Happy New Year everybody!!

Or, as the French would say "Gut New Jaar".

Well what a Festive season this kiddie has had! Life as an icon isn't easy sometimes you know and that's why I awarded myself a clear two week pass to just relax and get some much-needed carbo loading in to preface the kick start to my London Marathon regime.

Well, folks, ask me how I feel now?

The truth is, entre noo, I think I may have overtrained somewhat and I'm beginning to regret that little bit of Christmas spirit I entered into and exited from with some degree of whoosh. I spent the time with family and like-minded people and I'm afraid the Olympic diet and training programmes have drifted south.

I realised I might have got my timings slightly wrong when I came home on New Year's Day after what I thought was a fairly agreeable evening of Chicken Tikka Masala and a few tubes down the Dog and Bucket with Ernie. Well you'd have thought I'd kidnapped Ted Heath by the reception I got from the Half Share and Cash Drainers who apparently weren't happy that I'd gone awol for a couple of days.

But I did explain that Christmas is a time for families - New Year is a time for mates.

That went down well.

But not as well as New Year's Day. It started after I suggested that a couple of bacon butties would be just the job for me and Ernie. Well before you could say Bobby Davro, I was chewing the rough end of a set of bathroom scales. After some encouragement from the Half Share I did eventually stand on the bally things.

Well, Ronettes, you could have knocked me down with a quilt. I thought the flippin' thing was telling me the time - but horror of horrors it was my weight. And I was kind of a bit the wrong side of where I shouldn't be.

And that is putting it mildly. So that was it! The Half Share whipped off me kex and after thinking it was some kind of foreplay that's where the fun stopped. Before I knew it she'd flung a set of my Festive Lycra and a pair of green flash at me and pushed me out the front door for what she called a pre-training walk. Walk? I haven't even driven that far this Christmas!! Eleven and a half miles she had me walking - over shingle, sand dunes and beach. My calfs felt like they'd been ripped off my legs when I'd finished.

And it didn't stop there either!! There was no way I could run yesterday so as a punishment I wasn't allowed a pie.

I now know that I need to knuckle down. I know because it has been written on a piece of paper and stapled to my head. So this morning I went for my first run in weeks. Two flippin' miles!! That's all I could manage - 2 miles!

More to the point, I was so traumatised by the experience I couldn't take my lycra off for hours - I just sat in front of the fire hugging a cup a soup. And as I sat trying to get my Olympic flame to light I decided that I needed to have a few New Years Resolutions to encourage me to glory in 2010 - just two years now mind you - before my glorious Olympic medal winning occasion.

So here are my commitments for 2010:

1. January is officially a 'No Pie' month. Well at least until the last weekend in the month when I have insisted that no trip to Cork can be considered fulfilled without a pie.

2. I'm having to leave the tubes alone in January - apart from Saturday nights.

3. Learn to play a musical instrument. Might sound ridiculous but when I appear on chat shows I need to be able to play or sing a duet with people like Des O'Connor. So the Half Share has bought me a ukulele.

4. Learn a foreign language. I need to connect more with the Cash Drainers so I'm going to learn to speak text.

5. I must stop lying on the couch watching rubbish TV. So I've bought some exercise and workout DVDs and I'm going to sit and watch them instead.

6. I'm going to stop delaying things. Starting tomorrow,

7. I'm fed up with being in the same old rut - so I'm determined to find a new rut.

8. I've got a job so I'm going to stop working in the office in just my Y Fronts. I'm going to move the computer into the bedroom instead.

9. Get a place on the GB Team - I'm not fashed about competing I just want one of those fancy track suits.

10. Buy some 'Blong' so that I can look like those proper athletes.

I'll be doing my best with these - and in the meantime, the serious running business gets under way this week. I need a good three or four runs before the weekend. Then, on Sunday, its the Swanley 10K - and at the moment I have to say that I'd struggle to make the distance.

Anyway, from all my team here - Ernie and the Half Share, the Droog, Hylie Minogue and the Sod, here's to a great New Year. In the words of Griff Rhys Jones 'Go Bang a Drum'.

Keep on tapering.

Ron