For many years now I’ve considered myself a tough northerner. Ultimately up north we think we’re different. We’re harder, flintier, and steelier. We’re the ones that turn the air conditioner down in the meeting room, who want to sit outside the pub in Manchester in December, who order the hottest curry and who wear the slightest tee-shirts in the blistering winds of Blackpool in the winter. Ok, nowadays we play up to this stereotype occasionally and for us traitors that have since moved south (as far south as Dubai) we occasionally like to remind people how hard we are and how soft the southern Jessie’s truly are. Even the most sophisticated of Northerner who now lives in the sunshine, who owns a Gaggia Cappuccino maker and has sun dried tomatoes in his cupboard, fundamentally harbours an inner barbarian with a molten core of prejudice that sometimes just likes to pop its ugly, flat cap covered head, out. So, when the training regime changed this week and I checked my diary to see how it fits against my work schedule I shrugged my shoulders and said hey ho, I’m hard and I can handle it.
The new schedule meant that I had a 6pm ring session last night that ended at 7.15pm, a dinner with an Irish colleague that started at 7.30pm and then a 5.15am start this morning for a fitness and ring session until 07.00am.
We decided to go for an Indian meal in the Marina. This was a mistake. At midnight as I was tucking myself in for my 4 ½ hours of sleep before the gym I could feel the Lamb Biryani and the Dal Makhni whispering warnings of the trouble to come. I made it out of bed to the gym on time and into about the first 15 minutes of the session. And then it started. The curry sweats. The gradual rise of spiciness up my esophagus. The dread of the thought of puking in the middle of this hard man’s gym. I pushed as hard as I could, I smiled manfully at Richie as he made us run some more, punch some more, skip some more. I wiped off the pools of sweat around me and I busied myself by trying to think of anything but Indian food. But then words I could really have done without. “OK, on your backs, and give me 25 sits ups, 25 leg crunches and 25 ab crunches.” To compound this he made us do push ups in a wheel barrow style with someone holding your ankles.
The pain was unbearable. Normally Indian food can cause the worst cramps possible but compound this with what I went through early this morning and the hard man was broken. When he finally said “OK give me 5 laps of the gym and then warm down” the food was literally at the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, smiled dutifully, jogged 5 laps slowly, and then went into the bathroom to taste my curry again. It’s not as nice second time around.
The lesson is clear. Curries and Nan bread = good. Curry and crunches = very, very bad.
The new schedule meant that I had a 6pm ring session last night that ended at 7.15pm, a dinner with an Irish colleague that started at 7.30pm and then a 5.15am start this morning for a fitness and ring session until 07.00am.
We decided to go for an Indian meal in the Marina. This was a mistake. At midnight as I was tucking myself in for my 4 ½ hours of sleep before the gym I could feel the Lamb Biryani and the Dal Makhni whispering warnings of the trouble to come. I made it out of bed to the gym on time and into about the first 15 minutes of the session. And then it started. The curry sweats. The gradual rise of spiciness up my esophagus. The dread of the thought of puking in the middle of this hard man’s gym. I pushed as hard as I could, I smiled manfully at Richie as he made us run some more, punch some more, skip some more. I wiped off the pools of sweat around me and I busied myself by trying to think of anything but Indian food. But then words I could really have done without. “OK, on your backs, and give me 25 sits ups, 25 leg crunches and 25 ab crunches.” To compound this he made us do push ups in a wheel barrow style with someone holding your ankles.
The pain was unbearable. Normally Indian food can cause the worst cramps possible but compound this with what I went through early this morning and the hard man was broken. When he finally said “OK give me 5 laps of the gym and then warm down” the food was literally at the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, smiled dutifully, jogged 5 laps slowly, and then went into the bathroom to taste my curry again. It’s not as nice second time around.
The lesson is clear. Curries and Nan bread = good. Curry and crunches = very, very bad.
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