Gathering Dust

About halfway through my new workout with The Beast, I stare down at the treadmill's timer - marching towards ten minutes - and two thoughts occur to me.

1) I am not going to complain today.
2) Oh Christ, what if he wants to do more than 10 minutes.

I bit my lip, stare ahead and try to blot out the second thought in my mind by pretending I'm a recruit in Shaka Zulu's army. Shaka, for those of you who don't know, was a charismatic psychopath who ruled over the Zulu nation in the Victorian era. If you were around at the time and over seventeen years of age, you were immediately conscripted into his massive army, and were made to do practice drills that would have most members of the US Marine Corp writing strong letters to their Member Of Congress. I don't care how tough Marine Bootcamp is; I doubt any drill sergeant has made a batallion take off their shoes and then jump up and down on thorns until they're reduced to powder. And even if he has, I doubt he has clubbed to death anyone who cried out in pain.

I don't believe The Beast will do this either, although, by God by the end I start to wish he would. We begin by running at a brisk pace (read: 10 on the treadmill) for 10 minutes. Then we head over to the chairs of doom for leg extensions and leg abductions (yes, that's an exercise) to do 25 leg extensions, then 25 leg abductions, then 25 leg extensions, then 25 leg abductions, then 25 leg extensions, then 25 leg abductions - WITHOUT A FUCKING BREAK.

Then its back over to the treadmill to do another 10 minutes broken into two parts. We begin by walking up a steep incline at a brisk pace (incline: 9, pace: 6.0) for five minutes, and then the incline comes off and we sprint for 5 minutes. Then it's back over to the mats for 15 crunches. Then 20 crunches. Then 25 crunches. Then (yes, you guessed it) 30 crunches. Then (can you wait?) 35 crunches.

Back over to the treadmills. Sprint for 5 minutes. Raise the incline to nine and walk at a brisk pace as before for 5 minutes. Are we done yet? Body says yes. The Beast says no. Back over to the mats for 4 sets of 15 leg lifts. By this stage The Beast is breathing heavily, and I look like my heart burst in my chest.

"I read that you've been out of the gym for a bit, so I thought I'd get you back into it with something easy," says The Beast. And then he laughs maniacally.

I nod, and this seems to perplex him. Then he pays me the first compliment I think I've received since this whole thing began.

"Congratulations on not whining like a little bitch like you normally do. Hit the showers, killer."

I stumble down stairs, suppressing the urge to just hurl myself down them. I don't care if it's dangerous, or if the fall would hurt - right now my legs hurt a lot more! I feel so horrible. My head feels clogged, my legs are throbbing and the music in the gym, if anything, is even worse than before. Welcome back, idiot. The pain palace has missed you.

There haven't been that many posts on My Miserable Existence for some time now. This is because, up until recently, I wasn't living a miserable existence. I was travelling the world, sunning myself in the States, eating tasty food, enjoying the finest wines available to humanity - well, available to a member of humanity with a less than satisfactory bank balance - and best of all staying out of the gym. There has been no real reason for my skiving off like this. I suppose I could make one up. Okay, how about this; the damp, rain-drenched shithole that is normally Ye Olde London Towne between the months of June and September surprised us all this year by having a summer in which we saw rain only ten times. Ten. That's got to be a record.

(It must be - the papers were saying we'd all die from lack of water, if the heat didn't give us cancer first. And even if we avoided cancer, we'd probably get swine flu, they said. And even if we avoided that, we'd still have to live in a world where the financial markets are crashing, schools are failing and Peter and Jordan were getting a divorce - oh the humanity! Sometimes I really fucking hate the The Fourth Estate, I really fucking do!)

Anyway, the weather was nice and I was fucked if I was spending summer in the gym, eating tofu, farting like a racehorse and generally being miserable while my friends cleverly got smashed, sunburned and stuffed their faces with bbq meats. Then there was the fact that this last couple of months I have been to the States several times - twice on business and once for my holiday. I wisely chose Las Vegas as my holiday destination. Being a Brit, and thus a drunkard, it makes sense to holiday in probably the only city in the world where the authorities allow you to waltz down the street clutching a cocktail the size of your left leg without trying to slam your head off the bonnet of a prowler.

The strippers and gambling didn't hurt. Neither did the incredibly bling shirts, the gangsta wine bottles and the hotel we stayed in that looked like three massive memory sticks glued together in front of some lions and fountains.

