Welcome to the Road to London 2012 Dr. Greg Wells needs to get in serious shape Blog. This is a separate blog from my main page because this is a project in and of itself. This all started over the December holidays when my lovely wife leaned over and with her sweet voice and smiling face said: "So honey, you know the camera adds 10 lbs... How's that lemon cake?". And so here we are... 30 lbs, 200 days to lose it and my background in sport science and physiology to make it happen. Time to put all the knowledge into action. I've imposed much pain and suffering on many great athletes over the years and now I will be on the receiving end.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 10:22AM 
I have a brief and frankly sufferfest update from the Andes. To date I have been running 10 km / day with the following people.
Ray Zahab - ran across the Sahara Desert.
Kevin Valleley - skied to the south pole
Bob Cox - multiple 100 mile racer.
That is all I have to say about that.
Friday, February 17, 2012 at 09:18PM 
I have been avoiding all of you. Traveling and working like a madman has made Greg's weight loss blog take a back seat for a couple of weeks. But I am down to 190, which means almost 10 lbs so far. Ok but not great. But given work insanity I'm pleased. A weekend in Florida was a nutrition problem but we won't talk about that too much. The benefit of that weekend is that I may have recruited a new high profile member of this weight loss blog. More to come on that.
This weeks photo is a shot of my hotel room in Santiago Chile. You may notice the wires and gear spread all over the place. This is my mobile physiology lab for the next while. I'll be crossing the Andes Mountains over the next week testing Ray Zahab as he attempts to run from the Pacific to the Atlantic through Chile and Argentina. I will be running each day - hopefully 10- 20 km depending on the data we have to collect. Ray is going for 70-100 km's / day. You can check out the expedition at www.andesrun.com. My science testing results will be posted in the Science of the Run page. We will be broadcasting to classrooms all over the world and the data I collect will be presented at U of Toronto - we will try to lecture about exercise in altitude from altitude. That should be pretty cool I hope!
To be honest my focus for the last 2 weeks when I have not been posting much has been on work and trying to be present at home as much as possible. I heard a story recently that caused me to struggle a bit with the self-centered nature of this blog. The great thing is that this blog has gotten a number of people moving and asking questions about health, and we have hundreds of kids who have signed up to train and follow along with this current expedition. But the most moving thing that I have seen in the last 2 weeks has been the story of my friend's daughter who has a terminal illness. His challenges make mine look like a light walk in the park. He was interviewed on Global news about his daughter and the words that hit hard were that his goal and his family's goal was to squeeze the most out of every second of life. I've been trying and I'll keep trying to do that. If you want to check out Sophie's story check out www.stridesforsophie.com. Ill keep that attitude in mind as much as I can in the coming months and years. That way I can make sure that little Sophie has made a big positive difference in my life.
Running across the Andes mountains coming up! Time to squeeze a lot out of life!!!!!
Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 10:33PM 
In this weeks weight loss blog post I have a few updates and notes.
First of all, as I announced on twitter, im down to 193.2. Not great progress, but progress nonetheless.
I hit 7 hours of training this week. All great workouts. Hardest workout was when I took my daughter running (pushing her in the chariot) through the trails near my house. We stopped in a park and I decided to try to keep up with her on every piece of playground equipment. Brutal. That's all I have to say about that.
I have some deadlines to announce. Deadline #1 is that I am going to Chile with Ray Zahab and Kevin Valelley in 18 days. They will be running 1700 km from the pacific to the Atlantic across south America. I'll be doing the science testing / research on them and running as much as possible. So major training camp running in the Andes mountains is coming up. These guys are accomplished ultra endurance athletes. I am a former decent swimmer who is now slowly getting back in shape. I will keep you very amused by comparing my blood to theirs. For those of you keeping track, yes I am leaving my wife with my daughter for a week as I go do something nuts in a crazy remote place somewhere far away... again. You can follow the expedition at www.andesrun.com.
Finally, in a previous blog post I joked about going out to test drive a BMW. That's because my lease is up in 2 weeks. My lovely wife who made me start this blog informed me tonight that it would be very good for me to run and or ride to and from work until I get fit. And she noted that it would be easy to run and or ride to and from work if I did not have a car.
F&;$)(&:k!
So apparently (I agreed to this), I get a new car when I break 170 lbs. For the record I only got down to 172 after riding 7000 km across Africa. And for 6000 of this km's I had a mild form of dysentery.
I will need lots of trash talk from more than just Ron Watson. Time to run lots and eat perfectly. For a little inspiration, here is a principal from Ottawa who is changing his life for the better.
Principal George - Day 10 from GOi2P on Vimeo.
Stay tuned.
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 09:37PM 
Nothing like a little trash talk from your friends to get you in gear. Awesome day today.
Food as follows:
Living Fuel Superberry and protein powder shake in am. Used almond milk and cocoa in the shake. Awesome.
Double espresso - no comment
Nuts and carrots at 10 am
Red pepper, spinach, turkey, avocado for lunch.
Blueberries and grapes 2 pm.
Meetings all day long but stuck to 90 min intense work, 15 min break all day. Fantastic.
Did dinner (cauliflower, a little beef, more peppers, tomato, red wine), put daughter to bed, chilled for an hour and was pretty bagged. Checked Facebook. Saw trash talk from Ron Watson. Immediately got the bike out and set it up in front of the TV and watched 60 min of U2 360 tour concert footage while spinning as hard as I could.
According to Sufferfest (www.thesufferfest.com) the bike in front of the TV in the winter = the torture chamber. Here's mine (see photo above)!
Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 08:11PM As I wrote last Wednesday, I worked like a madman Monday and Tuesday. I trained well, and ate very well. I did weigh-in- Wednesday and all was good. Wednesday am I did a morning weights session and a 9 km run, followed by another adrenaline fueled work day to meet deadlines and get a lecture cleaned up.
You may have noticed that it took me until Sunday night to write another blog post. That's because I was so dead tired, mentally smoked and physically drained on Thursday and Friday. I was in a waking coma all day Saturday. I admittedly tried to hammer through the rest of the week fueled by caffeine and less than ideal food. F^*€>
PS caffeine does not help you recover from working too hard.
But the waking coma day (also known as sloth day) on Saturday was enough to help me recover - I had a great run on Sunday am - maybe my best yet. I had tons of fun with my daughter as well. I seem to be able to reenergize with one good night sleep and one slack day.
I'm good to go for another week but it's a problem - that kind of week is ok for getting work done, I was super productive. But it was brutal on my health and horrible for being energetic and happy with my family at night and on the weekend. To recap: work like a champ Monday Tuesday Wednesday, collapse Thursday Friday (drink gallons of coffee to hammer out the week), slug day Saturday. Decent day Sunday. Some might call this a normal week. I call it Greg's mess.
This is not easy, and I'm not doing very well. Frankly I'm pretty pissed off. I give myself a 5/10 on last week.
So what is the solution? When i was sixteen I broke my neck and got fit enough to compete at Olympic trials 14 months later. I trained hard, did well in school, but it was tough. This will get done. I've done it before I can do it - no I must do it again.
Simple goals for the week:
8 hours training - flexibility in training times will be key as I have another busy week coming up.
Take food with me every day. This means we need to do a shop on Wednesday. Must plan this.
The magic to preventing adrenal fatigue and burn out: 90 minutes hard work, 30 minutes break / exercise during the work day. This allows for 4-5 hard work blocks in a day with loads of mental and physical recovery and regeneration. That's what I tell my business clients. This week I'll put it to work for myself.
I had loads of great messages from people who are working on their resolutions and it's totally great that you message me - thanks! Stay tuned for a much better week from Dr Wells.
