Happy New Year...and I seemed to have eaten all the pies...and the chocolate...and the mince pies...

Happy New Year readers.

The original reason behind this blog was to document my battle for fitness from being what is more commonly known as a 'fat bastard'.

I've pretty much got away with being able to eat what I like for a few years while I exercised like an athlete but once you take the training away, it just means you pile on the calories...and the pounds.

I'll be honest from the outset.  Injury totally killed my 2016 from a training and fitness point of view and as a result, I've put on a good few pounds.  Looking back at my Withings app which syncs to our bathroom scales, I was 13st 9lbs on 15th March 2016, just before my injury really took hold.  On 1st January 2017, I weighed in at a somewhat hefty 15st 2.8lbs.  Ouch.  Embarrased, outraged, I'm over the anger already.

It's time to put the injury to the back of my mind and get back to some routine.

I still need to manage the injury to a degree because no one actually knows exactly what it is.  Remember my Physio said hip, then hernia...ultrasound doc said definitely hernia...actual surgeon said no hernia after MRI and put it down to a muscle tear but they couldn't find anything conclusive!

Up until the end of November I was still trying to do some training but I can't honestly say I was training pain-free.  I was in bits.  I done reasonably well in November to do a little bit of running, mainly some walking and some rowing/cycling but it wasn't enough to avoid the pain.  Having come down with the beginning of a cold at December along with some pretty bad back twinges, I called 2016 a day and started taking some Naproxen anti-inflammatory tablets to manage the back twinges before Christmas took hold.

It appears to be the best thing I've done as the anti-inflammatory properties seem to have had an affect on my groin and I'm no longer in pain.

I've managed two 5k runs, slow but 5k nonetheless and absolutely no pain in the groin, just the usual DOMS discomfort which one would expect after months of real inactivity.

I will now be documenting my 'comeback', for as long as my groin will hold out.  I'm not totally convinced I'm over the injury but I may just be moving in the right direction, fingers crossed.