Well, The well known 'ton of bricks' hit me with great force over the last 2 weeks and my god it has kept hitting me. I AM NOT FIT!!
I expected the first few months to be hard but my god i never knew how hard they would be. I hadn't realised that that the last 5 years of beer, takeaways, couch potatoing (that is a word i am sure) and all round general slobbishness had effected me so bad. In short..... OOOUUCCHHH!!!!!
So i have had to take some desperate measures. I am now eating far healthier. I have introduced 2 strange things into my diet, fruit and breakfast. i feel like i have a spring in my step and i am confident that before i know it i will be hitting the 2 mile target i have hoped for by the end of the month. fingers crossed.
Oh, and i have bought some dumbbells!! My pea shooter arms will be guns before you know it!!
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Well, June is here.... now the fun starts!!
So, here we are again, except this time the month in the date has a 6 in it, thus meaning that it is June! June is the start date to my training, June is the date when i will face my everest etc etc etc etc.
The shops closed and we are now back in our birth home of Nottingham. We moved this weekend which was amazingly the hottest weekend in Edinburgh for years. The manual labour alone equated to half a marathon.
We are now living in my late grandfathers house. The location is good, the area is nice and the house is a good size. It also comes with something that i have not seen on houses before....a time machine. You activate the machine by walking through the front door and then BOOM, your in the 1950's!!! it's just like magic!!
The aformentioned time machine has ment that i haven't actually done any training yet, well no running anyway. In the last 5 days i have proobable walked 10 miles carrying heavy weights. lifted and moved several large pieces of funiture and boxes. ran up and down miles worth of stairs and i have done all this in 25 degrees!! not a bad way to start my training!
I am about to leave for Sheffied for a job interview. on returning i will be embarking on my first run!!!!! that should be a laugh. my plan is this........
The shops closed and we are now back in our birth home of Nottingham. We moved this weekend which was amazingly the hottest weekend in Edinburgh for years. The manual labour alone equated to half a marathon.
We are now living in my late grandfathers house. The location is good, the area is nice and the house is a good size. It also comes with something that i have not seen on houses before....a time machine. You activate the machine by walking through the front door and then BOOM, your in the 1950's!!! it's just like magic!!
The aformentioned time machine has ment that i haven't actually done any training yet, well no running anyway. In the last 5 days i have proobable walked 10 miles carrying heavy weights. lifted and moved several large pieces of funiture and boxes. ran up and down miles worth of stairs and i have done all this in 25 degrees!! not a bad way to start my training!
I am about to leave for Sheffied for a job interview. on returning i will be embarking on my first run!!!!! that should be a laugh. my plan is this........
- June.
Several runs around 1/2 miles just to get the body used to pounding the tarmac this will last around 4 weeks with 3/4 runs a week finishing with a 2 mile run which hopefully i will find quite simple.
- July
My target for the coming months is to run 1 extra mile in distance on the sunday morning of every week. I will be running twice a mid-week and i will follow both of these runs up with a small free weights period. I have promised my wife that i will not become a lolly pop!! if i lose too much weight i become too thin and my giant head (no jokes please) looks out of place. so for this reason i will be working on my muscle growth as well. I will be concentrating on my upper body, arms and chest. I will work on my legs but this will come later in the training.
- August
This month the training will continue in the same fashion. The main thing that i will add though is that we will start biking. this will improve my indurance and build my stamina which will obviously be needed. By the end of August i will hopefully be running 10 miles comfortably. The 1 mile extra a week is a target that i will try to keep to. i will not obsess about it though as i will work more to completing my targets for the end of month runs.
Thats the first few months convered. The London marathon has around 1 million people apply for it. there is a ballot drawn in October to determine who has qualified to run! I will be running on behalf of the Childrens Trust and Cancer Research. Hopefully running on behalf of charities will help me get in.
I will post a wee message after my run today to inform you if i passed out, died or saw god!! fingers crossed i will be ok. the i-pod is loaded, the fun begins. wish me luck.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
My life is RIP, or has it just begun?
Saturday morning; We had a business and I had some real drive in my life.
Sunday morning; I am sitting on my sofa, talking to you, without a business, without a job and struggling to come to terms how life could have been so cruel in the space of 8 months!!
I was sitting in the first class lounge on the 15th September last year, with my wife of 48 Hours next to me, sipping champagne and feeling rather bloody proud of myself. we had just experienced the best day of our lives. A day that went so smoothly and was so perfect from start to finish I think my new wife could plan military operations! (as long as all the soldiers where dressed by Caroline Castigliano!). We were about to fly off in the lap of luxury to a 2 week honeymoon in the romantic mecca of the world, Italy. We had a bank full of money and we were not going to want for anything.
