Circle Work & Weighting Games 800M

This week I have covered:

Sprinting: 6 x 100 m
Cycling: 275 km (only twix big rides though)
Running: 20 km
End Weight: 79.6 kg.

For some reason I had stuff to do in town everyday this week so although overall I didn't put in the real burn out sessions like last week I still managed to rack up the ks. I doubt most of these would be helpfull.

Cycling is useful mental preparation, I have one tactic - attack. That's it. If I'm on a long straight flat, I attack. If I see someone on the horizon, I attack. If I'm climbing a steep hill, I attack. If I'm riding downhill with a tale wind, this is new, I attack. If I hit a hairpin turn, I attack.

Really that's all I can think of. But running a sprint round a bend (be it 200m, 400m or 800m) It's the same story I can only attack. There is simply nothing else to do. Somewhere in the process though, you slack off, so the key is to constantly look for things to attack, or be going fast enough that the time between launching an attack on a corner and an attack on a straight is minimal.

Now to address the 'Circle Work' aspect of the title, what I mean is I have started to do the hardest part of any training regime. That is to stop being nice to my mind. There are things you can do that are nice to your mind, like easing into a training regime, starting small, perhaps jogging 500m then racing 500m then jogging again and calling it a day.

If I ran a business like I run my training regime, I would employ more cunts than any company alive. I've never pushed myself as far as Ben Cousins say, who runs until he vomits, then keeps running. But I'm trying to come close.

So this week the big jump has been in my running, and I never thought I'd say it, but cycling is simply too effecient. It takes far too long to hit the wall and start burning fat. Running on the other hand is traumatic on almost every human system.

So one of the big runs for me was a circuit around the cemetary, park down the junction then jogging up the hill by Xavier home. It's about 4km, and I called myself a cunt and threatened to kill me, and 'you can do better than this cunt' and 'I don't care if you vomit you fucking pussy-fucked cunt' about 80 times.

It was the big run of the week. I have done nothing but endurance running really for the past 5 years. It's been a long time since I did race pace mid-distance. My aim is to step this circuit up into a 2 x 4km lap ending on the hill each way. I can think of no better prep than a 10:1 ratio of endurance running for the 800m. Furthermore having to sprint home uphill (for approx 400m-500m) should make tactic 2 - race the first lap andf make the second 400 a game of who slows down least, one in the bag for me.

So yesterday I was just trying to get one lap under my belt. Above my belt was dinner, the runner friendly dinner of silverside with potatoes. So vomiting conditions were good. Running after dinner is also an excellent way to trick your body out and have you kick your metabolism up. Running along I had to get my legs lifting, increased stride length and constant reminder to attack (thanks cycling) because for the past 5 years it has been all about easing into my pace for the long hall, not pushing myself.

So it was a traumatic run to say the least. I attacked the home stretch as if I had 50-100 meters to go not 400-500m and as the incline hit, it was more like hitting the wall, which I thought I had done earlier on the less inclined hill on the backside of the cemetary. But I simply forced myself to plod on uphill. Uphill is actualy what I excel at on the bicycle, but as I learned the hard way this didn't translate well into running.

But I got to the top without stopping and even broke into a cantar towards the last set of traffic lights, were I slowed abruptly and this was over.

That was the mentally challanging single circuit. The other challange with endurance races is the bizarre paradox of destination vs circuit running. Running from say the city to home, is easiest even if it's 12km because you have to get there anyway, and the faster you do it, the less time you spend doing it. Consistency pays off, and when you reach the halfway mark you think 'Woohoo, I'm on the home stretch now' or 'It's all downhill from here' (which is literally the opposite of what is true if you live where I do).

If you run a single circuit of say 6km the same thing applies. Back in the rat though you'd look at the lake and think, if only it were efficient enough to just swim across half way, duck out from behind the bushes and hit the finish line, because it is also the start line. That's about the only annoying thing, you head out and head back in. Some literally post the halfway point as a hairpin turn, some flagpole or course marker you have to slow right down to turn around, or face having your arsehole ripped off by centrafugal force.