That is all over and done with now, as I have returned to Blighty broke, sullen and more than a little portly. I haven't returned to the enormous 108 kilos (17 stone) I was at the beginning of the year. But I am hovering around 100 kilos (just under 16 stone) and this shit stops now. I have been to the gym three out of the last four days and am thus filled with righteousness. The Beast is training me again tomorrow, and this time we go all out. I fully expect to puke, shit or at least burst into tears in the gym when he brings the pain for the first time in months - anything less and I'll be wildly disappointed!

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In the interests of variety, I shall be introducing some new things to this blog. All The Love, All The Hate starts very shortly. It shall be a series of posts in which I will occasionally attempt to cling to the dust particles of hope in this cruel, scum infested junkheap of a world, but mostly it will involve thinking up things that aren't connected to the gym in any way, in order to make myself more miserable. What japes!

Stay tuned.

These days, when I roll into the gym, I'm greeted with smiles by all the people who work there. The young ladies behind the desk break off their chatter, the trainers in the entrance stop what they're doing and they all crowd around the reception's computer as I hand over my card to be swiped. This is because The Beast has left a little message on the internal messaging system in my account. Whenever they swipe my card, my account details pop up with a little message on the screen.

"This is my brother. He can have a free towel, but only if he smiles nicely!"

They all then look up at my face expectantly. I crack a sheepish grim and hilarity ensues. Not content with turning me the colour of puce and making me collapse in a sweaty, smelly heap, The Beast has decided to turn me into a regular source of amusement for his colleagues. What japes! I suppose I should be grateful - he could have written a message saying that I only get a towel if I [DELETED IN CASE THE BEAST READS THIS AND WRITES JUST THAT - AND HE WOULD, THE LOUSY SOD!].

My other problem in the gym is that I've finally realised that The Genius function on an Apple iPod is anything but! For those that don't know, (so-called) Genius is a mode on iTunes which you can put on your iPod to make spontaneous playlists. You press play, activate Genius and then it look through your library and compiles a playlist based on what your listening to. In theory this means that if I select a nasty, horrible heavy metal track to scream at me through my headphones to take my mind off my lungs imploding, Genius will then follow that track with a barrage of aural viciousness. In practice, what Genius does, is select one more shouty track and then fills up the rest of the list with randomly picked tunes from my library. At least, that's what it fucking sounds like. How else do you explain it following "Spit It Out" by Slipknot with "The First Day Of My Life" by Bright Eyes?

For those of you who aren't familiar with these two songs, this is Bright Eyes:

And this is Slipknot:

Now imagine you're running along a treadmill listening to the latter. You're breathing heavily. Your internal organs are heaving. Your lungs are burning. Sweat is running off you in rivers. The stitch in your side feels like someone is trying to insert a rusty scalpel into your hip. Even if you don't like Slipknot, you can't argue that it won't keep you at least alive until the next song. Following that aural nightmare with the Bright Eyes however, is - I'm sure you'll agree - a bit if a gear change.

Actually fuck that! It's potentially life-threatening. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with Bright Eyes - after all, the doe-eyed little sod's music is on my iPod - but listening to him in full bloody flight on the cardio machines of death is like employing Nick Drake as a drill instructor for the US Marine Corp. It just doesn't work. And following Slipknot with Bright Eyes is like jumping a skateboard down a flight of stairs, only to have it stop suddenly against a loose brick in the landing zone which sends you flying face first into tarmac.

I couldn't find a clip to represent this, so here's one of the worst skateboarding accidents I have ever seen.

I love YouTube.

Well, as the midway mark of the year passes by, my weight now stands at 100kgs. If you think that's porky, keep in mind that I began this year on 108kgs so I have lost nearly 10kgs in the last seven months. That's 1kg and a sandwich per month to anyone who cares. The Beast is impressed. So impressed in fact, he's decided to give me my first program in nearly a year.

All this year he's witheld this precious gift for a couple of reasons:

1) In the past, I'd ask him for a program, he'd give me one, and I'd do about two days of the program and then complain (The Beast was tired of me complaining).
2) I'd then ask for a new program and repeat step 1) (The Beast was tired of writing programs that never got used).
3) I'd then complain that I was fat and then proceed to step 2) and then step 1) (The Beast was tired of me being useless).