Back in Edinburgh we had a business that had just smashed the monthly sales projection for the 3rd month running. we had some great staff and the locals loved our "high street pro shop" ethos and no one could see anything but us going from strength to strength. At that point in life I can honestly say that I wanted for nothing. All my dreams had come true and apart from the patter of tiny feet, which we were going to set about creating the second that we returned from honeymoon then life was perfect. I was for once content and satisfied.
We returned to our hotel room in the middle of our stay in Venice, our first of 3 Italian cities, to flick on the TV. The next few weeks of news would change our lives forever. I read that the American investment bank, The layman Brothers had gone the way of the pear, it had gone tits end up, it was pushing up the daisys, it had run off to join the choir, it, was an ex bank!!
Again, while sipping champagne (i could get use to this) that evening, my thoughts turned to the news i had read that same afternoon. 'how could a multi billion dollar bank go under? how could the president et al let that happen? oh well, that's their hard luck, another bottle of your finest 96 Chianti please good man'
What happened over the next few weeks/months i am sure i don't need to tell anyone. To put it in my own very eloquent language, 'The arse fell out of the financial world'! This would over time, effect us in more ways than i ever thought.
We jump forward a few months to new years eve and once again i find myself with a glass of champagne in our hands as my wife and i drink some of our wedding gifts to wave in the new year. I had a few days earlier made a good friend redundant from the business but we knew that with a couple of months in Jan and Feb like they were in October and November then the business would make it through the rough time and we would hit summer being Edinburgh's number 1 golf retail outlet and we would be made for life........Oh how wrong you could be.
A few years ago a group of suit wearing egits who have never lived a normal life in Edinburgh thought it would be a good idea to make thousands of people redundant. To force hundreds of businesses to close. To rip up the cities most famous streets and landmarks. 'Hey, lads while we are it lets turn Princes Street into a ghost town, that will be fun' one faceless suit said to another. and so it was, a few days later the aforementioned egits collected huge bonuses and delivered in return...... The trams.
Some people say that as far as bad ideas go, invading Poland was not that hot a idea. The pole tax, that didn't go down to well. And lets not even start with the Spice girls reforming!!! The tram works though can top all that!! (ok, maybe a little over the top but that is how it feels at the moment)
Edinburgh has the best public transport of any city i have ever lived in. The buses are on time and plentiful. from anywhere in the city you can get anywhere in the city. We have hundreds of Edinburgh people who come in our shop and as the first digger started to rip the heart out of the city we asked people ' do you want the trams', 'are the trams a good idea'. the response was a infatic, NO!
By this point we new we were expecting our first child and although the business was beginning to show signs of straining, life was still good and it was nothing we couldn't handle. Oh how wrong was I........
I am not going to dwell too much on this as it is still very painful and a day after closing my business no one will want to shag a man that cries all the time (a very rough love actually quote). but by February we no longer had a child on the way and to say that customers had stopped walking through the door was an understatement.I was doing my best to ensure my darling wife that everything would be fine and that this was just a blip in our perfect life, that we would be laughing about in a few years as we sat in our million pound house surrounded by our 2.4 children.
Saturday 9th May. The Edinburgh Golf Shop LTD....RIP!
To this date we are still trying to add another element to our family and we are now planning to head back to Nottingham to try and start a new life. I feel like i want to apologies to my far better other half every day for pushing for the shop and basically being a typical pig minded male Boon and not listening to her worries, which were, as we have now found, very real worries! Oh and yes David, they could happen! Lets hope she doesn't do a Elliot style 'i told you so' dance!
I am business less, jobless and baby less. I am moving our out of the first house that we bought together and leaving a city and a country that we both love. In the space of 8 months we have gone from living the life of Riley to becoming another statistic on the government lists of people that have fucked up there lives!!! Sorry baby, my bad!
So David, you wuss. Suck it up and wipe away the tears you girl and lets do something about it!! The future will still be bright cause you are in a very loving marriage, you have a great group of friends and family and you have a lot going for you. So it is time for a change.
This week we are sorting out the paperwork etc that is involved with liquidising a LTD company. Friday we are off for a weeks holiday that is needed more than a poet needs the pain. When we return i will be joined by my parents in law who will help us move house. which brings us to June 1st..
JUNE 1ST!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the day that i have set out to start my training. This is the day that i have set out to change my life around. They say that a healthy body creates a healthy mind. if that is true then bring it on.
