A lot of large projects on the go

Having gotten home at 4:40pm after a financial derivatives training course, I really thought I was going to make good headway on virtual vampire. It's now 10:15pm and I've just cleared my plate !

Eating up that time in fairness was cooking a nice dinner, doing the homework for the course and a big gym session. I am trying to get fit for a number of reasons - firstly there is a 5.8km run coming up in July (the chase challenge) and I would like to be able run it in around 35-40 minutes. Secondly was a warning for a friend of mine that 30-45 years old is "heart attack alley" so really not the time to be neglecting exercise, and finally a had a health test last year that reported all was fine except for two things; firstly my anerobic / lung capacity was a little sub-par and secondly I am medically obese.

A little shocked that I was in this category, I looked at the statistics, and anyone with a BMI (Body mass index) of over 30 is obese. His chart was nice enough to have an extra "obese II" category for BMI in excess of 35, which I am far from, but being in any of the bright red areas doesn't strike me as a good thing long term. I am used to having a weight around 18 1/2 stone (118kg) for much of my adult life, but to drop to the (still orange coloured) overweight section I would need to drop to 17 1/2 stone (111kg). So I was a little shocked to find that using two different sets of scales, both confirmed my current weight to be 20 stone (127kg) putting me at BMI 34... nearly obese II.

Ok, so it's early days with the gym - around 8-10 weeks so far I think - and coming into Summer there should hopefully be some seasonal weight drop to help me along. But I think I am going to need to look at the little things more harshly now, and look at other opportunities for exercise to supplement the gym sessions.

Right - might get 30 mins on virtual vampire now. As long as each day I work towards goals (gym, writing the blog, software projects) then it shouldn't get me down, because I know what I'm working towards and I know it's things I enjoy and want to improve. It's a lot of investment of time, but cutting out the distractions of life (computer games, idle TV) and working more efficiently at work should all give me the time I need to fit it all in.