Last weekend my wife and I went out for a walk with our 11 month old baby.  Nothing unusual in that, except that rather than push her in a pushchair I used a Manduca to carry her on my back.

I am used to carrying the baby with the Manduca as we used it often when she was small.  During those early days she was carried on my front, only weighed around 10 lbs and I loved the experience of having her close to me whilst being able to have my hands free fore drinking beer and cooking BBQ (which is what I spend the most of summers doing).  Now she is bigger she can go on my back like a sort of baby backpack (fortunately still leaving my hands free for drinking beer and BBQ) 😉

The only challenge around this is getting the Manduca comfortable for her and for me, which requires tiny adjustments to the multitude of straps and buckles.  Eventually getting this right, we set off.  Now I am not saying that my baby is by any means overweight, but she is a fairly big 11month old and must weight about 2 stone (28lbs).  By coincidence, this is almost the exact amount that I calculate I am overweight.  “So what” I hear you say.  

Carrying her around has made me realise just how much excess weight I am carrying, particularly if I am going to compete in triathlons for any reason other than just to finish.  Bearing all that in mind, I am still not intending on doing anything drastic with my diet.  I will eat more healthily, train more and hope that the weight reduces slowly.  My first Tri is not until May, leaving me plenty of time to try and reduce my weight a bit.

Or alternatively I could just do all of my training with the baby strapped to my back, and then when I compete without her connected to me I will have the effect of being 2 stone lighter.  Not so sure my wife would agree with that though, and the baby might get bored of all the training!