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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