But now my dedication and self-flagellation seems to have paid off. The Beast has issued a program - a 24-page monster with exercises written on it like "Romanian Dead Lift" and "Dumbbell Squat" (which aren't as frightening as they would've been three months ago) and reps of 40 - 50 at a time (which fucking are). Yes, you read that right; 40 repititions of picking up weights in the gym. Suffice to say after the first week of this shit, my arms feel like rubber and the pain in my legs makes standing up and sitting down a planned activity.

However, there is an upside; the first week has gotten me some strange looks from some of my fellow gym-goers. It's hard to describe but it seems to be a mixture of "that guy's insane, he's going to kill himself" mixed with "I can't believe it, that guy hasn't killed himself". Yeah, it's not that much of an upside, but at least it beats the "what the fuck is that fat bastard doing in here" look I've gotten up until now.

I have also managed to fuck up my right leg. I initially thought my problem was with my knee, however, after complaining about the pain to The Beast during one of our murder sessions, his eyes narrowed and he placed his thumb and fore-finger around the top of my knee in a pincer movement.

"Does this hurt?" he asked.
I screamed in reply.
"Hmmm. How about this?" he said, pressing his thumb into my calf.
"Aaaaargh!!! Fuck off!!"
"Stop being such a girl! Focus on the pain!”
"I AM focusing on the pain, you bastard,” I yelled, “it’s not like there’s much else to fucking focus on!!"
"Good, then pay attention! And I need a description. And ‘ow, I’m a girl!!’” is not an adequate description."

As he pressed, the pain under his thumb subsided a little – just little – and slowly started to spread down the side of my leg and curled under my knee. When I told him this, he nodded.

"It’s your Iliotibial Band."
"My whatty-what?"

The Beast describes it thus: Imagine a leather strap that runs down the side of your leg under the skin. It connects to the knee. Excessive running on – as he calls it – “bow-legged limbs brought on through pie-eating and bad posture” can cause it to tighten and strain.

"So this was brought on through cardio."
"Yes."
"So I better not do anymore cardio then!"
"Nice try, sonny," said The Beast. And then he said something I've dreaded since this entire horrible experience of being a gym regular began.

"You are on the rowing machine until further notice!"

Oh no. NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My right knee has been done in. It hurts when I bend it. The Beast has told me to stay out of the gym. This may prevent further pain in my knee but it is proving to be a massive pain in the arse. Maybe the two are linked. At least there's some consolation in that; no matter what The Beast says, my brain and arse can't be connected as I'm not getting any headaches currently. Score 1 for me.

My knee started hurting last week Wednesday when I burned 800 calories - my new target as dictated by The Beast - on a treadmill, cross trainer and cycle, after which I looked like the slightly tubby result of a genetic cross breeding experiment involving a human and a radish. The knee ached slightly when I sat down and I ignored it for most of the day. When I tried standing up it felt like someone had whacked me in the side of my leg with a ballpeen hammer. I spent most of the week limping around like an unconvincing Bond villain. I'd love to be able to blame it all on The Beast, but unfortunately I did this to myself.

What I can lay at The Beast's door is a bout of projectile vomiting. I've never exercised so hard that it caused me throw out my lunch, but as I'm finding more and more in The Beast's company, there's a first time for everything. It happened after a particularly grueling cycling session with The Beast and X - the only other member of The Crazy Weights Club. X by the way, looked in about as much pain as me by the end, although in fairness, he'd only joined us expecting a quick cycle at the end of an hour-long workout.

We began with a 20 minutes of lightweight cycling - when I say lightweight we pedaled like buggery until we'd all burned 400 calories and the dashboards of our separate exercise bikes were soaked in sweat. As X tried to dismount, The Beast flicked him with a sweat-sodden towel.

"Where do you think you're going?"
"Oh come on," came the more than reasonable response.
"Come on, my arse! Back on the bike!" yelled The Beast.
"I'm tired," wailed X.
"You don't see this bitch complaining, do you?" said The Beast, jerking a thumb in my direction. "Right, off we go!"

