year. Or I would look at head and shoulders shots of myself that I had to take for passport/driving licence/visa applications and think “My god, is that really me?”. Sadly it was. I had become fat and middle-aged, and was becoming fatter by the day.

So after years of prevarication I finally decided enough was enough, but how was I going to get back to some semblance of fitness and lose the weight I had gained? This weight that I had put on through years of overeating and inaction. In my next blog I will tell you what happened at the start of 2016 and how I chose to make a difference to my life.

Open. But open away. Always.

The pursuit of knowledge. The desire to discover. The thrill of travel. Broadening horizons and enjoying new experiences can often be strong motivating factors in choosing to embark on a journey.

But even those for whom travel is through necessity rather than choice, this does not mean there is nothing to learn every time you pack up your carry on case and step over the threshold of your home and head for the airport.

In fact, the things that I have discovered on flights have stood me in good stead regardless of the airline, the length of the journey, the native language of the cabin crew or the nature and temperament of those sitting beside, behind or in front of you.

Now this is not some kind of revelation on the best way to flirt with the check-in staff and get yourself up into business class. Nor is it how to prevent the tiny, slim passenger in front of you for whom legroom is not a challenge from resisting the primal urge of all small people to recline the seat all the way back. Especially when the food is just about to be served. Nope it is not that. It is not, either, the best method to search online to work out the (supposed) best seat in economy – you know the one furthest from the smell of the toilets, closest to the galley and with the quickest food and drink service.

My advice is simple. It is gleaned from hundreds of flights, hundreds of thousands of miles in the air, countless security checks, multiple safety demonstrations and enough little packets of pretzels and peanuts that if you stripped the salt off each one of those little comestibles you could probably turn the nearest Lake into something resembling the Dead Sea, with people floating unaided due to the extraordinary saline content of the water.

You see, eating and drinking on a flight are, how can I put it, a challenge. Now I do not mean that the menu is a challenge, though to be fair the menu on a flight is also highly unlikely to inspire you to the heights of culinary delight. And despite how some fellow travellers seem to struggle with the concept, it truly is not that difficult to make a choice between beef or chicken, pasta or vegetarian, full English or crepes.

No, eating and drinking on a flight are a challenge not because of what is served to you, but rather how it is served to you, or to be specific, what it is served in. Because, a simple tray of airline food comes filled with the kind of hazards that may make it past the health and safety inspection, but they pose a threat not to life or limb, but to shirt and trouser like none other.

Let us begin with the wrapping that contains the cutlery. (I appreciate that any business, Club or First Class passengers reading this are now totally lost at the concept of cutlery being wrapped in anything but some Egyptian cotton napkin but for the rest of the travelling public, you know exactly what I’m on about. And for you in the posh seats, bear with me.) This wrapping is designed to keep the cutlery, and likely also the salt, pepper and sugar all together in a neat package on the tray. And for that purpose it does its initial job extremely well. Problems emerge when it has to perform its second task – that of allowing a passenger to easily get the contents out, and then put them (and the packaging) somewhere sensible on the tray. First, there is the opening to contend with. Attempting to get into the cutlery can be achieved easily. By using a knife or pair of scissors. But as these aren’t allowed through security these days, and the only other knife in view is physically inside the package you are trying to open, this leaves only one other option. To wrestle with the packet until, by some miracle it opens, or to employ your teeth in a bid to bite into the offending clear plastic parcel. If this second method works, of course, the chances of you achieving your goal of opening it up might be achieved, however, your chance of actually being able to grab any of the knife, fork, spoon, salt, pepper or sugar as they spiral their way out of the packet and onto the floor is, to be fair, limited. So they fall on the floor. And you ask the steward or stewardess for another one. And the joy begins. All. Over. Again.

But let us assume by some miracle that you get the packet open. Then where do you put it? And by it, I mean the packaging for the tray has been filled with such precision, that the only space for the contents, are the place from where you picked them up a few moments before. But as the vacuum packing that ensured the packet was shrunk to precisely match the contents to ensure it fitted in this space has now been rent asunder by the aforementioned opening gambit, the packet now resembles a deflated hot-air balloon but with aerodynamic qualities of such deftness and light that any breath of air are enough to lift it from its new resting place on top of your unopened three course tray of delights and right on top of your neighbour’s meal. (This is, naturally, assuming that they have meandered their way through their own opening ritual and got into the meal before you).

So we have had the starter of the cutlery packaging, let us move on to the main course. This is not the main course of food, of course, it is recognising that the opening trials and tribulations have only just got going in earnest.

Because you are on a flight, it is not just the cutlery that is contained. Everything is contained, particularly including the food. If you thought the packaging for the cutlery was light and deft once it was opened, just wait until you get going at the packet containing the bread roll. This one is usually easy to get into, but even more likely to waft away into the nether regions of someone’s else’s nosh before you can grab it as you reach for the butter, craftily hidden away and only accessible via a millimetre’s gap between the tea-cup and dessert.

