You done what?

The pain has subsided. Although a trip to get a sports massage on Friday left me covered in bruises. I am not sure I should be paying a lady to do that to me!

Another week has flown past, in a blur of wind rain and sweat. I had been hoping to get outside to do some training but not until this storm passes.

Over the last month I have roughly Swum 5km, Run 25km & Biked 150km which combined could get me to Carlisle.

I know, winnah winnah, chicken dinnah indeed. I could have a wicked night out there... apparently Guildhall Museum is Carlisle’s best kept secret.. so I will set my sat nav to there!

Wierdly my body seems to have been taken by aliens (and not the probing kind). the last couple of times I have been to the gym, I have really enjoyed it. Yes I know. No I havent taken any of that. Honest.

Which is good as now I have started my own business, time is going to be at a premium so I need to avoid feeling like I have to drag myself along to the gym and its bright green walls looking like a bad fast food place, or maybe they bought the paint from Del Boy.

Another added bonus is that I am getting faster. I guess it is because I am spending less time panting, bent double like a wheezing old man and more time ambling along like a wobbly dinosaur. Thats a mental image for you all to savour (how many of you thought Barney rather than a T Rex?)

I have only got 7 weeks before I actually do it properly proper for real and all that. Eeek.

On a final note thank you very much for all the contributions to the Gym idea. I have now met my fundraising target and I will be opening it with Two Hats Jimmy in the next six months :-)

 Music Corner 

And oldie but a goodie..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l6vTw97QWs

House of Pain

Not just a 90's music reference, but a fact of life at the moment.

Yes yes I know girls have high pain thresholds and boys don't. Yes I know that manflu is the most life threatening non lethal, but I hurt.  A lot.

Just a dull ache, located erm .. in my body ... everywhere. This has made the last 3 workouts based around grin and bear it.

I must have distorted the fabric of space time when I run because on one occasion 3 minutes was long than my whole 6 weeks holiday as a child! 

Still by 8am this morning I had completed my brick (40 minutes cycle followed by 15 minutes run). Ouch. And this is week 3 of 12. Woo and Hoo.

Ignoring my self pity and frankly childish moans, those that know me, know that I am quite frankly a bit odd at times.

Voices in my head this morning....(does wavy hands thing)

"Good morning Dragons. Today I am going to pitch to you a new and unique idea in branded exercise programmes.  It is called Two Toned and will reach £100 profit after year 3. I am asking for £100K investment for 4% of the company.

Studying the current offerings in the marketplace, my research identified a gap in the working out and and Ska  music. I havent heard of any other gyms in the Accrington area offering such a unique and stylish proposition.

Before you rush to invest I will outline some of the details. Two Toned will be a black an white themed gym, with all of the music supplied by Ska and Two tone bands.

Members will have to wear pork pie hats whilst working out for that extra Beat Burn (TM) which by providing coverage the head area will increase atoms leaving the body by up to 1% 

The gym will have a house band led by the weight loss king Buster Blood Vessel. They will provide up tempo music, a performance to perspire to.

The gym will also host every wave of Ska bands up to and including the 3rd wave. 

Themed nights include Beatercise, Leaner than Jake, Rowing with big Fish and Rankin Roger Run.

We would extend the chain with brand such as New Row Mantics, Rock and Run, Middle of the Row and Cross Country Music. 


I am now open to questions .... .Yes Theo ......" (wavy hands)

 Music Corner 

This week is that amazing duo -   
Carter USM with Surfing USM 

The intro to the song just explains it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l6vTw97QWs




 

Mmmbop

So I am back .. after a few months. Missed me ? I doubt it.Well welcome back to this irregular and frankly irrelevant load of tosh that is my blog.

In the intervening months I have almost moved to a small hebridean island, started volunteering at a horse sanctuary and now am living the dream in a small northern town.

Due to the move and life getting in the way training dropped off (erm sort of stopped) with it becoming patchy.

Got back to the Gym at the beginning of December and hated it with a passion. Then foolishly, I accidentally entered my first triathlon. Well as accidentally as you can do it, and no I wasn't drunk ... the theory being that if I have a date, I need to get training.

Which it has. Over the last 5 days I have trained un 4 of them, including two pool sessions and two lots of running. It hurts. A lot. And the next day you get up and start all over again. 3 months of this ..eek.



