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.

early morning sunburn

Loren awoke to the melodious sound of early morning alarm bells. Technophonic trajedies sprung a leak in his cellphone, rupturing his dream time connection. Why wake up at 6:00am, when sleep is still a posibility? He had training at Main Beach, he knew it, his team knew it and there was no way he could deny it. Off to training!

a penny for my thoughts

Another leisurely stroll down Moralla Ave, which becomes Government Road and something else in between. I have to placate my thirst by rehydrating and I do so by making another unnecessary purchase when I could have used the taps outside of the rest rooms, at training, for free, but I can't get out of my mind what I did to those toilets just a couple of days ago.

Vitamin water, watermelon and strawberry flavour, emmm, tastes disgusting, but it'll tide me over till I get home. Ah, home, at least a mile and a half away. I walk with my empty bottle, that I downed faster than a shot glass in front of an alcoholic during happy hour. I continue to walk and I notice a pattern forming, there continues to be no rubbish bins anywhere along the foot path.

I'm in Runaway Bay this is the rich retired Florida part of the Gold Coast, at least the multiple octogenarian in fancy clothes sightings would suggest as much. A sign to my right informs me: No dumping rubbish, maximum penalty $300. Where do rich people put there trash? I walk the entire length of my journey and there's not one rubbish bin till I'm about 2 minutes from home (yes, I live in the destitute bogan part of town). Does the threat of a fine and the absence of rubbish bins prevent thoroughfare by the poor through richman's territory. Do the rich have some kind of elaborate underground network of plastic pipes and capsules setup whereby they dispose of all the rubbish that doesn't seem to pollute their collective properties? It's classism all over again. Where's Michael Moore when you need him, shouldn't he be making a documentary about this or something?

I chuck away the bottle and shake my head, I think all this walking is getting to me just a little.

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.