Into week 4 we pop, and a new month is upon us – already 2010 is disappearing all too bloody fast. The new years resolutions are doing pretty well: the ciggies are gone – last one in 2009, the new obsession with fitness is well underway, and the only alcohol i’ve consumed this year was when it was force fed to me under duress in Cambodia…. The other new years resolutions to include more swearing in my diet have also been spurred on by my obsession with fitness and my new friends at Vanda, all of whom have been struck down by the tourettes virus that seems to be making its way around camp.

So, up and out at 7am this morning for a lovely run… i’ve got a nice 2.5 mile circuit that I enjoy, so I decided to do it at pace this morning. Now, when I say pace, anyone that has read my last Saturday blog must remember that it’s not necessarily pace to anyone else, just to me.. and to me, it bloody hurts regardless. My speed is relative to my stump type legs, so my left-right-left-right ratio is just as fast as the normal length legged man, hence the pain. I got home cursing the world because of the pain it has caused me, and sweat all over the place – an unavoidable habit that always impresses the wife, especially when I make small lakes around the apartment for her to find later on.

I was bloody knackered after my run, so went straight to the shitty food section of the cupboard where the healthy carbs live. Breakfast was a mixture of oatmeal, muesli, yoghurt, bluberries and some wheatgerm that I found in the fridge. Not that I know what it tastes like, but it was like eating the gravel off the bottom of a fish tank! I forced it down regardless, as I knew the benefits would be better than the enjoyment factor. It was a few hours later that I realised this ‘roughage’ would no doubt become more popular when travel is powered by natural waste, because if I had a plane powered by what this concoction had pushed through, i’d be writing this blog from the Carribean!

Anyway… enough of that shite….

I got down to Havelock having driven my nice new shiny second-hand car there for the first time and saving the extortionate rip-off taxi tossers fee. Yes, of course the car cost more than a load of taxi rides, but I could sweat where I wanted to… Actually, I couldn’t, but more about that later…..

Warm up was the usual 8 minutes of arsing around: jogging on the spot, with super-speedy bursts, star-jumps and hokey-cokey type forward-backward shuffles, that for some reason, I can never get right. I get all fidgety when i’m doing stuff on the spot – it’s like you’re not really trying very hard or something… it feels lazy. I can’t imagine there ever being much call for any “on-the-spot” events in the olympics any time soon… Although, 100-metres on the stop could be quite entertaining, and if you ever did have an on-the-spot olympics, you could reduce the stadium to the size of a small tennis court, and everyone could have their own on-the-spot olympic stadium in their garden, and host their own olympic events at cocktail partys! How could would that be??? Actually, it would be really crap, and if I had any sense i’d delete that whole section.

Next up was skipping with the hosepipes… If you can imagine a length of hosepipe, with a rolling pin at either end, then you’ll get the idea. Alistair, one of normal height people, enjoys twatting himself around the back of the head with his skipping prowess, so there is always a positive side to everything. To be perfectly honest, he has one of those backs of head that was made for being twatted with a rope. We skipped at normal pace, with Andy barking something that sounded like “fast” every now and again, where we all tried to rotate the big feckers at a faster pace without slicing our own heads off. Anyone who has ever seen the most excellent sitcom “Father Ted” will obviously remember Father Jack, sitting in the corner of the room shouting “Arse”, “Feck”, “Drink”… Well, that’s pretty much what Andy reminded me off, except he hasn’t got white hair. Luckily it’s not just me that hates these ropes – they’re a bugger to grip with hand wraps on, and quite hard to sustain… Nevertheless, I tried a speed rope halfway through as mine was “broken”, and I found I couldn’t use it, so it went back to the hosepipe again.. thou shalt not be beaten by hoserope. I realised halfway through that my left hand had gone numb due to my wraps being on too tight, so that was a welcome break and another reminder that half-man-half-dwarf should probably stick to easier sports, like running on-the-spot

Next up was our heavy bag work. Tonights fun was punchouts consisting of 15-second, 30-second and 1-minute rounds, with about 30-seconds break. Punchouts are basically when you stand face on to the bag and punch it as hard and fast as you can. Very knackering, but I do enjoy these.

After that, we pairred off in the ring, and hit our opponent in the head. Alexis enjoyed demonstrating this by hitting me in the head before he’d given us the instructions. I think he read the bit in my previous blog where I called him a bollox, and he was getting his revenge! We did this for three lots of two minute rounds, the same as our fights will be. This was quite challenging for the guys newer than me, as co-ordination in these drills is tough. There were a couple of good headshots that went in by accident, and probably a few more on purpose in retaliation!

Last up was our circuits, which were now up to 3 sets of 10 pushups, 10 squats, 10 crunches and 10 fcking burpees, three rounds. So, 30 lots of everything, with a 1 minute break between sets (90 of everything in total). I was absolutely bolloxed at this stage, and feeling the effects from my early morning run. Alexis is always at his happiest when he sees us in pain, so he was literally singing when he saw me collapsing in a heap of my own sweat!

The final nail in the Snelly Balboa coffin was the 2 lots of 1 minute plank…. I managed it, but cursed every person i’d ever seen in my life, including on tele, to help keep me planked. It did work, and I apologise to all of you. I shall write letters to those people from the tele.

I walked out of the gym a shadow of the former half-a-man I was upon entrance, squelching as I walked due to the sweat collecting socks I was wearing. If you ever need to collect your own sweat, purchase Adidas towelling type socks, as they hold close to eight gallons in each sock, and make you sound like you have your own personal lake in each shoe. I wasn’t originally sure why this would ever be a good thing, and you are probably reading this thinking i’m an eejit, but if you are on a really long run with no water breaks, i.e. robber, illegal immigrant, all-round bad bastard, then you may need to find your own water whilst hiding out in deserts or cupboards. So, if you are on the run, wear Adidas socks! You’ll never die of thirst! I can’t vouch for their ability to filter sand though, so careful you don’t choke if you are in the desert. Also, hiding in a cupboard probably won’t generate as much sweat as you’ll, so try some on-the-spot exercises when you need additional fluid,

I got in the car, and remembered that because it’s a shiny new second-hand car that I didn’t want to soak the seats with sweat. Before I left, I cut a bin bag in half so I could sit on it, and retain all the sweat neatly in my crotch area rather than the seat (btw, that was a finding as opposed to a pre-planned activity). The bag idea, I thought to myself, was quite ingenious until I went around a corner a little too fast, and nearly lost a bollock on the handbrake due to the slippy lake I was sitting in…

It was all too much for poor old me, and Monday had to bugger off with all the other bad Mondays i’ve discarded to hell. I was in bed at 10pm dreaming of fluffy clouds and bacon.