The DJ and I have commenced the scaling of what we like to call ‘the Fitness Mountain’. We have chosen to start at the bottom (always a very good place to start!). Discussions about how best to approach our new regime took place at the pub on Sunday afternoon, over a pint of lager and a lamb roll. Well, when the topic is a tough one, you need to keep conversation flowing somehow and to be fair, we had been for a 20 minute run that morning. Well, ‘run’ might be stretching it a bit, but we went for 20 minutes anyway. Over our pints, we decided the best approach would be slow and steady. Not unlike a turtle. Which is probably how we looked when we were running, like turtles on ice, all funny angles and jerky movements. You don’t want to rush a training comeback. Indeed, ‘fitness’ meaning what it does, you can’t. We knew it was time to start - torn ligaments, major surgery and Stateside holidays are fixed, healed and finished. Time get back on the bike, literally. We started with a pact to not drink unless we were in each other’s presence. Then we agreed that I would stay at the DJ’s on a Wednesday and made sure we were catching up at least once next weekend. At the time of writing, we are three days without a beverage of the mind altering variety. Continuing with our planning, we decided it would be a good idea not to exercise after eating any more, as the bacon, eggs, tomato, beans and toast we had for Sunday breakfast didn’t travel so well for the ‘run’ that followed. A beginners mistake we wouldn’t have made a year ago, but we are at the beginning, so it seems right to make a few errors of judgement. Unfortunately, we did it again on Monday when we had breakfast with the Entourage (minus Little C who is a bit under the weather this week – shout out!) and then decided to go for a swim. I was humming Sink or Swim by The Waifs as I got into the water and adjusted my goggles and I have to say, from where I was floating it was definitely more Sink than Swim. I continued the new regime last night at a Spin class while the DJ gave in to her jetlag and went to bed while the sun was still up (no mean feat in a non-daylight-savings state). The weight loss program was further progressed when I didn’t have to eat dinner thanks to the fact that the Spin session wasn’t restricted to my legs but somehow found its way to my stomach. Odd….that didn’t happen last time I went – in 2008. Tonight we got back into running and on our third 400 the DJ spent 400 metres telling me off for saying ‘Hi Rich’; we shouldn’t talk when we’re running. Unless we are telling me off, apparently. In closing, I’m pretty sure that Ruth Ostrow, column queen of Australia, had it right at the weekend when she observed that thin fit people might live longer, but people with a spare tyre who ate chocolate cake and drank red wine to their heart’s content were a whole lot happier. All hail the queen….after tomorrow morning’s swim, of course.