We then proceed to do another 20 minutes, except this time we did 3 minutes on a normal setting and then 2 on the hardest setting available. During this time, FrankMusik's new number was blaring out of the gym's TV. To fully appreciate what we all went through, imagine pedaling up hill through quick-drying tar while listening to this:

At the end of this horrible, vile, disgusting and torturous escapade, we all flopped off the bikes, hit the showers and got dressed. It was only when I was leaving the gym I suddenly felt like Mt Krakatoa was erupting in my gullet. I barely made it into the men's room before a yellow stream of liquid ushered forth from my mouth and into the toilet, leaving the most bitter taste in my mouth I believe I've ever experienced. As I exited the cubicle I was accosted by a man who seemed equal parts muscle and hair wrapped in red spandex and a loose T-Shirt bearing the legend "I'm The Daddy!"

"Been working hard, eh?" he chuckled.
"Too hard, maybe," I gasped, wiping my mouth.
"Nonsense! I used to puke all the time when I first started working out!"
"Really, did you?" I thought, suddenly fearing for my life.
"In my old gym they didn't mind when I puked on the floor in the middle of workout," he said, staring wistfully off into the middle distance. "Of course, the wimps round here have a problem with that. They say it's unhygienic."
"Well, must be off!" I said.

I left the bathroom in search of The Beast? No matter what the side-o-beef with eyes in the loo had just told me, I was sure that puking in the gym couldn't be normal. I must have been pushed too hard. Upon finding that he'd already left, I furiously texted him.

JUST THRU UP! AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!

I nodded in satisfaction and put my phone away. As I made my way back onto the street and towards the tube, my phone beeped in reply. As I scrolled through the text from The Beast, my anger threatened to boil over.

JUST THINK HOW STRONG YOUR STOMACH MUSCLES WILL BE, NICOLA!
SEE THAT? SEE HOW I CALLED YOU GIRL'S NAME?
THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE BEHAVING LIKE ONE!

Mind you, what did I expect? In The Beast's view you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs and you can't slim a fatty without making him cry. At least he rang me out when he found out I was having trouble with leg.

"I was just calling to see how you're knee was doing," he said. "Any improvement since Wednesday?"
"Well, it seems to be okay. It feels..."
"Good, good," interrupted The Beast. "I've bought an Xbox 360."
"Oh?"
"Yes," he continued, "but it doesn't have any cables or a hard-drive. Now I know you have some spare so bring them to the gym tomorrow."
"Okay, are we training tomorrow?"
"Yes. A spare controller wouldn't be a bad idea, either."
"A what?"
"A controller, for my new Xbox 360. I know you've got a couple laying about. Bring me one."
"Right."
"Oh, and bring me some Xbox 360 games to play or your knee will be the least of your worries."

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, when I was a fit, cut and handsome individual, I used to work out three times a week in a gym in South London. It was a good gym, a fine gym, and most important of all, a gym within 2 and half minutes walking distance from my house.

Every Monday it was rammed with the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad. That wasn't what they called themselves. I called them that. And not to their faces. Because they were all built like Mack Trucks with arms and legs. What the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad used to do was this; they'd take over a bench press and then take it in turns bench-pressing weights of fucking eye-watering magnitude. One of them would lie on their back lifting a weight of around 1,000 kilos, with their face contorting into a mask of pain of such magnitude that it looked as though their eyes would either dissolve into pools of claret or be shot out of their sockets at Mach 3. The others would stand around the bench yelling expletive-ridden encouragement at their mate, who would proceed to do one repetition (with an admittedly colossal weight) and then leap from the bench to the cheers of the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad and say something like this:

(ahem)

"YEEEEEAAAAHH!!!!! YEEEEEAAAAHH!!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!! YOU FUCKING LIKE THAT!!!!!! HUH!!!! YEEEEEAAAAHH!!!!! (etc)."

I only mentioning this because this Monday I was late for The Beast, and as is his wont, he decided to start training with another professional torturer/personal trainer by the time I arrived in the gym. I thought that this meant I would have to do cardio, which has now been upped from 650 calories to 700, and reflect on how precious The Beast's time is, and why I should make every endeavor to be punctual in the future. However, The Beast had other plans for me.

It seems The Beast and his mate (who from here on will be known as X, because he might not like seeing his name in an online blog and he's big enough to snap me in half using only his earlobes) have their own version of the Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad. It's called the Crazy Weights Club. So-called because if I decide to be sarcastic about their weight-lifting activities in this blog, I might not survive my next gym session with The Beast.