So why Mmmbop. well like any good scholar I have been doing my research about triathlons and came across something interesting. There are different levels of triathlon with the top one being the Ironman. This is pain on a epic scale.

Roughly it consists of 3.8k swim, 180k bike ride and then a marathon. One after another.  In under 17 hours.

Those who have completed it like to adorn themselves with a badge of honour, which is the M Dot. It is the Ironman logo.

So why do I care. I dont. Sort of.

Imagine this scenario, an unruly class is messing about the teacher threatens to give them a test if they don't behave. Out of the 30 students 29 will be dreading a test, yet one will want to take it, to test themselves.

A lone voice against the sanity peddled by others.

Some where inside of me is this class. 99% of me looks at an M Dot and thinks yeah that's nice.

But I am never going to get one.

Yet...

yet..

somewhere is a quiet voice saying "yes I would love one".

Reality strikes ...

I wonder if they do fake transfer ones ...

Music Corner

 The only way I can get through some of the runs is to listen to decent music. So each week I will bring you one Tuuuuuuuuuuuunnnneee that has eased my misery.

This week it has been Apollo 440 - Odessa Dubstep.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjZEXIvQz-0

Please if you have any recommendations for Tuuuunes to run to I am all ears ...

Apologies for lack of funny stuff but this is the first week so breaking you in gently.
Next week I will do better.

Recruiter says no ...

Been an odd sort of week, time has flown yet stayed still at the same moment. I am sure young Mr Einstein will have an equation to calculate for that something along the lines of T=H-Tr+CB*

Still applying for jobs, but almost at double figures with my rejections, which i class as success. I think they are just playing hard to get. I reckon a couple of weeks stalking their offices, writing them love poems which I will sellotape to the CEO's car and creating the head of HR their own C90 mix tape and I should be good for at least second interview with them. Cheeky cheeky monkeys... I know their game ...

So this week has seen a few notable achievements in the world of wobbling Will. Last week I started to use my bike in anger. It was a mild sort slightly pissed off ness to be honest, like the realization that you have put the suspension bolt in the wrong way when you have spent 30 minutes putting it back together and will now have to disassemble it again, but without the 10 second thought of does it really matter?.

Luckily Scotland is awesomely flat and very very smooth, so I have been enjoying the path round the nearby lake (or as the ginger indigenous people call it a Lock).

Brilliantly for a nation that cant even install a tram system, the path round the lake doesn't actually go round the lake, but stops halfway.  In a couple of years apparently they might get round to finishing it. Really then a there and back ride, about 25km in total.

That has been attempted and conquered a few times, with a few blue bits on the way(man I didnt know wind was made that cold)

Just in case I am ever famous and you want a small anecdote about me to use at parties, I bought my bike from Perth Bike Station. They take bikes from the tip and refurbish and flog them on (that isnt the anecdote fact fans).

In their shop they had a Raleigh Activator the first bike I ever bought with my money earnt bell ringing way back in. If that isnt enough they had Grifters and also a Street wolf in stock!



Sadly none of these fitted my needs, so I now have a slightly rubbishy 15 speed MTB which more than suits my needs.

Step one of sprint triathlon complete - I can cycle the distance, outdoors and not die. Yes I may be slow, have a sore undercarriage and I am definitely not stylish but complete none the less (unlike trams or paths in scotland)

Step two has been to get more time in at the gym and today I completed my first 5km in 36 minutes. Again not very quick with some small bit of walking but a tick in the can do without dying spreadsheet.

My next aim is to sign up to Park Run and try it out doors. In the cold.... bits of me turn blue just thinking about it...

*Time = Happiness - Tears + Chocolate Biscuits

..and we are back

Welcome back to the wonderful world of wobbly Will...

So been a few months since I have updated this, the last time was in 35 degree warmth in Cambodia. Now I am sitting in 14 degree Scotland. How the mighty have fallen :-)

A quick recap for those not paying attention. Man gets fat, gets fed up of being fat, puts down his chocolate biscuit*, decides to do something about it, decides that it can wait until after the chocolate biscuit, then reads a book, decides he is a fell runner, realizes that physics have objected to him taking that path, has another chocolate biscuit, starts running.

