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[Dollyboy]

So here goes 46 years old 15 1/2 STONE SMOKE 40 CIGS A DAY TIME TO GET FITTER.

[Hidden]

Ex smoker here. How do you find time to smoke 40 a day? How can you even still breath?

Even cutting down to 20 a day would make a big.very noticeable improvement to your fitness.

[Dollyboy in reply to Hidden]

Long distance lorry driver sat behind the wheel 9-10 hrs a day 1 cig after another.

[Hidden in reply to Dollyboy]

This is not advice or anything. This is just me, as an ex smoker, being interested.

Have you ever tried them awful vapour thingies? They seem very popular these days. I never tried them. I did have an e-cig that took nicotine cartridges for a while. I found it awful. It helped me to quit actually because I'd promised myself that if I must smoke, it would only be with the e-cig, and as it was awful, so first the pure habit aspect of the addiction went, and then I started to dread the cravings because I knew to relieve them I'd have to use the e-cig. I found myself resisting for longer and longer, and taking fewer and fewer drags when I did cave in. Then one day I just chucked it in the bin and went cold turkey.

As a smoker trying to quit (I've quit loads of times so I must get getting good at it ) the one thing that uses to really annoying me was 'advice', which is why I pointed out at the start that I'm not offering any. There's two reasons why it annoyed the hell out of me. One is that most such advice was conveyed like some great secret revelation, despite being well known and understood fact. Stuff like 'think how much money your literally burning' or 'smoking will kill you'. Smokers know that just as much as anyone else. We know we're poisoning ourselves. When my oldest son was still a toddler and I was still a smoker, I fully understood that i was slowly murdering his dad, and condemning him to a crap life by destroying the bread winner of the household. Smokers know all that. That's why it bugged me when people told me.

The other reason 'advice' bugged me is that most of it came from people that didn't have a clue what they're on about. 'If I was a smoker, I'd just stop buying them'. No. No you wouldn't. Because if you were a smoker you'd be an addict, just like a smack'ed shooting up, not in control of your own life. We know that. Someone who's never been an addict can't possibly know how addiction enslaves a weak mind.

So that's why I don't offer advice on the matter. It's an individual thing. But I am interested. Smoking 40 a day do you not find it difficult to breath even when at rest? Don't you feel sick all the time? How do you cope if you have to go somewhere where smoking is not really allowed? As part of your plan to claw back some fitness, do you think your smoking habit will change?

[nikkiwabit Graduate in reply to Hidden]

Yep agree, ex-smoker here too.

I cant possibly advise how I gave up as a good way - I got pneumonia! and was unable to smoke for a week and so was not physically addicted by then.

[Hidden]

So what's the plan? How about one of those e cig thingies?

[IannodaTruffe Mentor]

Posting here is a start. What next?

[Dollyboy]

Yeh started e cig today and couch to 5k app.

[Hidden in reply to Dollyboy]

Well done, good place to start. The very best of luck!

[Elerir Graduate]

Ashamed to say I am also a smoker with a 20 a day habit. But the good news is I am on w8r2...so probably not advisable but definitely possible!! Good luck!!

[naedoot]

Good to see you are starting down the right road. My last real cig was on 2nd may 2015 just prior to be loaded into an ambulance and blue lighted to hospital with a heart attack. Ecigs have come on and fair bit and you will find that the money you save will mount up quickly in your pocket and you will start feeling healthier. I for one could not go back to a real cig now as even the smell makes my stomach churn. Far healthier now than I was few years ago. Stick with it and you will feel better.

[Irish-John Graduate]

You are just an amateur! LOL - seriously, compared to how I was just over a year ago you are ready for the Olympics Just take it all slowly and steadily, never skip a Rest Day and hang out with us here - that's how I and so many others managed it and so can you

BTW - Running does not just get you Fitter, it will change your entire life in ways that are explainable and inexplicable until you experience them - I was 56 when I started, thought life held no more surprises except 'bad' ones, getting old and wearing out and losing more than I could ever gain and a lot of what I had...man, was I ever wrong

Wishing you many happy miles in your future also

[Irish-John Graduate in reply to Irish-John]

ps From my 'Runaversary' Post this year. It's definitely a cliche - but if I can do it...

June 1st 2016. Irish John is morbidly unfit, overweight, unhealthy, clinically depressed and looks and certainly feels twenty years older than he is.

Filled with a kind of weary curiosity, he sets off to see if he can do D1W1 of the preposterously-promising app he stumbled across while playing with a new cell phone.

Yep - weary curiosity.

Weary because I was absolutely bored to death with walking but it was literally the only thing that I was doing exercise-wise, and only about two miles of that a few days a weeks, weary because could not face the monotony and hassle of swimming at the only venue available - a usually crowded pool, and homicidal traffic around here scared even me from going out cycling. Since finishing a thirty year career that was also a lifestyle over a year beforehand I was literally dying by degrees mentally and physically - weary of life and myself.