Basically, it's like Monday Night Crazy Weights Hollaback Squad except there's more repetitions on the weights and no celebratory victory lap. There are however, words of encouragement yelled at your head from close range by the person spotting for you. X's preferred phrase of encouragement is "Be aggressive!!". I'm sure this is meant to fire up machismo to power the muscles, but unfortunately it makes me want to laugh because I instantly get the cheerleaders from Faith No More's "Be Aggressive" playing in my head:

By the way, when you start to snigger while holding a 20kg barbell with 35kgs of weight on either end, you damn nearly kill yourself.

The Beast's preferred phrase is "One More! Come on, one more!" which is ingenious in its inherent sadism. When you hear the phrase "One more!" you automatically think you're on your last repetition and so you push harder. It's only at the crest of your repetition that you realise that you're expected to do another one and so you struggle away as The Beast repeats the phrase "One More! Come on, one more!" again. The pain experienced between lower the weight to your chest and lifting it again is enough to black out your memory and reduce your concentration span to about 3 seconds. This means that by the time you start lifting the weight and you hear The Beast's catchphrase again, you actually believe he means it. Of course he doesn't and then you're back where you started.

Aside from these concerns, the only other problem with this activity is the size of the weights we're lifting. The Beast and X work out about six or seven times a week so they can handle these sodding weights. Next to them, however, I feel like a slightly tubby mouse trying to bench press a hundred times his body weight.

However, a couple of miracles occurred during this horrible, horrible afternoon. Apart from me dying of course. The first was that I was able to lift the sodding weight eight times. I may have ground my teeth into powder and felt like I'd been on a roundabout for an hour afterwards, but I managed eight reps on a huge, nasty, former-me-killing weight. Second, I realised that the shirt I was wearing for the gym felt looser around my stomach and tighter around my arms. I haven't lost more than eight kilos since the beginning of the year but my belly seems to have deflated somewhat. When I mentioned this to The Beast, he nodded and clapped me on the back.

"It's ll down to hard work, sport! All down to hard work!"
"Wow," I said. "I know I'd been putting in hellish hours, but this is the first time I've seen it pay off. It's really...

My ramblings are cut short by The Beast boffing me on the head with one of the gym's oversized loofas.

"I meant MY hard work. It's all down to MY hard work. You are nothing more than the clay mould. I am the hard-working body sculptor! Now hit the showers, shitbird!!"

It's good to be reminded of one's place from time to time...

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Apparently Singer Doll might be leaving the Pussycat Dolls after all! Maybe she's jealous that High-Kick Doll is getting more attention? Seems my predictions were right.

There you go, folks. Join a gym. Unleash your inner beast. Get buff. Become a Pussycat Dolls groupie and follow their developments in your spare time.

It was late today that the symptoms started. It seemed okay for a spell and then I suddenly realised that more temperature had shot up, my throat was feeling scratchy, my ears felt blocked and OH FUCK!!!!!!

I had a head cold coming on. Or a full on cold. Or a sore throat. It didn't really matter what the according to Hoyle definition was. I was coming down with something. I was getting sick. I am ill. This means exercising activities are suspended.

This means no gym.

In past days I'd probably have welcomed that state of affairs. Today it's made me mad enough to fart chlorine. As much as I hate going to the gym (and I do hate it, with a passion that borders on the murderous) I loathe and despise not being able to go to gym. I don't like the pain The Beast inflicts upon my body, but I hate not having the choice to have the pain inflicted. If that makes sense. Overall I hate it when my body breaks down because it's almost as though every weak aspect, every lazy impulse and every passive fibre of my being have joined forces to sabotage my efforts to look less like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

It's not just my body has let me down. Now I have to drink vast copious amounts of Vitamin C, swallow mouthfuls of Echinacea (which tastes like ear-wax) and stay on a diet that doesn't include bread, pasta or anything nice. It's soup and water from here on in until I recover. Recover - ha! If I was out for the count I'd be recovering. As it is I'm just sniffling and shivering.

And this is really what pisses me off! While my pussy immune system has managed to prevent me going to gym (The Beast has demanded I don't come in and infect him - and if I do, I'm dead, you understand?!) it's putting up just enough of a fight to make me work-fit. I'm not bed-ridden, I'm poorly. I'm not sick enough to stay home, but I am too sick to go to gym. And of course, this happens after a week of hellish cardio, in which I put in five fucking days of sweating all over the place and burning off nearly every calorie that went into my body. Just when I get back into the groove of going to gym on a regular basis, my body decides to hold a white flag and fail like the little bastard it is. Right now I feel like punching my own lights out!

