Sherri's Boxing Ring & Mary's Healthy Ling

In a month when the Tasmanian Deputy Premier Lara Giddings is abstaining from alcohol for charity, fitness guru Sherri Ring and my wife Mary have taken charge of my health and fitness. This week, after the boxing Ring came Mary's ling.

It is somewhat less than well known that before I involuntarily came to resemble "Cravat -A- Licious" I was, for some time, a serious amateur athlete. As the TV ad goes; "You know how it is - you settle down and let yourself go a bit ... I'm not worried..."

After, nominally, giving up smoking in the mid 1980's I took up running and swimming and, being obsessive compulsive, that soon led to open water swims and racing bikes and pretty soon I was getting up early and competing in short course triathlons.

Well, before you could say Matt Preston, I was running half marathons, then marathons and then ultra marathons and long course triathlons. Half ironmans, Ross to Richmond and Hobart to Cygnet runs, Bruny Island north to south, the Overland Track from Waldheim Chalet to Lake St Clair in 14 hours, Three Peaks and, and , and.

Even during this period of insanity I kept in touch with my inner man. On a rafting trip in individual rafts down the Franklin River in 1988 I cooked for our party of six. No dried jerky and dream stew for us. I took smoked kranskies, kassler and gnocchi and cheese for cider fondue eaten with rusks out of trangias. Overproof Bundaberg and river water completed the evening meals in place of wine.

I really don't know what happened but as I slowed down I started to beef up and when, in January 2006, I broke my ankle climbing up to the Lost World on Mt Wellington and caught a helicopter to the operating theatre, that was really the end of my extreme exercise.

And so I come to my present sad state - mesomorph, morbidly obese, ecstatically happy but, (having given up serious drinking 12 months ago), retaining enough brain cells to know that something must give if I am to live my allotted span. Thus it is that I have given myself up to Sherri's boxing Ring and Mary's healthy meals.

Last week it was a one hour workout comprising warm up, boxing, medicine ball and weights followed by steamed ling and oven baked chips and rocket and walnut salad. I felt good. This week I will don Sherri's boxing gloves again and I think I feel one of Jill Dupleix's salads Nicoise coming on, (apologies to Simon Thomsen for the spiffy photo in the link).

Ah well at least, notwithstanding the ravages of time, I have my food memories to keep me going and to provide me with the motivation to get fit - so I can do it all over again!