Now some of you may have heard of a little football match that is being held at Birtley Town FC on July the 9 ^th between fans of the Northern League and a Football Writers XI that match will be follow by two proper teams; Birtley Town v Ryton.

The purpose of these two games is to raise some money for a worthy cause. “Socrates For Onagawa” is the name of the event and we hope to raise money to help a Japanese football club called Cobaltore Onagawa and their town that was destroyed by the tsunami .

Anyone  that has had the pleasure of meeting me will know health and fitness are not two of my strong points. Hell they are not even my bad points, awful just awful. Now to be able to play the 20-30 minutes that they will let me on the pitch I am going to have to build up some actual fitness. Not improve my fitness but actually have some in the first place.

It’s not going to be easy.

Recently I went 14 days without chocolate, sweets, cakes and biscuits and then supremely crashed after a few days in a bad mood. Today I jumped back on the wagon. I plan to keep you updated with what I do and eat etc. All future updates will feature on my team-mate Scott’s site “thefootyblog.net” where you can also follow Scott, Andy Hudson and David Hartrick’s progress from week to week.

DAY 1

The plan was to wake up and walk to work, it’s a good 40/45 minute walk, so an ideal way to start my day. Well let’s just say it didn’t go according to plan. I awoke at 7am and decided I really wanted that extra 20 minutes in bed, next thing I knew it was 08:05…fuck.

Starting at 9 there wasn’t enough time to walk all the way, so instead I walked a half a mile to the bus stop and then another half a mile from the bus stop to work. So for everyone counting at home that’s a grand total of 1….yes 1 mile….phew.

For my breakfast I had myself a mandarin muller yogurt and a ¼ pint of milk. Inbetween breakfast and lunch there was a machine coffee (no sugar). For lunch I had a chicken breast I had cooked on Sunday with some rice, pretty tasty if I don’t say so myself, oh and some home-made bread.

After work the missus and I went to ASDA to do our food shop, I can happily report that quite a few healthy things were purchased. Bananas, Oranges, Apples, yogurts, wholegrain crackerwheat….sounds delicious doesn’t it.

Once home I pulled on my running shoes and a pair of shorts and went for a jog…well I say job, a mix of running and walking. My fitness is awful, but I tried. I had mapped out a little circuit near my house, it measures about 1.4 miles…not exactl y the London marathon I know but you have to start somewhere.

The start is uphill, walking it is bad enough, I went for it though, ran for quarter of a mile before I had to walk…then ran again…then walked and then run for just over another quarter of a mile, downhill this time. Measured out it looks like a ran just over half the distance but at no time did I stop.

Before I can move on to long distances I need to be able to run for the whole 1.4 miles…so we will see how much I progress in 2 months, not sure if it’s even possible for my fat belly. Not sure exactly how much I weight right now, need to go to boots and get weighed. It will be between 18 and 19 stone, so there’s a long way to go.

I hope I haven’t bored you too much.

Good Luck to everyone who’s training began today, even those with a hangover