48 Hours of Sporting Success (Pt 1)

Monday 29 January.

After a couple of gentle exploratory runs I felt pretty good, though I aborted one of them a lap early because my knee began to twinge. So on Monday night I went out to run at full chat. It was 6.20 pm and I was supposed to be meeting Tony, Linda, Craig and Glynis for supper at 7.30 somewhere smart that was 20 minutes uptown. Clearly it wasn't time to dawdle.



When I ran 43m 29s for two laps of the lake circuit (9460 m) earlier this month and took 90 seconds off my previous personal best I thought that I had squeezed every drop of effort out. But running with fresh legs, lots of other runners to act as impromtu pacemakers (see that quick running guy up ahead? you've got to get level with him inside the next 1 km, etc) and the prospect of being late for supps at Rockpool all combining to spur me on...



I couldn't belive that time. I knew that I ran the first lap at a pretty high level because the split was just under 21 minutes. But my legs ached at that point and they carried on aching for the next 21 mins and 29 seconds. I really had to dig deep mentally and keep going. Now anyone who knows me would probably say that lack of self-motivation is my single biggest weakness. I'm a lazy, lazy bastard. So to push myself, even for such a short period of time, to the apparent maximum, and get another whole minute off my personal best in the process is massively satisfying.

I know you'll agree that I look appropriately smug...




Like young fauns prancing on a bright mossy forest floor we pass lightly over the shithouse performance of the England cricket team on Tuesday evening (and consequent spunking of another goodly sum) and arrive with sparkling eyes and dew drops on our noses at...

48 Hours of Sporting Success (Pt 2)

Wednesday 31st January 2007.

Today was just about the closest I will ever come to being Superman.

At 9 am I was in the gym with Troy working on the core, the upper body and the arms.

At 10.30 am I took myself out for 4.6 kms around the lake at a fairly gentle pace so as to stretch my legs out for...

12.45 Southerners CC vs Fawkner Park CC.

The midweek cricket comp has come out of its seven week summer holiday hiatus and we're back. Southerners took on Fawkner Park CC surrounded by picnicking office workers on a good wicket in perfect Melbourne weather - clear blue skies, strong sunshine and a sea breeze to keep the temperatures down to 27C.

Craig, Nick and the living legend that is Ray Hare.




Paul Grant flays Fawkner Park's 3rd change bowling.




Your correspondent was fortunate enough to make a gritty 56 at the top of the order. First fifty in the Southern Hemisphere. I could die happy as an Englishman if I could only say, on my deathbed "Ah, but I made a hundred on Australian soil." Sadly I'll never get a better chance than I had today and I blew it with a mis-timed sweep shot.

However the self-satisfaction index was clearly pushing hard against the red line on the gauge when this photo was taken, about 15 minutes after getting out.

48 Hours of Sporting Success (Pt 3)

Scarcely believable as it may seem I then was allowed, as the captain's pet, to bowl first change. I think Craig intended to allow everyone to turn their arms over for 2 overs.

However after I snared (I use the word advisedly) three wickets in my first two overs of wobbly seam-up medium pace my skipper generously changed his mind and allowed the carnage to continue. Sheer Aussie ruthlessness you might say, and you would only be somewhat wrong.

I was able to reward him with just about the spawniest five-fer in the history of cricket. My fifth wicket came when I bowled a lollipop slower ball badly down leg side and the batsman, in his understandable eagerness to wallop this pie for four, hooked his shot and hit the ball with the back of his bat in a loop up to first slip.






It is better to be lucky than good.

As you can clearly see the self-satisfaction-O-meter is just about completely off the scale by this point.



It's a cliche to say these days but nothing else comes close to making me as happy as exercise. I drank the bottle of Aussie fizz I had been keeping in the fridge in case of emergencies with supper to celebrate and the alcohol only depressed me before intoxcation began to kick. You don't think I could write this shit sober, do you?

I won't give up drinking at weddings or other special occasions but I really don't want to drink regularly anymore. Drink gives me almost no pleasure to make up for the great deal of unplesantness that it causes in me.

21:02 AEDT Tues 16 Jan 2007

Quakka - The Official Cricket Australia Toy Duck now also my Official (and Only) Friend.

Quakka:

What's the matter?

Self:

My knee gave out after 8 kms last night which is going fuck up my training. I've just lost enough money to buy a detached house in Belgravia on the Eng-NZ game and the cricket betting has been a total nightmare all summer. I've got no career prospects, no transferable skills, no long-term future. I can't hit it off with women and I haven't got laid in years. I'm a lazy fat failure. Life just doesn't seem worth living.

Quakka:

You look pretty gay in that vest too. Well, you're on a sixth floor balcony with a razor-sharp steel sculpture temptingly positioned right in the kill zone. Do it. Go on, jump.

Self:

You're supposed to be my (only) friend.

Quakka:

Yes, well that was before I discovered what a self-loathing, boring cunt you are. The world needs fewer Pommie bastards. Get on with it.

07:16 am AEDT Sun 14 Jan 2007

What on earth goes into Gatorade?

The health and fitness thing is going pretty well right now. I've got rolls of fat which just aren't going to go away but at least I'm fighting the good fight.

Apart from the initial assessment I had two sessions with Troy, my personal trainer, before Christmas and have now had two this week. He works me harder and smarter than I can push myself and after each 50 minute workout I have nothing left to give, which is as it should be. Massive endorphin high though.

Meanwhile out on the Albert Park lakeside trail I'm getting good mileage into the legs. Ran the standard 2 laps (9.5kms, 5.8 miles) on Mon, Tues and Weds this week. The prevailing wind direction is South-Easterly and if you run anti-clockwise you can have a long leg downwind. With this assistance I lowered the previous record of 47 mins 15 seconds down to 44 mins 55 seconds last week.

Then yesterday afternoon I went food shopping, ate a few more carbs than normal, a banana and a bottle of Gatorade. The temperature was a pleasant 22C when I hit the trail at 6.30 in the evening. For the sake of feeling good and getting a harder workout I decided to run into the wind and thought I might get a 47 minute time.

After about a kilometre I realised I was going pretty easily at a higher pace than normal. It was went I went through my halfway split in 22 mins 10s that I began to really knuckle down to it.

It's quite useful to have runners ahead of you to act as de facto pacemakers and on the final, grinding upwind leg I had the perfect hare to chase. And with 100 metres to the line I sprinted past him and on to the bollard outside the rowing club which is my start/finish point.

43 mins 29s. Upwind. That's about on pace for a three and a half hour marathon. Two years ago I weighed nearly twenty stone!





Gatorade must be a Class A drug.

EDIT: But then again I did 43m 34s this evening just 24 hours later, so perhaps I've just stopped jogging and started running.

02:16 AEDT 12 Jan 2007

Try not to make the boss feel small if you can...

"Are we covering the spread?"

Genre parody (it's one of those days)

English People in Australia! There is little or no need to wear England cricket and football replica kit around the clock as your pale skins, bad teeth, inappropriate footwear and ugly clothes will be ample evidence of your nationality.

I had read lots of Top Tips but never come across

"Racists! Try and limit the extent to which you sound racist by saying "I'm not racist but..." just before saying something racist."

before and it is rather wonderful.