The Optimise Health Blog

Just back from a restful holiday in the French Alps I jumped on the scales and realised that I have gained 5 kg since my triathlon last year and around 3kg of this is from eating too much and doing less exercise over Christmas or just eating too much on holiday! So I resolve now to get back to and better than my fitness of last summer ...by going back to basics. How did I get here?  1. My portion sizes have crept up while my activity levels fell before Xmas with a chest cold and a hip injury slowing me down.  2. I ate too much cheese and drank too much wine in France! As it was a family holiday I did less exercise overall and while lugging my 2 yr old daughter up the hills sledging and snowshoeing helped strengthen my back, thighs and upper body, it did not counteract my vast mountain appetite and high fat intake of Savoyard restaurant diet.  3. I have had little to aim for as tri season was over too soon - I hope do at least a couple of triathlons this year. 4. Bad weath...

So I completed the triathlon. During the event I was surprised that I had time and presence if mind to think about what I would do differently next time. Train more, not get a cold or d+v in the 2 weeks running up to the day; oh and get calf compression guards!  The swim went ok but slower than I had hoped due to distraction of 99 swimmers front crawling  in a lake full of weeds... Can't say I enjoyed it but completed nonetheless and lesson learned is to get your heart rate up before maximal effort ( perhaps a quick sprint up and down pre-race and a swim up and down at the start) and to make sure your wetsuit is well fitted - mine had ridden up so that I found it hard to breathe and had to unzip during the swim.  The transition was simpler than expected and good planning here minimised lost time; lay out your bike shoes and put helmet and glasses on your handlebars facing you; I had my compression gear underneath wetsuit so it was a quick slip out of bottom half of wetsui...

I am less than 3 weeks away from my first sprint Triathlon. As you may see from the blog I intended to do a Triathlon last year to prove to myself I had fully recovered from Malignant Melanoma. This goal was thwarted last year by a slipped a disc and 5 months of standing up with sciatica. Undeterred I have entered the Castle Howard Triathlon on 21st July. Before commencing training this year I lost 6 Kg over 4 months through diet changes, mainly reducing processed carbs, cooking from fresh and reducing portions.  My weight has come down to a steady 87 Kg with benefits seen in my knees and running/swimming/cycling times. I have been training with a buddy who did the Castle Howard Triathlon last year and is fitter than me in all events - a good person to chase! I certainly have felt benefit in company and the motivation to continue training when we are tired or needing to push it to the max in cardio training. Barriers have included injury - an ankle sprained slipping on...

Why Movember? Because in 2010 there were over 40,000 UK men diagnosed with Prostate Cancer and over 10,000 men died of prostate cancer. Thats more UK fathers husbands sons and brothers than have been killed in action since the second world war. Why Movember? Because we need to unite behind a memorable and distinctive cause to help raise awareness of issues around Men's Health. Growing a moustache is hard to miss and kicks off many helpful chats about mens health - especially if people are used to you being clean shaven! Men are not the best at proactive approach to men's health and neither is the human race - on average around 70% of cancer research funding is used towards breast cancer research - now awareness is high and most of us know know breast cancer is a killer disease with good prognosis if caught early. Prostate and testicular cancer can also be treated successfully if identified early and dealt with appropriately. But still we don't have a good diagnos...

The temperature is dropping as we are into autumn and approaching winter. This can have a massive effect on ability to exercise and perform under more challenging conditions. I discovered this the hard way cycling last January and found myself cramping and seizing up at the halfway point.  Knowing I had a further 15 miles cycling to get home I was fortunate to be with a buddy to slipstream and managed to painfully limp home at a snails pace in what became known as "the winter ride of death"! A few factors contributed to my painful demise on this ride - I was inadequately dressed without windproof leggings and inappropriate base layering up top. I also had not eaten that morning and had no food or energy source with me; I found myself to be in poor fitness and my metabolic rate was low after some time avoiding cycling in bad weather and I became cold after sweating up a steep hill and cooling down while resting too long at the top. All this conspired against me to produc...

Copyright Castle Howard I went to see my friends complete the Castle Howard Triathlon on Sunday morning. When I got the all clear I vowed to myself to complete this challenge to give myself a goal to work towards and prove to myself that I was better. So after 4 months of recuperation after surgery and complications of scar burst, infection and then a lumbar disc prolapse I am starting to plan my year of training to complete the Triathlon. As a sprint distance it involves a 400m swim then a 23km cycle followed by a 5km run.  I have been able to achieve each of these individually in the past, but to achieve a reasonable time and the fitness level to do all three at full pace will require a gradual build up in endurance, a change in my usual diet, fitness activity and a focus on endurance training which may (hopefully) change my body shape and composition in the process! After 4 months of relative inactivity my weight and fat levels are not good so this is the ideal time ...

I had surgery for malignant melanoma on April 18th 2012. I don't normally remember dates but as this was the first general anaesthetic and the first time I had ever had significant surgery I remember the day and the events leading up to it very clearly. I spent the next 8 weeks off work willing my leg wound to close up and heal which it has now done and all the bizzare nerve jolts and tingling sensations have ended. This is a relief as a jolting leg can be quite embarrassing and disruptive when you're trying to work or talking to a client! My leg finally healed leaving an impressive war wound for which I have invented many stories in case I don't want to go into the "you survived cancer, i'm so proud of you have a medal" conversation. After the op everyone kept telling me how well I looked, to which I replied that I had only had a lump of dodgy flesh removed from my leg and groin, it was not an illness but disease prevention for the future and that I w...