I have become obsessed. Obsessed with weight, and obsessed with waiting. You probably guessed the waiting part from my insistence of counting down the 600+ days til the Race.

Ah, but the weight. I first realized I needed to do something about my weight when I had to buy two new pairs of jeans. Now, going from a 34 to a 36 is explainable if you switch brands, because apparently different brands use different inches. But I've been wearing Guess jeans for years, and I noticed that they started using the smaller inches. I bought a pair of 36" jeans.

This was enough to motivate me to do nothing about it. So six months later, with another brand and another 36" fit, I finally started working on it. And it's not just about vanity. I'm doing my level 1 training for the race 4-11 October, and I expect it to kick my arse. And my theory is, If I have less arse to kick (and gut, and jowls, et. al) then it might not be so bad.

The long and short of it is, through a careful regimen of not eating as much crap, I lost 23 lbs in four months. I started using a skinnier notch on my belt I've never used before. And I'm back down to 34". Except that I'm not when it comes to actual measurements.

As I'm in full on 'buy lots of stuff for Clipper to fill the time between now and my race actually leaving, while justifying it that I need to test things on my training legs' mode, I'm buying more clothes than I've ever bought before in such a short period of time (except maybe the annual school uniform restock odyssey). And as I shun human interaction when at all possible while buying stuff, I use the internets for most of my purchases.

But this presents the problem of what size actually am I? When I measure according to sizing guidelines, I'm a what the fuck 39" waist. But then when I measure my 34" jeans they're 40". Except the 32" inseam uses the inches I grew up with, not these mysterious waistline inches. Basically, I might be going round the world in some really ill-fitting togs.

Oh, and the other weight. I have a box at home with all the supplies I've purchased for the race so far. Fleece, several merino wool items, headlamp and leatherman, silk sleeping bag liner, clothes line, silica gel, sealsinz socks, and nite-ize biners. And it weighs 4.58 kgs. Because I'm only allowed 20-25 kgs of gear to get me round the world, depending on how competitive the Skipper and Crew I'm allotted are. I'm shooting for 20Kgs, but that's also going to have to include the gear I've bought so far, my camera for sure, Docs for shore, maybe a laptop, couple of jigsaw puzzles to kill time with on the boat, and one of those foot bath thingies cos I reckon that'll be just what the doctor ordered i the middle of the Southern Ocean.

So my life feels a bit like weight, and wait, and weight some more. But weighti-- bugger, waiting doesn't last forever. Just look at the 13-14 crew who leave in less than a month.