One Sit Up + One Push Up

Today marks one month to go till I race in the city to surf. City 2 Surf, some marketing shit. The point is that I will have to run 14km in what is almost certain to be direct sunlight up and down hills with a big swarthy, sweating mass of people around me. Funrunners range from the truly beautiful people, to the total dorks who wear little plastic clip things on their shoelaces, have sports watches that they press and go 'beep' when the start gun goes, so they can dispute their times infront of their friends on monday when the time gets published in the newspaper. And it doesn't stop there, these running dorks also wear oakley sunglasses that kind of go with their matching tri-colour nike running shorts and singlets.
Man I don't ever want to be one of them. The only matching out fit I'll be tempted to run in would be a pantomime horse costume, and then only if I was the front part so I could yell encouraging abuse at my arse while attempting to run over as many unnecessary obstacles as possible like gutters, park fences and small children. Face it having read this you'd do it to me, should the situation be reversed.
But alas, yesterday I decided to start training early by building up my upper body strength. I'm just easing into it. So Yesterday I took some time out to get down on the floor and do one pushup and one coresponding sit up.
I am fairly confident having gone from 2km fitness to 20 km fitness in Japan over a similar period of time that with dedication I can run the 14km comfortably, I do have one disadvantage over my running partner Shona though - anticipation. I have run the City to Surf before, twice infact and the first time I did it I got to heartbreak hill and ran over it pretty soundly as other runners collapsed groaaning to the ground, or were driven insane by the tantalizing sound of plastic cups getting smashed underfoot at the drinks stands that is deceptively far from where you first see it. I ran past all this quite happily because I simly didn't know any better. I knew nothing about the geography of Sydney and had no idea how far I had to go beyond the hill so I just kept running and it was no big deal.
The second time I did it though, I remembered, I remembered that I still probably had another 40 minutes of running from the top of the hill. I remembered that there was a drinks stand along the hill somewhere and thus couldn't wait to get there and didn't want to leave.
Hence my training regime has to be so much tougher than dear Shona's, I have to make my mind like steel, I have to toughen up to the point that I am simply oblivious to external realities, I have to go on doing one pushup and one sit up (which if I leave it at that will probably still leave me much stronger than those dork runners, if not as lightweight and fast) but I intend to actually keep adding one a day, that by the time I'm doing the city 2 surf this year I will have done 30 sit ups and 30 push ups...which doesn't sound that impressive. Man I should have thought about this earlier, so I could head for an impressive end target of like 500 sit ups and 500 pushups making me look like the love child of Lennox Lewis and a cheetah. Did you know Lennox Lewis' nickname was 'the Lion' coincidence, apparantly not.
But still this isn't the first time I have adopted such a training regime, the name of the game is to stick with it. Yes this is about discipline says I as I lead I lifestyle almost completely devoid of any discipline whatsoever. Well things are going to change I tell you now.
No...now.