IT’S official. I am now at my lightest weight in over a decade.
Not since I borrowed my Dad’s best shirt to shake my thing in the old State club have I tipped the scales as light as I did at yesterday’s check weigh-in and pre-race fitting.
I’ve gone from tipping the scales a bowl of Scouse off 14 stone in February to a mere 12st 4lbs today - and I hope to get another two pounds off before the starter calls me to the line in Bangor on Saturday.
My body fat total has tumbled from 20% to just 12%, giving me a similar index to that of a professional footballer.
In layman’s terms, I’ve lost three centimetres of fat from around my upper body.
I am delighted to finally confirm then that I have convincingly achieved my goal of dropping 20 pounds in two months and I feel lean, mean and green (it’s the salad).
But I won’t lie, it’s been really tough. Long hours working out, strict dieting and gallons of H2O along with an alarming lack of beer has got me race ready.
Now, bring on Saturday night when Cains and Colonel’s chicken will rock me to sleep.
Flat out for the race of my life
DURING my youth and, let's face it my sporting peak, I loved nothing more than that feeling and rolling emotion you get the night before a cup final or school sports day.
To know that you are within touching distance of achieving something memorable; lifting a trophy and testing yourself against athletes of a similar level and experience is something every competitive person thrives on.
But the insomnia I've been suffering this past week is as much to do with fear as it is with the looming competition on the horizon.
It's the type of fear you get when put into a scenario that is alien to you – almost like the mouth-drying hesitancy we experience when stepping onto a rollercoaster for the first time.
Sure, my gallop at Bangor on Dee is on the Flat and the pace will be some way off that of, say, the Gold Cup.
But still I'm going to be going flat out perched above a tiny piece of leather on the back of a galloping racehorse in front of a grandstand – when less than eight weeks ago I didn't even know how to do a rising trot.
If that's not something worth worrying about then what is.
Perhaps I should be grateful that my desperate lack of late night cheese ingestion – a block of red Leicester remains my most heartfelt culinary desire – is probably keeping the nightmares at bay.
Staring up at the ceiling at 1.00am trying to keep my heels down in the stirrups is one thing. Waking in a cold sweat at 4.00am after tumbling out of the saddle and straight out of my pit would be another thing entirely.
