The Running Diaries - Journey To Half Marathon

Day 1-7

Lockdown Day 1.

Weight: 10 stone 9...okay, 10 stone 11 before my poo.

Height: 5ft 3 (added on inches so that BMI doesn't tell me what I already know; that I am an overweight individual who is in denial and in turn, finds comfort in a glass of wine).

Job: Customer service advisor (and hating most seconds of it)

Relationship status: single...but it's complicated.

I hear that writing a diary in the back of a notepad rather than the front means that you're more likely to stick to it, and, as I'm doing this to track the perpetual hell that is lockdown and the other perpetual hell that is my fitness journey, I figured that I may as well see if it works.

I didn't think that life could actually get much worse, but it turns out that I was wrong, very wrong. It's almost the end of March, I'm on breakup number 3 before the age of 22 and I'm living in my mums 2 up, 2 down terraced cottage in a box room staying on a fold out bed on a mattress that is as thin as a Ryvita cracker...if this doesn't snap by holding my fat arse, then my back definitely will...and if that fails then queue the snapping of my already low patience. This house is small. It's in the middle of nowhere, filled with useless crap and creepy dolls which my mum calls 'antiques'. I don't think my mum has decorated it since she moved in here in what looks like Victorian times.

Never did I imagine moving in with my mum and her husband, who seems to only engage in conversations about his job as a lorry driver and the many different roundabouts that he drives around on a daily basis. Yet, here I am sitting outside of the cottage, listening to the river, and writing in a book that could quite possibly be used as our toilet paper in a few days if people keep panic buying bog roll. My mum told me that the sound of the river is so calming that it could have ended World War 2, to which I have to strongly disagree, but I understand what she was trying to say. What my dearest mother was trying to say was "you're a very angry young girl and maybe staying here with me and the husband that I listen to 5% of the time may do you a bit of good". So, taking her silent lecture as a hint, I've got this notebook on my lap, a pen in my right hand and a glass of wine in my left, ready to document how I can make myself less of a fat fuck.

I can't say that anything I'm doing right now I.E. the sitting down, the glass of wine and the whining that I'm doing is going to help me shed any weight, unless I drink a bit too much wine and throw up, to which I would be surprised, because although it wouldn't be the first time (thanks Uni social nights and strawpedo'ing a bottle of the cheapest wine), it would be quite humiliating as my mother is a master wine drinker.

So, 4 sips deep and I'm thinking about this half marathon that I've promised to do because I wanted to raise money. I've never done a fundraiser in my life and I somehow got into my little brain that baking a few cakes is a firm no, jumping out of a plane would be too easy, a 5K would be yawnfest and 10K is "yeah but, not that impressive" So, I'm basically going from couch with a glass of wine to 21KM. Lunatic behaviour. I used to run, I used to claim to be a runner but, note to self: could never have been a runner as legs are a little too wobbly for that.

Out of all of the people in the UK right now, I think I'm in the 20% of people (a statistic I totally just made up in my head to look intelligent) who are still working, slaving away for queen and country, doing my part...for JD sports and ruining people's day as I tell them no parcels are being delivered for the foreseeable. In fact, I'm not just working, I'm putting extra hours in, slaving away for 12 hours a day on the computer that I shown up at my mums house with, begging for her to take me in. The 12 hours are less for 'queen and country' AKA JD sports and more for...well, me, to get a 1 way ticket out of this shit hole.