Training begins and a reality check

Hello everyone, and thanks for the messages on Blogger and Facebook. This journal is going to be on both sites at the same time - isn't Web two-point-oh great?
After spending the weekend sitting in a chair in a hotel function room looking at powerpoint slides I decided I had to run today, no excuses. What made me feel more determined is I weighed myself and I'm in even worse shape than I thought. Apparently three months without serious exercise plus Christmas has taken it's toll, and I'm topping out over 112kg. That's 17 stone 9 in old money.
At the moment my training is just running on the treadmill in my living room while watching TV. It's a nice way to get into it - it's really discouraging to be pounding the pavements when you feel like you're going at tortoise pace and you know you look like you're about to have a coronary. Also you have to guess how far you've gone and how much further there is to go, you have to stop to cross roads and you have to deal with different slopes and surfaces, as well as pedestrians, cyclists, dogs...
Basically, on a treadmill you can just plod away and rack up the miles, getting used to running constantly for as long as you need to, and you've got the TV to distract you. Obviously I'll have to start road-running before the first race, but for now I'm just working on getting my basic level of fitness up where it needs to be.
At the moment my limit is pretty much 30 minutes, in which time I cover about 2 miles. That's probably worth about 340 calories, so not bad, but I tend to hit the wall pretty soon after the 30 minute mark, so I really need to improve if I'm going to survive a full 10K- at my current pace that will take more than an hour and a half.
However, while I know I've got to get better, I'm consoling myself with the memory of not being able to run for ten minutes at a time, only a few years ago. And I was a bit lighter then! I started off running for ten minutes and wanting to die, but I did it three or four times a week, and pretty soon it wasn't that bad. So I upped it to fifteen minutes eventually, and kept going progressively like that. It sounds simple, but it took months to get to the point where I could run for a whole half hour!
So that's the general plan with the training - up the distance gradually, and try increase the speed too.
Of course, if I have less weight to carry around, the running will be easier and faster, so I'm going to have to start looking seriously at my diet soon. Everyone who knows me knows I love to eat, especially the bad stuff. I'm not averse to a bit of salad or veg, but given the choice I'll usually go for meat and pasta, or a sandwich. This is going to be hard, so if you've got any tips that have worked for you, please leave a message below, I'll really be interested in hearing what you have to say.

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