There's more to being unhappy than a vicious task master. There's also dietry concerns; ie not drinking any booze, not going out to dinner, avoiding lovely food like burgers, pizza, ice cream and anything else that isn't good for you - and then of course the guilt when you fall off the wagon with a resounding thump, as I quite frequently do. The only thing I have managed to avoid all year is cigarettes - I had my last cigarette the night I watched Chelsea limp to a 2-1 win over Cluj (who? EXACTLY!!) at Stamford Bridge in December last year. December 9th to be exact.

I haven't had a cigarette since then, and while I'm sure it's done wonders for my health (HA!), I miss them terribly. I miss them like an old girlfriend. An old girlfriend from a damaged teenage relationship. The sort of girl that everyone told you was bad for you. The sort of girl who was bad for you. The sort of girl who'd hurl tantrum after tantrum, play you like a cheap, cracked viola, and generally treat you like shit but you didn't care because she was smoking hot and dynamite in bed. And she could bake great cakes.

That's how much I miss them. The only reason I haven't taken up toking again is that giving up a second time (yes, I'm stupid enough to have quit and then started again!) was such a collossal bitch, I'm not sure I could take round three. Also, my new, enhanced lung capacity can barely cope with some of the things The Beast instructs me to do and I shudder think what would happen I was forced to run up a flight of stairs while nursing a smoking habit. The goop in my lungs would probably be forced into evolving into a sentient being which would then choke me to death if that happened.

Speaking of which, something strange has happened in the last few months - and no, unfortunately it isn't weight-loss, although hopefully that'll be on the way shortly as The Beast has informed me that the next packet of BBQ-flavoured cashew nuts I eat will be the last meal I get to enjoy before he kills me. I am now able to burn 650 calories (if the cardio machine read-outs are anything to go by) without feeling like my innards are going through armageddon. In the last week I've visited the gym three times (and I'll be going again after I finish this, God Help Me) to do cardio, and was able to make it through 40 minutes are sweat-spraying mayhem with little to no ill effects. I'd like to believe that this is my body learning to cope with regular exercise, but then, I'm such a pessimist that I find it more likely that my body is gearing up for some sort of inner rebellion at some stage.

At the very least, I'm in for more pain. I know The Beast reads this blog and will probably be devising some hideous torture to test the limits of my new found endurance. Why print this, then, you ask? Well, he was going to do it anyway. The least I can do to limit the damage is let him know everything's going according to schedule...

My hands still haven't recovered. Yesterday they were fucking so painful, I had to quit writing early. Today I feel as though weights have been tied to my wrists and typing any other way than two-fingered like some fucking pre-PC-primate is damn-near impossible. This is because yesterday, after making me row, cycle, lunge and lift dumb-bells The Beast decided to teach me how to box.

Okay you can stop laughing now.

No, seriously you can stop laughing.

Shut up, okay!

Fine! Fuck you! Okay?

Anyway, we walked - we he did, I kind of lurched - over to the training mat area and he proceeded to tape up my hands. Initially I thought this was an exercise where he just strangled me to death and was done with it, so imagine my surprise when he pulled out a pair of boxing gloves and slipped them over my hands. All of a sudden I heard Survivor's number one hit belting out through my brain.

I started bouncing on my heels, jabbing the air. I circled the mat aggressively. I faked, ducked weaved, and lunged. I bounced up and down and again, and shook my head.

The Beast slapped me in the face.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" He yelled.
"I'm, just... you know... getting into th-"

The Beast slapped me in the face.

"Rhetorical question, dingbat! You don't know what you're doing! So allow me to enlighten you. Rule number one about boxing; you're an idiot. Seriously. Eliminate the thought process from your mind. The moment you try to start thinking during boxing, you're fighting an uphill battle. The trick is to learn the basics of what you're capable of and build on that. Then you don't need to think."
"So you mean, you react on instinct?"

The Beast slapped me in the face.

"Don't try to make yourself sound cool. You are not cool. You are an imbecile who knows nothing. Now, let's begin!"