Curious because running for sixty seconds did not seem TOTALLY impossible - but with Asthma, screwed up footbones, only about a year and a half off a twenty cigarettes a day (and sixty or more on weekends) almost forty year nicotine habit, and wearing jeans and ratty old trainers 'cos never in a million years was I going to buy 'Running Gear' - well, it would certainly not be something to bet on that I would get even get to a minute or maybe two of continuous running...but at least it would be a change from walking the damn Park and it would be interesting to see how far I would get before having to quit...

The only encouragement I had was having read a graphic account in the ads for C25K by a graduate who suffered the physical horrors of hell to get to graduation and - 'I DID IT!!! ! I damn well DID IT even though it nearly killed me!"

I could relate to that.

NOT the graduating part, Lord no - but the 'running nearly killed me' bit !!! For the first time in my life I got an inkling that MAYBE running was not 'something you can do relatively effortlessly or absolutely not at all.."

MAYBE it was something I could do a little tiny bit of...furthest I'd ever run continuously in my life was no more than a hundred yards and that was in a bona fide an emergency (and it completely knackered me!)

So off I set.

365 days ago I wondered if I could run for one minute maybe twice. I did not believe I would do the whole of Day One. It was just going to be a break in the awful monotony of my days...

But - I DID THE WHOLE DAMN THING!!!!...I managed to do ALL of DAY ONE!!

Granted a lady walking by me at the end had to be dissuaded from completing a 911 call for an ambulance for me. I was bent over double desperately trying to breathe through all orifices and was 'slightly blue' around the lips and eyes'....it didn't matter!! I had run the WHOLE STAGE!

Damn! Maybe I will keep going with this programme!!!

I kept going. My dream was to someday finish W3 and maybe see how far I could get in W4....

my dream was to run half way around the slightly-over- 7/10ths of a mile Park pathway without stopping....

my dream was to run once around it without stopping...

I must be dreaming if I think I can run two times, three times, FOUR times around this Park without stopping...

and finally my determination was to do the four and a bit laps that would let me graduate with 5K...

Which I did.

And then there was the wonderful 5 miles without stopping morning.

And then came the rather foolhardy and presumptuous 10K without stopping...

And a 33:27 5K race was in there among this last 365 days.

And of HUGE importance was the finding this great Forum and the genuinely open-hearted and decent people I have come to know here...

And their were LOTS of 'practice' days before and after graduation and no doubt more in the future, lots of 'I just don't WANNA finish the distance this morning' times, lots of 'Am I REALLY doing this?' Gremlins in all manifestations trying to stop me even on 'rather good run' days.

There was the accosting of the Park Pervert, getting hit by the 'Walking Meditation' Lady, the newly discovered gift for scrambling up a high wall when chased by slavering dogs, the asinine comments by the smirking passers by, the frustration of Pram pushers blocking the route, the rain and the snow and the ice and the cold... the temps in the high nineties and the humidity worthy of a Turkish Bathhouse...the fingers freezing in winter before finding gloves that fit without making me feel like Sasquatch...

All I have to do is go out the door in my Running Gear and I fully come alive every second day or so. And though I still run on my own, thanks to you all I never run alone...

This last year - what a gift!!!

Thank you all

[foreverendeavour]

What a post. You are TOTALLY INSPIRING and one superb person. Thanks for being you, and being there.

[foreverendeavour]

I too am a lorry driver. Used to do continental and eat and smoke myself to oblivion. Have been smoke free for a heavenly 3 years. Try reading Alan Carr 's EasyWay to Stop Smoking'. Also, a non smoking colleague once said to me 'You want to stop smoking. Why is it so difficult to do something you say you want to do?' I'm not sure if it helped, but it was a very interesting point and it kept niggling in the back of my head. Good luck, and welcome to c25k, the best thing you'll ever do - next to quitting smoking.

[Madgen in reply to foreverendeavour]

Totally recommend Alan Carr; I smoked 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years but since reading the book 15 years ago I haven't touched a cigarette.

[Si68 Graduate]

Like you I mostly drive for a living and spend most of my time munching rather than smoking (ex smoker).

One of my reasons for starting the plan was due to the weight I had put on since taking up driving for a living and found the runs really helpful in terms of feeling a lot lighter and fitter.

If you are able to do your runs before work it also makes the traffic hassles a lot less stressful.

Good luck with the running

[J9_54 Graduate]

Good on you. I wasn't brave enough to even try this before kicking the fags, I'm afraid I couldn't run upstairs without being out of puff and my chest burning but now a year off them and have started the challenge. Good luck, keep posting how you're getting on as I'm genuinely interested 😊

[nikkiwabit Graduate]

Go for it!