The 12WBT Preseason has 8 tasks that open progressively throughout the four weeks before the actual start of the full diet and exercise program.

The first task gets you to list every excuse you’ve ever used as to why you haven’t exercised or eaten properly. It was quite eye opening to hear of some of the excuses that people realised that they used, and there were a few in there that I’d used as well. You had to marry up your excuses with what the real reason was.

“Too tired” or just “Oh, I don’t want to” were a couple of my favorites, even though I know that I actually feel like I have more energy after I exercise than I do beforehand, it’s just a matter of getting out there and starting.  I used to use these excuses when I was living by myself. Back when I started cycling I knew that once I’d been on the bike for about 1 kilometre I was happy as larry and would enjoy myself, getting myself out the door was the problem. It was more like laziness.

“Too busy” was another, although that was actually because I didn’t want to get up early and exercise in the morning. Like all people, I usually feel a bit tired in the evening after work, so because I didn’t want to get up early to exercise and I didn’t want to exercise after work, I’d spend time on the computer and inadvertently stay up late and get insufficient sleep. Which meant the next day I didn’t want to get up early to exercise and I wouldn’t want to exercise after work…  Claiming that I was too busy made it easier. I might work late, or I’d have a meeting after work, but if I did I was always home by 8.30pm, so I logically should have been able to go to bed early enough to be able to get up at 5am and exercise, but there I was, going to bed at 11.30pm, and sleeping through to 6.30am, and getting on the bus to the train station less than an hour later.

Eating properly has never been that much of an issue, our worst habits were going to the local food hall on a Friday night, but I usually had good food in the freezer. So we started eating out of the freezer instead.  As I’ve said previously, my problem has been portion size.

The other tasks were planning and diarising your exercise program and flagging days that would be an issue (holidays, birthdays etc), setting goals and how you would achieve them, clearing your cupboards of bad foods (and therefore temptation), making sure that you had the equipment required or a gym membership ready for your exercise program, a benchmark fitness test and body measurements. Declaring your goals and your intentions was a major task. A lot of participants didn’t want to do this part – the prospect of someone laughing at them or belittling them was too scary to announce their intention.

I was 81.4 kilos the day I signed up. With Warm-up and Preseason at Day 1 I’m now 75.9 kilos. Assuming I get closer to 70 kilos I think I’ll be re-adjusting my goal weight to 67 kilos.

I’ve run two 10K races in the past few weeks, and come out uninjured both times. I’m quite determined that I will finish the Busselton Half Marathon. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be running it lighter.