I know a little about training etc from my past experiences and from my Sports Science degree. I am not going to quit my life style cause you should never start to hate training or dieting because it is something that is stopping you from being you. I will still eat my Sunday dinner and i will still have a beer with the lads. I will obviously work on my fitness and stamina as 26 miles is no walk in the park. well it is actually at the beginning in Hyde Park! but after that it isn't. I am going to work on my muscles cause i do actually look a little better in a bigger physique than i do a skinny rake. i am looking forward to driving myself and pushing myself through the pain that i know will come with the training.
After what i have been through in the last year i am bizarrely looking forward to the future. I have never been one to stick my head in the sand and to feel sorry for myself. If anything happens in this world then bar a lottery win YOU are the one that needs to make it happen. So that is just what i am going to do. I WILL get another good job that can support my family for years to come. We WILL have a little one on the way very soon. I WILL complete the marathon in less than 3 hours 43 minutes and i will feel total contentment in my life again very soon, don't get me wrong, i am still very happy but as everyone who knows me will testify, i need success to be complete.
So here i am. I will be buying a proper pair of running trainers tomorrow morning, along with the first series of The Inbetweeners (clunge!!). And as far as i am concerned my life starts now. one chapter has finished so it is now the time to turn the page and start a new one.
My god, a whole blog entry without saying the word Rainbow once, i am very impressed with myse........... DO'H! so close.
Sunday morning; I am sitting on my sofa, talking to you, without a business, without a job and struggling to come to terms how life could have been so cruel in the space of 8 months!!
I was sitting in the first class lounge on the 15th September last year, with my wife of 48 Hours next to me, sipping champagne and feeling rather bloody proud of myself. we had just experienced the best day of our lives. A day that went so smoothly and was so perfect from start to finish I think my new wife could plan military operations! (as long as all the soldiers where dressed by Caroline Castigliano!). We were about to fly off in the lap of luxury to a 2 week honeymoon in the romantic mecca of the world, Italy. We had a bank full of money and we were not going to want for anything.
Back in Edinburgh we had a business that had just smashed the monthly sales projection for the 3rd month running. we had some great staff and the locals loved our "high street pro shop" ethos and no one could see anything but us going from strength to strength. At that point in life I can honestly say that I wanted for nothing. All my dreams had come true and apart from the patter of tiny feet, which we were going to set about creating the second that we returned from honeymoon then life was perfect. I was for once content and satisfied.
We returned to our hotel room in the middle of our stay in Venice, our first of 3 Italian cities, to flick on the TV. The next few weeks of news would change our lives forever. I read that the American investment bank, The layman Brothers had gone the way of the pear, it had gone tits end up, it was pushing up the daisys, it had run off to join the choir, it, was an ex bank!!
Again, while sipping champagne (i could get use to this) that evening, my thoughts turned to the news i had read that same afternoon. 'how could a multi billion dollar bank go under? how could the president et al let that happen? oh well, that's their hard luck, another bottle of your finest 96 Chianti please good man'
What happened over the next few weeks/months i am sure i don't need to tell anyone. To put it in my own very eloquent language, 'The arse fell out of the financial world'! This would over time, effect us in more ways than i ever thought.
We jump forward a few months to new years eve and once again i find myself with a glass of champagne in our hands as my wife and i drink some of our wedding gifts to wave in the new year. I had a few days earlier made a good friend redundant from the business but we knew that with a couple of months in Jan and Feb like they were in October and November then the business would make it through the rough time and we would hit summer being Edinburgh's number 1 golf retail outlet and we would be made for life........Oh how wrong you could be.
A few years ago a group of suit wearing egits who have never lived a normal life in Edinburgh thought it would be a good idea to make thousands of people redundant. To force hundreds of businesses to close. To rip up the cities most famous streets and landmarks. 'Hey, lads while we are it lets turn Princes Street into a ghost town, that will be fun' one faceless suit said to another. and so it was, a few days later the aforementioned egits collected huge bonuses and delivered in return...... The trams.
Some people say that as far as bad ideas go, invading Poland was not that hot a idea. The pole tax, that didn't go down to well. And lets not even start with the Spice girls reforming!!! The tram works though can top all that!! (ok, maybe a little over the top but that is how it feels at the moment)
Edinburgh has the best public transport of any city i have ever lived in. The buses are on time and plentiful. from anywhere in the city you can get anywhere in the city. We have hundreds of Edinburgh people who come in our shop and as the first digger started to rip the heart out of the city we asked people ' do you want the trams', 'are the trams a good idea'. the response was a infatic, NO!
By this point we new we were expecting our first child and although the business was beginning to show signs of straining, life was still good and it was nothing we couldn't handle. Oh how wrong was I........
