when disaster strikes

Tuesday circa 6pm

wave 1:
I had a slight bugbear impede on the ever loving sanctity of my league training the other day. There I was running like Ben Johnson on steroids and my stomach decides it's time to start messing around me. Usually my stomach and meself get on swimmingly, even the best of relationships faces it's hardships I suppose. I manage to contain myself to the end of the fitness session. Now I don't want to get too graphic but lets just say that once I'd found the appropriate facility to handle the situation at hand, in abject darkness (the lights we're out of order) I began peeing out of my bum. This was the first sign that things we're going south for the evening.

wave 2:
I survive training without further incident, although a constant burning feeling in my nether region serves as a plucky reminder that there's more to come. Much, much more. I bike home across a 3km stretch of road (it's probably more), half way to my destination, one of the peddles falls off. I thank my lucky stars that I bike like an old-lady on a walker at a nursing home. Strapped for options I "decide" to walk the rest of the way. Strangely the walk feels harder than the training I've just been through.

wave 3:
Gradually my stomach and ultimately my entire body turn against me. As I lay down to try and accumulate some much needed rest, I'm struck with the head splitting notion that I'll not be sleeping at all tonight. No the fates have something much more insidious in store. The first times the best because I've just chugged back at least 2 litres of fluid and it all comes out. When I get to about the seventh go round, I'm puking up my stomach lining and just waiting for the digestive acid to start eating it's way through the stomach and into the rest of me. Between puking my guts out and doing training I'll train any day of the week. Some time Wednesday morning I finally fall asleep.

wave 4
Wednesday circa 7pm
wake up wondering wtf just happened.

three strikes

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?" -- Chuck Palahniuk

yep.

I'm a door to door salesman. A smooth talking go get'em closer without the gift of the gab. The ability to form a coherent setence is a lost art, or at least for me it is. Articulating a sales pitch or whatever it is they call a presentation these days should prove mighty challenging. But if I can move to a new country with no plan, no assests and some crazy idea that I'll play rugby league, at the very least, semi-professionally, why can't I pretend I'm a salesman too. Times they are a changing. Anyone want to sign up for Austar?

there's a glitch in the matrix

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?" -- Chuck Palahniuk

sure could.

I now wear thongs. Don't look at me like that. I can explain. In New Zealand we call them jandals; in America, slippers or flip flops; but in the Aussie vernacular they're thong, tha-thong, thong, thongs.

"Thong" evokes powerful images especially when applied to my (astonishing) person, most of which are extremely disturbing unless I'm involved in a male beauty contest, like Mr. Universe where this kind of wardrobe choice is the norm. I'm no oiled up grease monkey though, I don't wear circus pants (only gymaholics will know what I'm talking about here), no it's nothing but thongs for me, Oz style.

I'm not cheating either, this isn't part of the new Loren by virtue of my calling these jandals by a different name. My transformation extends far beyond the pedantry of semantics. When it comes to foot wear, I believe that feet are better heard and not seen.

What's that you say? You're feet's noise pollution is next to nothing. So much the better, they probably afflict society in other more obvious ways. Excuse my personal prejudice, but I feel feet are close to being the most disgusting things ever. Both in appearance and odour. Walking is better than not walking I suppose, so the best we can hope for is that people cover their bad boys up with something (please).

It's not that I feel that my feet are exceptionally offensive or anything, but as a matter of principle I shroud them with the hope of maintaining some form of dignity. I must say though, that in comparison to most I may possibly be sporting the "Andre the Giant" of feet. I rest easy in this fact: big or small, ugly is ugly. Why not try to make the world a better place, some one's got to do it.

So, here I am a changed man. One of my personal vendetta's abandoned in favour of common sense. It's really fricken hot here. That's one more pair of feet exposed to an unsuspecting world. It could be worse, I could start wearing the other type of thongs too.

warning: double/triple irony is very hard to detect without vocal inflection.

speaking of Chuck

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?" -- Chuck Palahniuk

Yes, I could.

I touched down on the unhallowed ground of a nation built on the backs of criminals no less than 3 days ago. Am I on hostile ground? The fauna would suggest so. The harsh environment (when contrasted with New Zealand) , seems to breed a form of life that compliments it's inhospitablity.

Truth to tell, everyone has been very nice and I haven't seen any bugs or snakes at all. The people of the Gold Coast seem like a pleasant blend of country bumpkiness offset by a city-wise practicality. If you get the chance check it out.

It Begins...

I am about to engage in an enterprise of unprecedented proportions (in my own experience). An anthropological experiment, if you will. Before I hang up my boots once and for all, it's time for one last ride just for old times sake. The results could be explosive, I foresee many an aching muscle in my future. I hope my bones are no less brittle than they have been in the past, I've never broken one before; I don't intend to start now, but there's a first time for everything. Over the last few months I've been running, hitting the weights, laying the ground work for the rigours of the season to come.

Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame, once mentioned the minor craze of including food recipes in the pages of chick lit, his reaction was to include recipes for making napalm and other explosives in his writing. My aspirations are only slightly less violent. Each work out I post here is another ingredient in the recipe of my evolution into a human wrecking machine, preferably the wrecking will be done to my opponents and not myself, which is a particularly nasty sentiment. Oh the glories of socially acceptable violence. The journey continues...

chins 99*15,10,10

bench 50*15, 90*8,92.5*7,95*5,60*19

bench row 60/2*10,6

back extensions 7.5*12,10/2*10