But worse than a 6km circuit is having to run 2 x 3km circuit. It's just mentally much harder. Just so running 10 laps of an athletics track is much harder than running a 4km circuit. The boring monotony of anything as straightforward as a track makes you want to call it quits early. The pain of 2 laps of an actual cross country cirquit means that when you hit the halfway line you don't think 'Woohoo - halfway' you think 'I have to go through all that shit again! fuck!' even though before the halfway mark all you thought was 'everything I do here, I have to do one more time, this hill that is killing me now, NOW on the FIRST lap, I have to do it again' etc.

So the circle work is going to be a big part. I need to be able to run a hard 400m then do that AGAIN only harder. It is what I call the 'attack, attack, attack, attack, attack!, attack!, attack!!, attack!!!' strategy I am yet to put a patent on.

The other thing is my physical concentration. I need to change the composition of my body to max out my power:weight ratio. Only propelling, driving and stability muscles are welcome, any other non-essential compounds are not welcome in my body. (except my awesome hair).

So in this age of purchasable lifestyles, I went shopping!

Here is the breakdown - I am 176cm tall. I need to look at bodies and figure out the ratio 'playing weight I need to be'

First stop, Usain Bolt 196cm, 86kg



He has 20cm more to pack on a meagre extra 6kg. And none of that I'm guessing is fat either. For me to get in h:w proportion with Usain Bolt I would need to weigh -

(176/196)*86 = 77kg (of muscle and bone)

I believe below 73kg my BMI goes all unhealthy, so this seems good to me. 77kg is technically overweight but with nothing but some protein pistons for my heart to worry about I don't care.
But let us not forget, I'm strictly utilitarian in my body image. I don't want to get thin to look hot, I want the most versatile and dominant body I can get.
For that I need to look at Shawn Kemp,

Shawn Kemp 208cm, 104kg (in his heyday)



Now Kemp was a meat-cake. Phil Jackson described him as 'power forward extraordinair' before his bulls rolled him in the Championships. But this was the guy that posted up to the NBA's all time best season team with 72 wins in the regular season, and along with Gary 'The Glove' Payton pushed them to 6 games.

That's the sort of physique I need, one that doesn't run from Jordan's unstop-a-bulls. But fights it. Usain Bolt is all very well, but the 800m isn't an event I want to run from. It is one I want to attack and kill, and give myself the best chance of beating it, even if it remains favored by the bookies.

Kemp is about as much of an 800m runner as Usain Bolt is. Plus I like to play basketball.

So the maths is...

(176/208)*104 = 88 kg.

yikes, that means not only would I have to dip down to 73kg to shake the fat off my bacon, I would then probably have to do nothing but drink protein and hit the gym until I had gained 15kg of lean muscle. This seems impossible, as much as I would enjoy walls of solid meat to protect me from the 800m apocalyptic fall out.

Are any other NBA players in my league?

Chris Paul 183, 79.4 kg (he already weighs less than me.)

I would have to weigh (176/183)*79.4 = 76.4

I could achieve that next week! Except that Chris Paul is ripped, I am merely a lump of fat on some meaty legs. So again I'd have to go back down to 73kg then build up 3kg of muscles.

Kobe Bryant 198cm, 93 kg

Kobe has the same appeal as Shawn Kemp, but in a different way. He will face down Lebron James, the younger, bigger NBA star and shoot right through his defence. That's humiliating for Lebron, and it is humiliation I seek to exact upon the 800m.
So let's do the maths.

(176/198)*93 = 82.66 kg

Hmm, almost ten kg's of fast muscles I need to gain in the core and arms. Is it doable? not by me. But this perhaps shall be the benchmark. If it's too hard, I'll go Chris Paul/Usain Bolt. If it proves to be easy, I might gun for Kemp! Something tells me though, the absence of Kemp like physique in the NBA before or since he played (and even before he stopped playing, he ended at 127kg) that Kemps don't come around too often.