I am not going to dwell too much on this as it is still very painful and a day after closing my business no one will want to shag a man that cries all the time (a very rough love actually quote). but by February we no longer had a child on the way and to say that customers had stopped walking through the door was an understatement.I was doing my best to ensure my darling wife that everything would be fine and that this was just a blip in our perfect life, that we would be laughing about in a few years as we sat in our million pound house surrounded by our 2.4 children.
Saturday 9th May. The Edinburgh Golf Shop LTD....RIP!
To this date we are still trying to add another element to our family and we are now planning to head back to Nottingham to try and start a new life. I feel like i want to apologies to my far better other half every day for pushing for the shop and basically being a typical pig minded male Boon and not listening to her worries, which were, as we have now found, very real worries! Oh and yes David, they could happen! Lets hope she doesn't do a Elliot style 'i told you so' dance!
I am business less, jobless and baby less. I am moving our out of the first house that we bought together and leaving a city and a country that we both love. In the space of 8 months we have gone from living the life of Riley to becoming another statistic on the government lists of people that have fucked up there lives!!! Sorry baby, my bad!
So David, you wuss. Suck it up and wipe away the tears you girl and lets do something about it!! The future will still be bright cause you are in a very loving marriage, you have a great group of friends and family and you have a lot going for you. So it is time for a change.
This week we are sorting out the paperwork etc that is involved with liquidising a LTD company. Friday we are off for a weeks holiday that is needed more than a poet needs the pain. When we return i will be joined by my parents in law who will help us move house. which brings us to June 1st..
JUNE 1ST!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the day that i have set out to start my training. This is the day that i have set out to change my life around. They say that a healthy body creates a healthy mind. if that is true then bring it on.
I know a little about training etc from my past experiences and from my Sports Science degree. I am not going to quit my life style cause you should never start to hate training or dieting because it is something that is stopping you from being you. I will still eat my Sunday dinner and i will still have a beer with the lads. I will obviously work on my fitness and stamina as 26 miles is no walk in the park. well it is actually at the beginning in Hyde Park! but after that it isn't. I am going to work on my muscles cause i do actually look a little better in a bigger physique than i do a skinny rake. i am looking forward to driving myself and pushing myself through the pain that i know will come with the training.
After what i have been through in the last year i am bizarrely looking forward to the future. I have never been one to stick my head in the sand and to feel sorry for myself. If anything happens in this world then bar a lottery win YOU are the one that needs to make it happen. So that is just what i am going to do. I WILL get another good job that can support my family for years to come. We WILL have a little one on the way very soon. I WILL complete the marathon in less than 3 hours 43 minutes and i will feel total contentment in my life again very soon, don't get me wrong, i am still very happy but as everyone who knows me will testify, i need success to be complete.
So here i am. I will be buying a proper pair of running trainers tomorrow morning, along with the first series of The Inbetweeners (clunge!!). And as far as i am concerned my life starts now. one chapter has finished so it is now the time to turn the page and start a new one.
My god, a whole blog entry without saying the word Rainbow once, i am very impressed with myse........... DO'H! so close.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Chasing Rainbows!!
All the time,
I could deny,
But I'll never realise,
I've been chasing rainbows,
All my life.
"Shed Seven" 1996.
I-pods are a great thing. Not only do they drown out the mind numbing dullness of the bus trip to work, but they have the ability to transport you to any place, time or event in your life or in someone else's. On this sunny Wednesday morning though it didn't transport me to anywhere but to my present location, what it did do though was open a door in my mind that hand been closed for a long long time. The sign hanging on the front of the door that the boys from York hand just opened by singing the lyrics above to me read....
"contentment"
My name is David Boon, I am a 30 year old golf pro who is currently the director of his own retail business in the heart of the Edinburgh, the greatest city i have ever lived in (and there has been a few). I am married to a beautiful girl who is everything that I had wished for in a woman and then some. I own my own house and I drive a very nice car.
Now before you reach for the big X in top right hand corner because you think this is going to be a blog about my perfect life I will let you in on my dirty secret........... my so called perfect life ended in February and in the next few weeks it will be ripped away from me in total with the force and pain of a child losing her favourite toy!
My wife and I suffered in the beginning of the year the greatest high followed by the greatest low I have ever felt in my life. Within the space of 5 weeks I went from holding my wife, both with tears of joy in our eyes, trying to avoid the smell of urine coming from the stick in front of us screaming at the top of it's voice the fact that we where going to have our first child. 5 weeks later I was holding my wife even closer, with even more tears in our eyes, as we left hospital after having the aforementioned addition to our perfect life removed from her body after the babies heart had stopped beating, the result being we joined the statistic that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in mis-carrage! In the proceeding weeks we have realised that getting pregnant again isn't as easy as it was first time and also that we feel that the world basically hates us!
