Never go out drinking with a mad Irishman and a crazy northern lass!

On Thursday night, I was invited to celebrate the Business Design Centre being open as a business centre for 25 years. Over the 6 years that Revolution has been open, I’ve built up great relationships with the Morris brothers who own the BDC, and Dominic Jones who is the CEO, and thought it would be great fun to join them for their celebrations.

With this in mind, I ate perfectly all day and had a plan to say ‘no’ to all the lovely food on offer, but to say yes to 2 glasses of red wine. I was joined by my good friend and senior Revolution trainer Neil McGuigan. For those of you who don’t know Neil, he is someone who works hard but likes to play even harder.

The party was fantastic, and as a business owner I found it really inspirational. Stories were told of how the family business started and how - against all odds - it succeeded to become a huge success and also one of London’s iconic buildings.

I was on track to stick to my 2 glasses of wine, but then Neil hit me with the old classic “one for the road mate”. Well, it was never going to be just one more, especially when you’re out with Neil. After several glasses of pink champagne (I was including that under the ‘red wine’ banner) and more wine, we headed out of the party and down to the gym to grab our bags and head on home. Not sober by any means, but certainly not sozzled.

That’s when we bumped into Bex Maslin, London's top female trainer, locking up the gym after a late finish. We all looked at each other and said “one drink in the nags head?”. Well, the rest is a blur but I’m going to call it power drinking. Within no time at all, there were 3 empty bottles of red wine on the table, more drinking followed but I can’t honestly remember what it was.

I was in no fit state to get a tube home, and thought sleeping in the gym was a good idea. I sneaked past the BDC security and went to sleep on the physio’s couch. A terrible night’s sleep was followed by a horrific hangover. How Bex was back in the gym for her 5.30am session, I’ll never know.

Yesterday was damage limitation, and considering my hangover I ate well yesterday, and to coin a phrase from ex football manager and TV pundit Ian Dowie, I’m going to show my ‘bouncebackability’. This is exactly what I’m going to eat today.:

7.30am – black coffee, no sugar
8am – porridge made with water and squeeze of Manuka honey
12 noon – 1 organic chicken breast, sweet potato, carrots and broccoli
3pm – 2 Brazil nuts, 4 almonds and a black coffee
6pm – baked fillet of cod with stir fried green vegetables
9pm – green tea

What lessons have I learnt?

1. There’s no one so easy to fool as yourself. I was never going to have just 2 drinks. Once you’ve fallen off, don’t worry about it, just get back on track as quickly as possible.

2. Never go out for a drink with an Irishman and northern lass on a school night.




Cheers,
Rob G