Everyone makes them, everyone fails at them.

Mine this year is to get fitter and lose some weight. This isn’t really a new resolution, I tried starting running again back in 2009 and found that really didn’t work for me – basically my ankles and knees wouldn’t take it anymore.

Since then I’ve been pretty full on with work and house renovations and while I’ve been able to reduce my weight a little, the idea of regular exercise has been honoured more in the breach than the fact.

Diet, apart from a fondness for a decent glass of wine, isn’t really an issue I’m a muesli/yoghurt/wholemeal bread/fruit/salad/pasta type of guy, with a couple of veggie only days most weeks and I eat a lot more fish and chicken than I do red meat.

It’s purely lack of exercise. Working in IT you spend a lot of time on your bum and the trick is to get off it on a regular basis. Social media doesn’t help, as these days work and life blends a bit with me finding myself answering emails at weekends, not to mention checking twitter a couple of times a day – some of it’s recreational stuff to do with my interests, some of it’s work, and some of it’s in between.

Up till now everything’s been more or less ok. I might not be the fittest, but I thought I was ok for a man in his late fifties.

And then last Friday we got up at five o’clock and drove down to Pebbly Beach for a swim and a gentle bushwalk to mark the end of the end of year break. I swam, I enjoyed myself but I found it a lot harder than I expected – sometime between climbing Ohlsen Bagge in South Australia this winter past and now I’ve reached some tipping point.

Taking it as a wakeup call I was up at 5.15 this morning for a twenty minute powerwalk – just me and the kangaroos – amazing how many there are in the suburbs in the early morning – and ten minutes cardio on the exercise machine we bought some years ago for cross country ski training and never used seriously.

I plan to repeat this three days a week and get some other exercise in at weekends – be it a bushwalk or a bikeride. I might never be able to run 10km again but I can still keep fit …