Which brings me back to the bus trip and my i-pod. It is a sunny Wednesday morning and i am on the bus heading into work to continue with the closing down sale of our business. The banks refuse to help us, our creditors can't wait any longer and due to the economic crisis that has gripped the world we are again going to become a very unwanted statistic of businesses closing due to the "credit crunch". Damn those statistics!!!!
Which brought me to my door opening moment. I am not sure how long I have been searching for this key subconsciously but it appeared to me just as we drove past the beautiful Botanical Gardens.
I won't lie to you when I say that I have had a bloody good life. I turned pro at golf and subsequently played all round the world. I have lived in some great places with some great people and I have done many things that i would never tell you in front of any ones parents! But one thing throughout my life has always been at the back of my mind, or the front shining as bright as the sun as my sunglasses wearing friends will tell you.
I am never happy with what i have got and i always want more!!
Which brings me to the rainbows and the key. I have always wanted to better myself with anything in my life. Job, house, car, wealth. If I don't have the best or the most then I strive to get it. I am sure most millionaires will tell you is the only way to live but I am not a millionaire. I have tried, my god I have tried but as I write this I am closer to be a homeless man with a dog and a imaginary friend than living the lap of luxury I have long dreamed of.
Cars, houses etc. They are all very good and shiny but the loss of our first child and the impending doom of my business has lead me to realise that the rainbow is not the shiny materials that i crave but it is the personal contentment that i have never had, although i thought. The prospect of being Jobless, moneyless and homeless has been hanging over my head now for 6 months. These fears and feelings though pale into insignificance compared to what I felt leaving the hospital that rainy February day. Bizarrely I actually feel something completely different. I feel like my life might actually be starting.
My wife is perfect, I have a very generous skitzefrenic family (if you knew them you would know what i mean) that I wouldn't be without, and a group of very old friends that I consider myself very lucky to have. Yes I have lost my business but there are far more important things in life than money and procession's. Things could be a lot worse.
So to my new chapter in my lives. We will soon be moving 'home' to Nottingham and once again we will be surrounded by the people we hold dearest. I will find work, I don't yet know what but I know I will. I will never stop though, my wife has said this and I have to agree. Until I am holding that rainbow, or driving along it in a Mario Brothers style then I will never be happy. My rainbows now have nothing to do with the previously mentioned posessions. I need to be able to support my family, rainbow 1! We need to make our family grow, Rainbow 2! And we must make sure that every day we are happy and grateful, rainbow 3! This I feel I can achieve because I am a very lucky man to have what i have.
Which brings me to my blog and to my final rainbow........my personal rainbow that i might never reach but at least I have to try. Over the years this rainbow will change, it will morph from one challenge to the next, each one though I am determined to finish, not for money, power or adulation. but for me! simple as that!
I have never been jealous of anyone in my life because although jealously can act as a driving force I believe that it is a unhealthy Passion to have. That is until on Monday evening when I spoke to my friend who I must now admit I am jealous of him. Not because he has a nice job, kids or a house. It is because after hearing the pride and the passion in his voice, after reading the hundreds of messages of good will and support for him and everyone else. and after looking at myself in the mirror and realising that i am 30 year old with a body that is closer to my overweight father than the very fit and strong 18 year old memory that unfortunately has disappeared in a haze of beer, wine, restaurants and way too much good living, This needs to change! I now realise that changing this is the final rainbow I need to chase. and fingers crossed, I chase it in less than 3 hours and 43 minutes. On Tuesday morning i paid my entry fee to the London Marathon!
My god that is going to be the most painful press of the 'Enter' button ever!!
If you have read this far then thank you. You will no doubt have realised that I am no Shakespeare. If you want some iambic pentameter then trust me you are in the wrong place. I am me and I will write like I talk and think. I will be honest, sometimes too honest and I will never shy away from my feelings. I will give you a run by run, fall by fall and pasta meal by bloody blister record of my training from the very few steps out the house to the finishing line in 12 months time. I will hopefully make you laugh and maybe even make you cry but what I will do is to give you a 100% honest appraisal of what it take for a normal family guy to run the London marathon
I am currently 14 1/2 stone and the most exercise I get at the moment is when I drag my fat ass onto the golf course. I know this is going to be hard, possibly the hardest thing I have ever done. 26 miles of what could be pain and agony, but from what my friend has told, the result, or the rainbow as I will be thinking of it, is one of the greatest prizes you can achieve.
So it's time to set my alarm, buy those trainers, load up my I-pod because my friends, it time to Run Fat Boy, Run!
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