I would go out tonight...

...but I haven't got a stitch...(to wear)

Just had the stitches out of my knee - alll pretty painless - just get the end of a sharp blade under the stitch, cut the thread, and pull - wwhich I expected to hurt but it really didn't. All healing jolly nicely apparently.

Oh yeah - and found a sheet with a diagnosis - apparently I have "osteoarthritic degenerative changes" plus a "medial meniscus tear" which has led to "medial meniscus shearing". They've washed out the debris and trimmed the torn bit, so hopefully all will be okay now. Will probably go for a swim later rather than sitting on my backside.

At least I'm getting exercise by proxy from watching the athletics :-)

Another Pizza :-)

Decided I needed to do something as I was getting bored being inactive, but then I'm banned from being too active so I settled for a kitchen based exercise routine centered around cooking pizza. If the karate kid can train to beat top notch karate peeps by painting a fence then I can surely train to beat the world's leading triathletes by making pizza.

I decided to go for a feta and spinach montage this time, with added onions and chillis to give it a bit more kick. To continue a long tradition, I added some eggs, although unlike Jogblog I remembered to put them under the cheese :-)

It was indeed scrummy, although I have saved half of it for lunch on another day

Knees Op Mother Brown...

Friday saw me up early to go into the local hospital for a knee operation. For those who haven't been following the bear for long, over the past two years my running has been hampered by what we originally thought was a medial collateral ligament problem, but has persisted and lef to my knee locking up just before crimbo last year.

Anyway - finally it was time for keyhole surgery. This is not something that has to be done when Jogblog locks herself out of her house, but rather a procedure where they make a small hole and insert a tube with a camera on it into the knee and it also has scissors on it too to snip through bits of stuff. It's well cool, and is obviously a gadget. Even an N95 doesn't have scissors on it :-)

I got to the hozzy just before 8am, was shown to the ward, the physio (Sarah from my running club) popped in and we had a chat, and she explained the exercises. She said "I remember - you were going to be a physio", and I replied "Well now I *am* going to be a physio, I got confirmation through last Thursday!" and she welcomed me to the "mad world of physio". He he! Anyway - then the doctors came round, then the nurses, and they all asked me the same questiosn which was well irritating - I told them drugs I was on and contact details three times in quick succession. Then half an hour of reading and I was whisked off to surgery where I was sat in the operating room and then the doctor bloke came in and did comedy kung fu moves which was weird and then we had a chat and then he stuck a tube into me for the anaesthetic. I ddidn't feel sleepy so told him and he said "We haven't actually injected it yet" but then he did and I conked out. I woke up on the ward at half ten and before I knew it was beign whisked home around midday, complete with my crutches :-)

Anyway - my digital camera seems fecked or you could see a nice picture of my knee :-(. I'll work on this though as my leg looks like it's been dipped in beetroot. I thought this was some weird bruising thing but turns out it's some sort of disinfectant stuff they paint on.

Anyway - two days later and I'm moving around slowly and badly missing the gym. I can't swim untilt he stitches are taken out on Friday and I bet I'm getting lardy. Then another week and I can use a gym bike (so maybe a gentle spin class?) and then run about a month after that. It's going to be a long road back though :-(. I just hope this does get me back to proper trainign - if it does then it'll be worth it :-). Maybe I'll chuck in some upper body weights in the mean time.

I've Been Tagged...

Right - well I've just been tagged by London Jogger so here goes:

Jobs I’ve Held: Paperboy, Clerical Officer for the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (work placement while at uni), programmer for the Radio Regulatory Division (another placement at uni), software engineer then senior software engineer for benchMark Technologies (sic), same role for DSK Technologies, lecturer at Carshalton FE College, tutor at Campbell Harris College and DLD College, then head of department at DLD.

Movies I Can Watch Over & Over: I tend not too - they lose the drama once you know the ending. CLosest would be "The Company of Wolves" and "City of Angels"

My Guilty Pleasures: I agree with Jogblog - why be guilty?

Places I have lived (in order): Carshalton, Wallington, Sutton, Sutton - only lived in four places my entire life and one was only for my first year

Shows I enjoy: CSI (various incarnations), Big Brother, sports programmes, in particular athletics

Places I Have Been on Holiday: Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, Swanage, various south coast resorts, Bolton, Edinburgh, Scarborough, Port Salou in Spain, Bodrum/Gumbet in Turkey, Dallas with work but turned into a holiday, Biarritz in France.

