I met my Fairy Godtrainer yesterday morning for the first sprint training session, and here’s how it went:
0600 Get up.
0610 Eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich.
0620 Chug 500ml of raspberry Viperactive to “power my performance” (a free sample I got from Maximuscle 2 years ago).
0640 Walk slowly (to conserve limited performance power) to Clapham Common tube station to meet Fairy Godtrainer.
0700 Meet up and jog gently to a pond on Clapham Common. She describes the plan as “to break me painfully at the beginning and then reap the benefits of training on the broken muscle”. I’m like George W in Iraq: Bring It On.
0705 Step up onto a bench with left leg, 15 times, then sprint full out to end of pond and back.
0707 Repeat with right leg and another shuttle.
0709 Excuse myself to puke raspberry Viperactive onto Clapham Common. Out of my nose.
0710 Fairy Godtrainer wraps the session up and I saunter home to bed.
I draw positives from this.
1. A great place to start is rock bottom – maybe next week I’ll get beyond the warmup.
2. Ego and bravado have been exorcised (behind the park bench). Humility is assured from now on. That’s a good thing.
3. Try everything once. Puke Viperactive out of nose – tick (once will do).
My 100m P.B. of 12.11 seconds feels a long way off.
A friend of mine has filmed me doing an official timing at Battersea Athletics Track, to find out quite how far the disabilities of age and sheer lack of any flair have set me adrift. So I’ll share that next week.
And in the meantime, the Greater Purpose will continue to take shape.