The inital plan was to do a 5k run then move on to half marathons. Easy.. .of course. Apart from running is boring. And I am not very good at it so far.

Then I had a new flash of inspiration brought to me by Mel C. Now it isn't the first time she has featured in my thoughts (No.2 after Baby for those who wanted to know) but she was shown doing something called a sprint triathlon.

I have always fancied doing a triathlon but quite frankly they would take me too far away from the biscuit jar and I wouldnt be home for Neighbours** so I ignored them. They are better left to super humans like Wendy, Lawrence and Simon to do.

They are around 750m swim, 20k bike and then 5k run. These Sprint ones though are shorter and more importantly mean I wouldnt have to miss match of the day training.

So that was it, my new target is a Sprint triathalon for March time.

With renew vigour I put down the biscuit and joined the gym. It hurts but it is nice.

In the last 6 weeks I have gone from thinking that 30 minutes is a good workout to being disappointed if I dont do over an hour of cardio. I have also lost about 8 kgs (which is nice). I have bought a bike, cycled 25km on it, froze to death with the brisk scottish breeze and now have a sore unercarriage(very tender)

So that is up to date. Bet you are wondering if you can invent a time machine and get those last 2 minutes back of your life spent reading this rubbish. :-)

*Rich tea biscuits name has been changed to protect the innocent
** Other generic addictive rubbish programme are available

My year in 25 numbers.. ughhhhughhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

4000 Riel to the Dollar
$2 the most Will expensive haircut
$60 the most Shiona expensive haircut
94 # of dogs we have befriended
32kg the amount of will left in Cambodia
1.5 $ the cost of our breakfast
17 amount of organisations we have helped
126 poeple that have attended our free business training
51 number of weeks that Shiona has threatened to chuck her laptop in the river
1 amount of beers I have drunk (may not be true)
6 # of flip flops stolen
4.1 km's I can now run without medical intervention
320 the amount our room cost per month
102 dives completed in a year
290 meals eaten out in the last year
0 the number of times I have washed up this year
4 number of accounting systems designed and implemented
36kg the weight of our life
70 the $ I earnt for one days work
15% tax I paid
2 number of dogs we have acquired
2 number of cars we already have
17 amount of visitors we have had in cambodia
4 countries we have visited in the last year
0 number of miles driven in last year

Johnny Drama ...

So the last week has been quiet on the running front. After being defeated, rather than get back on the horse I allowed everything to get in the way ...

Really it was a bit of cowardice ... but today bright and early I ventured back to the roller of doom to complete my task. Fuck was that hard ... I have to admit I walked an extra minute so technically I didnt complete it ... still I got to the end of the time... still very very broken.

The hard bit is the mental bit, I cant switch my brain off or refocus it. Loads floating around my head from inputting accounting journals through to what I am actually going to do in life.

In 8 days time our bubble will burst... this life I have created in the fantasy world of Cambodia will disappear and will be back

I wont lie and say I am looking forward to coming home .. .I am not. For lots and lots of reasons ... too varied and too numerous to mention. Yet I dont love Cambodia, I dont love this life ...it is the most frustrated I have ever been a country that doesnt want to change...

I was introduced to the concept of the Drama triangle a few years ago. it was one of those really simple concepts that honestly can apply in most situations

For anyone who doesn't know the triangle is made up of three elements.

The Victim feels pressured by the Persecutor and will tell everyone. normally this is the "not my fault syndrome". then to the rescue comes the Rescuer to help "save" the Victim.

This doesnt work because whilst the Rescuer wants to save the Victim, they dont actually want to be saved! Or as wonderful Wikipedia puts it the Victim is not really as helpless as he feels, the Rescuer is not really helping, and the Persecutor does not really have a valid complaint. [Details] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle…]

What was interesting is that the role can and will change, the reasons change but ultimately whilst anyone is part of the triangle you will not get a resolution or even be able to have a grown up conversation!

Today I have been a triangle all to myself ... persecuting, rescuing and complaining all to myself about myself. I have decided to stop and have a grown up conversation with myself ..

Living in a country full of Victims, Persecuted by the government and surrounded by lots of Rescuers it really hard.

No wonder normality well .. doesnt exist...