Favourite Foods: Jogblog's cooking (I had to say that but it's true :-), Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Indian, pizza, pretty much anything really - I love food!

Websites I Visit Daily: Runner's World, The Student Room, various blogs

Body Parts I Have Injured: As of last night my hand thanks to Jogblog's psychotic cat, both knees, broken arm when small - nothing really major

Awards I’ve Won: Best student on my course at uni, Garnett prize for my master's degree dissertation, four London Marathon Medals

Nicknames You’ve Been Called: Big Mac (I'm big and my surname begins with "Mac", Hamburger (as a follow on from Big Mac), Bear, Fruity

I'll tag some other suckers later ;-)

Acceptance

Cor this new system is complex! Never happened in my day and UCCA!

Anyway - next step - I have to send off a form to St George's saying that I'm accepting the place I've just gained and sweated blood for and lost sleep over and pretty much pooed my pants over Wednesday night and early Thursday morning!

Do I trust the post to get it there okay? Do I heck! So I'm trogging over to Tooting to deliver it :-)

The Official Notice :-)

Here's how I was greeted at 7:04am yesterday morning..

I have a headache this mornign - partly from this stinking cold that everyone doing spin at my gym seemsw to have got, partly from major beerage with Laura and her partner Dave last night. Shame no one else made it along, really want to know how the other guys did.

I got home and stuck a veggie burger under the grill as I had post beer munchies. I then went and lay down on the bed, only to wake up at 4am and discover a rather charred thing under my grill :-(

Let's Get Physical...

Right you lot - A levels results day.

Into college to meet Laura (fellow student from the course) and pick them up for 9:30, but those nice UCAS (UCCA to you oldies) people provide a service to let you know if you got you place without spilling your grades.






and...















keep scrolling....
















don't give up now..










I'M IN!!

St George's University of London!!

Yay me!!!

Torte Me a Lesson :-(

The last five days has been exercise-tastic!

As well as a body pump class Wednesday morning, I did a spin class, and then a spin class every day after that up until this morning. I was losing weight like nobody's business. so well pleased with that.

Then yesterday (after a spin class, of course) iwent to a barbecue at Josie Jump's new house. It was great to see her and Mr Jump again, and of course they put on a fantastic spread. I wasn't too bad on the first course, but the puddings were numerous and um - well, rich! It would have been rude not to sample them all, so I did, and then went back for more. All in all I had:

1. banoffee pie
   
2. summer fruit trifle
   
3. apple tart
   
4. chocolate torte
   
5. chocolate birthday cake
   
6. chocolate torte
   

the promised tarte au citron did not put in an appearance, otherwise I'd no doubt have had a slice of that too.

This morning I have gained three pounds - can't believe I've really put that much on, but I deserve to have gained something after the pud extravaganza :-D

Catch Up

The Cycle Starts Again

Guess what dropped through my letterbox recently? That's right - the FLM magazine. For you non-runners/Americans who may not be so up on British running that's the Flora London Marathon. An annual trog through the capital by over 30,000 people that's a fantastic day out and is rightly IMO described as a "26 mile long carnival" (except that it's 26.2 miles long of course).

Anyway - every year since 1998 I've applied for it. Most years I've applied for it pretty much as soon as the mag arrived, in the hope that it will improve my chances of gettign accepted. It hasn't! I've only once got in via the ballot, the other times were club places, charity, or else deferring from a previous year. Sadly both times I've had the club place I've deferred so that means I haven't got a 5 year streak of rejections yet which would guarantee me a place.

Anyway - so I've filled it in - my knee is still playign up, but as of today I have a date for the op - 24th August, so hopefully that'll be the beginning of getting the knee sorted and back to proper training. I just hope the other knee calms down - it's been giving me gyp recently!

Exam Results
One more week to go and it's results day! This time in seven days I'll know if I got into physio school (highly likely), whether I got an A or not (probably I reckon), and be about to set out to meet my mates from the course for a post-results piss-up. Then just over a month until I start my course.

Training
Body Pump and then spin yesterday, sjortly to head off to a spin class (advanced, yay me) tonight.

