Unleash the Monkey Army

Previously in the blog... ( Part 1 )  In our last episode, our intrepid hero had gone off to find some tucker having survived the static (ish) events of the day. And while I was having a munch on my lunch, I found myself thinking about the events so far at Nailsworth Strength and Fitness and was wondering if I could have done more. I won't lie, that's a crappy place to be. Of all the things you could be thinking about after a competition, the one that shouldn't come up is "could I have done more?". You might think "could I have done better?" or "Could I have done that differently?". But the question of whether you could have done more, that should be beyond doubt, an emphatic, resounding no.  But unusually, I wasn't unhappy. Curious about how it might have gone, and a slight thought about perhaps I might have been able to get more but ultimately relatively happy as I'd hit target (and therein lies one of my issues with goals...but t...

I've been thinking about training a bit recently. Partly inspired by the end of the indoor rowing "season" and partly on the back of a couple of  conversations I've been having.  The indoor rowing "season" is actually a year and runs from the 1st May. Having just come to the end of the 2015-16 season it seemed a good time for a  review. Top level, I completed 1.4 million metres over 108 hours of sliding up and down on the metal rail. Sounds like a lot of time in the same 8ft x 3ft but it's  significantly less time than I spend watching TV. Also, while it is two thirds of my recorded lifetime distance, it is a pretty moderate sort of distance for  most indoor rowers. That's not surprising, I don't have a long history of anything that would help me very much and while the physique I've been gifted and  enhanced with nutritional choices (good and bad) might have some uses, it is not one that you would look at and think "rower"...

End of November. Eight months done. It's quite satisfying to write that. I know I have been going for a while, certainly it feels like ages. Counting down the days as I have been keeps the journey ticking along but they are just numbers and, if I'm honest, it feels like measuring a long road-trip by the lamp-posts you drive past. But to write 8 months is like being given a gift that you weren't expecting! It is only two-thirds done but four months to go seems within arm's reach. OK, maybe for a gibbon rather than a T-Rex but nonetheless it is within sight. One of the things that I had not expected on this voyage was the down-times. Given my constant fight to keep the darkness pushed to the back corners of my mind, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it did. There are many things that contribute to its exacerbation - sleep and nutrition are two crucial components in keeping the hormones in check. Recovery, mobility and tissue work would not hurt ei...

Going back a few years now I first came across Dale Winbrow's poem in a book by Wayne Bennett (as much as I'm a blue rather than a maroon, I admire his work) titled "Don't die with the music in you". The title of the book itself speaks volumes to me, and periodically I look to literary works for reassurance. Here it is, as I first saw it: "When you get what you want in this struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day, Then go to the mirror and look at yourself And see what the man has to say. For it isn't your father, your mother, or wife, Whose judgement of you - you must pass, The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life, Is the guy staring back in the glass. He is the man you must please - never mind all the rest, For he's with you clear up to the end. And you have passed your most difficult and dangerous test, When the man in the glass is your friend, You can be like another and chisel a plum, And you think you...

Ordinary people leading ordinary lives. We look for the extraordinary out there to give us a sense of something more than this. But quite often we end up putting our faith in the witless, the feckless, the pointless, believing them to be something more as a result of how we come to be aware of them. Glossy and distant it seems is better than gritty and close to hand. Familiarity breeds contempt? A prophet in his homeland? Or perhaps that people on our level make us think too much about our own part in all this... Even in the drab ordinariness of it all we plant and nurture the seeds of the very thing that could lead to our own accomplishment of something grand if we would but just point in that direction. Our ability to confront and endure a job; a relationship; a friendship; a life which by all accounts is manifestly unfair and beneath us should give us a sense of pride. OK, so it is not a fate borne with good grace but while not stoic, it is an endurance that most would not ...

The first flush of the new year is out of the way and many resolutions have already been cast aside, dismissed like a credit card bill pending a better set of circumstances in which to respond to the call. Now is probably a good time to visit the perennial January question - goals. Picture from Reuters.com Now, we "know" that the setting of goals is a good thing. I mean, those of us who have the double-edged blessing of working for pretty-much any sized organisation will have had it drummed into us that that it is vitally important. It also stands to reason that achievement is more likely when the objective is set. But what doesn't often get mentioned is that this is not merely a matter of temporal inevitability like night follows day; rather, it is a likely but no guaranteed sequence like Summer following Spring in the UK (you know it should happen but quite often it seems to go from Spring to Autumn/Winter with barely a pause for breath in between). Go...

It's about giving yourself permission to fail. Not wishing to fail, that would make you some sort of nonce. (Normally I would apologise if that offends you but I'm not going to - because you surrender the right to take offence when you sell your soul for a handful of praise, some empty words from hollow friends and a plastic medal) You're giving yourself permission so that you can dare yourself to succeed. Cheesy? Maybe, but then you've been dared to do more stupid sounding things than that...and done them! It's alright to come off second best if you've put your heart and soul into it. Actually, that's a half-truth. If you wanted it enough to put your heart and soul into it, coming off second best will hurt like gravel burn with a lemon juice poultice but you can learn and you can adapt to that. Besides, coming off second best even though you've safe-guarded your ego by only giving it a half-arsed effort will still hurt. But it will hurt in the deep ...