when in Mexico

I watch this and my nausea explodes in a bright spectrum of colours like light passing through a prism. 

Here's a meme that's probably run its course, but you can never be too sure, lets perpetuate its ubiquity just a little more. Yes, lets... During the 1968 Olympics in Mexico a series of rigorous tests were carried out on a sample of athletes from different sports. Vertical jump, horizontal leap(?), and a 10 meter sprint were all tested (and probably others), all the key athletic indicators. The weightlifters won everything, beating the sprinters at sprinting, the high jumpers at jumping etc. Therefore: I should be weightlifting! For the uninitiated this means: the Clean & Jerk and the Snatch, all other lifts (except the squat) are of secondary importance. Most personal trainers (in spite of the evidence) will disagree with this assessment.

I've just finished cleaning up my mess. For the last five years on and off I've been doing power versions of THE LIFTS. Then I see high school attendees doing full depth versions with incredible poundages (because you get so low to catch the weight on the real versions of THE LIFTS, theoretically you should be able to lift far more weight then the power versions, more weight is good). It's about time I started doing things properly:

Saturday 21/03/09

hang clean/front squat complex 40, 45, 50*5

clean 60,65,70,75,80,85,90,95,97.5,100 (so I can clean as much as I can power clean, what gives?)

Sunday 22/03/09

Played game, felt totally smashed, only broke a few tackles and even missed a few, don't lift the day before a game ever again. We won 60 something to 10ish, I lost count along the way.

what time is it? game time hooo!

the man who almost wrecked my season

Have you ever tried to heavy squat the day after playing back to back league games? Not recommended. I packed it in after the second set. I suppose the important thing here is that I finally got cleared play. The last time I took a league field in any (semi) official capacity was for the Richmond Bulldogs and that was 5 seasons ago. Why after the extended lay off did I need a release from the NZRL, did playing one season (the extent of my on field experience) of club footy for a lets, be honest, an absolute shambles of a team from an organizational standpoint justify my being eternally contracted to New Zealand rugby league? Thanks to Karmichael Hunt, yes.



The offender in question after two years of playing in Australia decided he was Australian (he's a Kiwi), hey if he wants to change national allegiance more power to him, the option was there and that's his prerogative (to be fair I think he's played all his league in Australia). I for one would have done differently, but that's just me. He went on to play a part in many successful Queensland and Australian sides and also lost in the world cup with Australia last year. You can't win them all eh. Karmichael is a talented player and the Kiwi's fearing a loss of other potential greats have instituted a rule precluding any players who have ever played in NZ from playing for Australia ever again by requiring said players to sign a contract pledging their loyalty to the NZRL the alternative being non-eligibility to play in Australia.



The details of the process of being cleared are complex beyond comprehensibility my current club manager for the Runaway Bay Seagulls showed me a schematic detailing each step of which there were about a million. All I could think of is: haven't these people heard of the internet? The bulk of the communications relied on faxing. Faxing? Did technology somehow freeze in the late 1980's for these people? Well through much pleading and excess expenditure of my mobile telephone credit I managed to circumvent the Karmichael Hunt rule. Finally I played yesterday. All is forgiven NZRL.



Played one game for the reserve team. We tied 16-16 with the Ormeau someone-or-rathers. Our team suffered from poor completion rates. Is it really that hard to catch a ball that's lollipopped into your lap? Come on boys! Played another with the Seniors after (I think my entire game time for the day must have been around 80 minutes). This one we lost by a converted try and an inability to retain the football once again. If you want to win you've got to respect the ball. Balls are quite dignified so I pay them their due reverence. Ahem. On a personal note my offence was almost up to its usual standards with my "the hardest man to tackle on the planet" moniker being justified once again. Damn I'm good. Then there was my D. The less said the better huh. Needs improvement.



Stats that matter:

No turn overs.

1 try. Only one? I'm just getting warmed up (coverage on the way soon).



Disclaimer: I bear no ill will to Karmichael, he's an awesome player. He'd be even better if he played for the Kiwis.

I'm in!

Just in time for the last preseason game the NZRL has responded to my incessant calling by faxing the form for my release to the Queensland Board of Rugby League. Game on!

Me and League

I was 10 years old when I was first exposed to rugby league. I was vaguely aware of organized sports as a concept from possibly the age of 5, there was something called soccer were you kicked a ball around, there was running, an activity for which I lacked any natural ability at that early stage, but the thrill of athletic competition wouldn't truly capture me until a few years later where opportunity skipped over preparation, but found luck anyway. My lunch times and play times in those budding years were occupied by wild feats of my own imagination, I'd pretend to be various things, none which included sports stars.