Another Jogblog Visit :-)

Well Jogblog turned up and I went to meet her at the station. After a quick visit to the offy it was back to my place to cook pizza. Jogblog's chilli advice wasn't terribly helpful but before long we'd ended up with a couple of dead nice pizzas - one vegetables with chilli and the other feta cheese, spinach and egg which was amazingly good. Sad to say I forgot to put them in the fridge after they'd cooled so they were out all night so we decided to bin them which was a pity as they'd have fed us both for the next couple of days.

Sunday - and we got up late and decided to head out for a possible fry-up and the pub. It was hot out and neither of us was very hungry but I managed a triple ice cream cone from Thornton's which went down jolly well. Then off to the pub where we sat outside with beer in hand. A great way to spend a SUnday lunchtime :-)

At the end of the first pint we were accosted by a rather drunken looking bloke at the next table without any teeth who seemed to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder about life and women and particular who seemed to think that Logblog should be at home cleaning out chickens as that was her role in life. Women were apparently also a load of pissheads which was ironic given his inebriated state. It did provide us with amusement for an hour or two afterwards though :-)

Then off to another pub with more sun. A couple asked if they could join us at our table and I said yes without thinking but then realised that these days they could be smokers as indeed they were and they proceeded to puff smoke around so we moved. Next time if anyone asks if I mind them joining me I shall ask if they smoke cos if so then the answer is no.

Pizzathon Part 2

Started the day well with a trip to the gym and the spin studio. It was the 9am session which now seems to have stabilised with a new instructor, who is great fun, although Mel at 10 is still my preferred option. I certainly got sweaty enough today though :-)

Then home and started to get prepared for the impending visit from a certain Jogblog. The bad news was that she had problems with the boiler again and might not be able to come, but it got sorted, so I headed out to the shops to get provisions. This was not going to be a diet conscious night, and what's worse, it was our second pizza party in four days, and this time we might actually have two pizzas as I don't intend to drop one of them.

Anyway - that's where things stand - Jogblog is en route as I type - hopefully I'll report back with some pizza piccies later but the camera's been playing up a bit so maybe not :-(

Coneathon Day 1

Found this oddity just down the road from me. Looks like someone has had a few bags of cement delivered but gone rather overboard on the cone supplies. The ones on the right are piled about twenty deep in those stacks, so there must be about 70 cones in total for about six bags of cement!

August 2nd

Last night's visit to Jogblog's wasn't quite such a dietary disaster as it might have been, for not only did we have fried stuff (zero calories remember) and only one slice of pizza each, Jogblog introduced me to the "Instant drop" dieting technique. Now you might be forgiven for thinking that the instant drop is something to do with a sudden and dramatic loss of weight, but actually it's to do with dropping food onto the floor when you're taking it out of the oven and therefore not actually serving it to your house guest. It probably saved us both about 500 calories :-)

Still - the other pizza was jolly nice, as was the garlic bread, and I even got to hone my skills as an Olympic garlic crusher. I might combine this with parmesan shaving and onion chopping to make an unusual pizza based triathlon event. Jogblog is rumoured to be in training for throwing the discus, and was practising last night with the pizza ;-)

Here's the bird poo piccie from yesterday - it was even worse from the other side as well - ruddy birds!

The End of Lardathon

August now so Lardathon's over - and I lost a grand total of 2.4kgs - just over 5 pounds. Not as much as I'd hoped for but my enjoyment of good food and beer rather spoilt that. I'm going to keep going even though it's not Lardathon month still, but with a night off tonight for pizza and garlic bread with Jogblog.

She's told me that pizza is several hundred calories a slice, so our strategy is to have very large slices (i.e. a whole pizza = 1 slice) to make us more health conscious. We're also relying on the principle that certain cooking methods such as frying removes the nutritional content of food, so therefore fry-ups have zero calories :-). I like Jogblog's diets - she's much more fun than that Gillian McKeith, and hasn't asked to look at my poo yet either.

Back was a bit better so I went to the gym this morning. Thought the back was going to scupper my session at first but I managed to get through the squats and back track okay and it was fine after that. Then onto spin where visible thong woman's blonde friend appeared and went on the bike in front of me where she also displayed a visible thong, although not as bad as the original. One of the problems with hovers in spin is that you stick your head forward and your bum back, so in a tightly packed spin studio you can end up with someone's bum just in front of your face.

My camera has run out of batteries otherwise I would at this point offer a picture of the damage the local birds have done to my scooter by using it for pooping target practice. It looks like there's been an explosion in a yoghurt factory or something - FFS! I'll get you a picture as my first post of Picturethon at the earliest opportunity.