I learned how to jab. I learned how to deliver a right hook. I learned that you need to keep your stance wide. I learned that you need to keep your body turned sideways to reduce the target area. I learned to keep my arms up to prevent being hit. I learned to lead with the left and then throw a right cross. I learned that the heel of your back foot needs to be off the ground at all times. I learned that boxing gloves are heavy. I learned that hitting pads is hard. That The Beast has no mercy. That sweat stings the eyes. That properly delivering a right cross makes me feel like I've been kicked in my ribs. That heavy breathing is a sign of weakness. That pads hurt when someone hits you with them. That farting while boxing isn't funny. Not in the slightest. That it results in being poked in the nose. That boxing gloves really weigh a ton after fifteen minutes. Well, actually it was about ten. Okay, it was five, but they are still fucking heavy. That I am an idiot. That if I just do as I told, that within a split second I can deliver a decent right cross. That if I get cocky I will be poked in the nose.

After fi..te..five minutes we stopped. Sweat is running off me in rivers. The Beast looks like he just woke up.

"Very good," he says. "You will hurt soon."

I will hurt soon. This is good. I want to do this again.

I have obviously lost my mind. It's a good place to be...

So the evil canteen at evil work has evilly started stocking an evil product. Evil, because I am now addicted to it. Every time I'm at the canteen's counter ordering a cup of what they laughingly sell as coffee, my mouth starts to salivate, my hands start to shake in anticipation and it takes every ounce of willpower to resist buying it. Walking back to my desk without it feels like I've cheated myself, and acts as a downer on my mood for the next few hours.

I'm talking about cashew nuts. BBQ-flavoured cashew nuts. Here are some cashew nuts. Look at how yummy they look.

Look at them. Yummy. Not as yummy as BBQ-flavoured cashew nuts, but yummy just the same. Now if you could imagine them covered in MSG and salt and BBQ flavoured "stuff" you'd be staring at a food stuff that actually makes my heart beat faster. Of course, they're very bad for me. Well they would be. They taste nice and yummy and the world is a cruel place and if there is a God, he's a sadistic prick. This is why everything in life that tastes good is bad for you. Cashew nuts are bad enough, but BBQ-flavoured ones are a heart attack in a bag, apparently. I found this out while I was Googling them to find an image of them. The second link that pops up under that search string tells you just how bad they are.

The Beast confirms this when I arrive at the gym and pick his brain on whether the internet is right.

"Cashew nuts?" he sniffs. "They're awful. Full of oil and saturated fats - and that's just the normal ones. If they're salted or dry roasted, they're even worse."
"Really?"
The Beast looks at me through narrowed eyes.
"Yes. That means you can never eat them. And don't ever question me again."
We amble over to the rowing machine and The Beast programs in 2000 meters.
"I want you to finish this in under eight minutes and twenty seconds," he says.
My jaw hits the floor.
"I'll never manage that!" I wail.
"Well, you won't if you keep whining!" snaps The Beast. "Get to it."

The first couple of minutes on the rower and I start to wheeze a bit. I keep going though, as The Beast has changed the time to show what my projected finishing time will be, rather than how many minutes I've been strapped into this horrible fucking contraption. The time alternates for what feels like eternity, flashing 08:15, then 08:11, then 08:21, then 08:25, then back to 08:16. Every time the projected finish time shows higher than 08:20, he throws me an exaggerated wince, causing me to laugh. Or at least, I would laugh if I had any fucking air in my lungs; with every stroke on the rower, my knees push my stomach in and force out a mouthful of much needed 02. Towards the end, The Beast starts tapping his foot rhythmically and barking "Ramming speed" at random intervals. I finish and he gives me a little round of applause.

"Well done. I'm almost tired having watched that!"
"I... I... I'm so... so glad that I amuse you. May... Maybe you..."
"TO THE CYCLES!!!"

On the bikes he sets the speed at an equally sadistic level, except this time I have the upper hand. I've been following his horrible 600 calorie program at the weekend - recently the little fucker upped it 650, if you can believe that - mainly using the bikes. I pedal furiously, looking like I'm about to die, but secretly rebuilding internal organs that were reduced to paste on the rower. By the end, I've almost returned to normal.

This doesn't last long. The Beast takes me over to the squat rack - the place where all legs go to die - hands me two dumb-bells and then forces me to do some horrible combination of lunges and vertical presses which reduce my legs to jello and make my arms feel as though someone's shoving bits of broken glass into my triceps and shoulders. This, however, is just the beginning...

(Be here tomorrow for part 2 and find out why this entry was cut short and why my hands are in so much fucking pain right now, that I don't care this entry is incomplete, I can't fucking type anymore.)