Then we can begin to think about actually eating something, and the cover can be taken off the starter. But again, while this is made of sturdier stuff than the previous packaging so poses no risk of floating away in the recycled breeze of the plane’s air conditioning, it is not without its own problems. Once you have picked it up and removed the cover, where to put it? You glance down at the tray, simple solution, put it down in the place from where you picked it up, surely? But you can’t do that. Because in between spreading the butter on the roll, picking up the starter and opening the cover, you did the only sensible thing. You put the bread roll down in its place. So now you have a bread roll sitting safely ensconced on your tray but nowhere to put the cover down. Easy solution, put the bread roll in the cover. And just when you do that and then take the first bite of your starter, you realise that the bread roll would be a more appetizing choice than what is masquerading as a tasty pasta salad/potato salad/couscous and peppers (delete as appropriate) lying in the bowl you have in your hand. This then requires the kind of digital dexterity of the kind normally reserved for child piano playing protégés as you then attempt to manoeuvre bread roll, starter and starter lid back into their original positions.

By this point, of course, ravenous hunger has also kicked in, as the effects of the pretzels have worn off, the impact of the first drink has kicked in to add a bit of alcoholic impetus to the munchies, so the main course must now be tackled.

Other than the brief inconvenience of your cutlery packaging impinging on your neighbouring passengers nosh, so far, there has been little impact on those seated around. But now as the main course looms, then the elbowing and shuffling in the seat can begin in earnest as you do your best not to annoy anyone sitting around you, which simply ensures you annoy them all the more.

Your choice of main course is irrelevant, for it is, once more, the packaging which shall prove the first hurdle. I am big fan of technology, so planes fascinate me. Travelling tin cans with most of the mod cons of a house – including a kitchen. And in this kitchen they have an unique capacity. The capacity to heat food containers up to the temperature of molten lava, with the innate ability for the container to retain its shape and to pass on that heat, in its entirety, not to the food held by the container, but to the flimsy piece of tin foil that wraps around the top. In order to handle this, you really should have the kind of heat proof gloves routinely used by those guys in a steelworks that you see putting things in and out of a blast oven accompanied by a sort of golden fireworks display as the molten metal pops and sparks. No protection for you. Oh no, no. no. I once heard a famous chef tell his trainees, “Fingers are for burning.” Well, I think he must have trained in the gastronomic school in the sky, as this maxim can easily be applied to every poor passenger who ever attempted to get in to their hot food only to discover that this miracle of physical heat transfer does not stop at the tin foil lid. For the lid also has the same transferrable capacities and that heat is now being directly transferred into your fingers at a rate that cannot be achieved elsewhere in the natural world. Of course, this then produces the kind of involuntary movement of your elbows that guarantees a close encounter of the passenger kind with the person seated next to you. Or if you are unlucky and you find your legs decide to join in, then those in front and at the back can also be party to your heated discomfort. The one saving grace? As quick as the heat transfer roars into your delicate digits, it begins to dissipate. Just as well, as if it lasted any longer then you would be able to say “Flame On” and fly about as a Roman Candle like that guy from the Fantastic Four. But in the confines of a plane, that is unlikely to be a good thing. So dissipate quickly it does, and then you are ready to have a bite to eat. If only you could find where you put the knife and fork you fought so hard to get access to only a few minutes before.

And with your main course it would not be unreasonable to want to have something to drink, either something alcoholic (and given the challenge of the food tray I would argue this is essential) or something like water or orange, which is likely to have been one of the original tray contents, often delivered not in a bottle but in another small, clear, plastic container with a lid. It is as if the drink is taunting you. Visible. Desirable. But unobtainable. And here is where I get to my piece of advice. For these kinds of containers can easily be overcome. And this advice applies to a whole myriad of containers which the airlines may throw at you on your journey. It is particularly apposite for opening yoghurt containers. Or milk cartons. In fact, anything that contains any liquid that can go from looking like a small drop in the container, to resembling a flood of biblical proportions when the contents of the container leap up and promptly deposit themselves on your clothes. So my piece of advice is this, and this applies on-board planes or anywhere else. When opening a carton like this, open it pointing away from you. Because it will spill. It will spurt. It will displace its contents. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. But it is guaranteed as it would appear that despite the millions clearly spent on their development and production, these cartons are incapable of opening in a way where all of the liquid remains contained in the actual container itself. This would appear to me to be a design flaw, but as the companies that manufacture them clearly make big profits, I am guessing that none of the bosses of any of those companies ever have to open them in a confined space, jostling along with the others in economy, trying desperately to stay dry, so the impetus to sort it out is rather missing.

So open, but always open away.

Oh, and enjoy your dessert.