In 1990, my final year of primary (elementary) school, I shifted from the then backsliding, according to my parents, Grey Lynn school (20 years later my youngest sister would finish what I started by once again attending the school I'd been pulled from, proving that either (a) there's never any parenting mistake that you can't fix by having other children or (b) and slightly less believable, government funded institutions, like public schools, can actually improve over time) to Westmere Primary. While there I made friends, broke up with friends and re-befriended them again; I threw a tennis ball like a girl and have done so ever since; I went Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle crazy; I learned from a talking Giraffe about the wonders of puberty; Mike Tyson lost to "Buster" Douglas; New Kids on the Block were the hottest thing out and even then at that tender age I couldn't figure out why. However, the most seminal moment in that pivotal year came when I was invited by my sometimes friends to participate in a lunch time game of rugby league, I had no idea what they were talking about.

During the first few moments Lee received the ball, and perhaps keenly aware of my inexperience, ran directly towards me. Encouraged by the others to smash him, I responded by picking the poor boy up and power slamming him into the turf. The others were impressed informing me that I had "dumped" Lee. In later years "dumped" would take on other definitions with greater impact than this initial tackle, but for that small troop of prepubescent boys only one type of dumping mattered and somehow, inexplicably I was good at it.

pros and cons

During my legendary journey to the west island I've come across a few things that make me go hmmmm?!?

• Eftpos minimums: what century are we living in again? I feel like buying a chocolate bar and I need to spend ten dollars to do so. So much for the cashless society. Maybe this is one of the economic stimulus plans, I know these shopkeepers wont be going broke anytime soon.
• Internet Banks have weekends and holidays off: Are you kidding me. If you blow ten bucks on an eftpos minimum purchase on the weekend the transaction doesn't show up on your internet bank balance until Monday. I've got a budget to monitor here people, come on. I think someone actually enters all the transactions manually. And I thought we were backwards in New Zealand.
• Monster sized cockroaches: 'nuff said.

(if this is all I can complain about I suppose things aren't too bad) On the plus side...

• For the first time in my life I have a tan.
• There's no fee to put books on hold at the library
• League actually matters here. Wooo!

bureaucracy strikes again

Due to a little piece of paper making it's way to NZ, my aspirations to play league have been put on hold temporarily. I can't play until it returns. No nines for me this weekend. I put pen to paper almost a month ago covenanting with the NZ Rugby League that if I make the NRL I will never ever play for the Kangaroos, I should be so lucky. I'm 29 years old I have a greater chance of winning the lottery than making the NRL, let alone being selected to play for the Australian national team. Given, the state of international rugby league where players cycle between teams on a whim I find it difficult to fathom that at the grass roots level the powers-that-be are more stringent in their management of players than the elite level of the game. NZRL and the Richmond Bulldogs, please release me, I've got some people to smash.

grasshopper you have much to learn

They're not asking much really: 5x100 meter sprints followed by 5x200 meter sprints, with 1 minute rest periods between each cycle. I get out of the blocks quickly on the first 4 runs or so. I wonder what my dust tastes like. Got Nathans running on either side of me. How's it going, I'm Loren, nice to meet you. Later boys. I'm good like that generally. Yep, I'm pretty much the life of the party when I get going, making connections, putting myself out there, don't let my Kiwi southern drawl fool you, I'm just lulling you into a false sense of security before I pounce. I don't want to get too self congratulatory, but I'm pretty much the man.

Ahem.

Cough.

OK.

As I was saying I was running and sometimes I find myself moving back to front here on the field, sometimes here I start fast and finish crap. I blitz the rest of the boys for the first few 100s and before I know it my body runs out of ATP stores and I go into coast mode for the rest of the evening. Gold coast mode, like she's right mate, no worries. I believe it was the honourable Vince Lombardi who said "Fatigue makes cowards out all of us." ATP can be replaced no matter how depleted, but bad habits aren't so easily reversed. Fatigue what have you done to me?!? As the "sprints" wore on I found myself inclined to decide before they even began, hey I'm gonna dog it on this one. Yet if I decided otherwise I could have gone a lot better. Friends, esteemed colleagues, children of the revolution this is no way to live life. "Save secondary efforts for secondary occasions." I came here to do one thing and that was to be the best. To be my best. Maybe I'm not quite the man I thought I was. Not yet, but it's coming, oh yeah baby it's coming. Next training's gonna be seick mate.

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?

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