DAY 20

While we savor the news, and obviously genuinely rejoice in this wonderful achievement, I must voice a few sad developments.

First of all, what is this damn cold again? This cold snap affects me for several reasons, but I'm most concerned about the run the day after tomorrow. It's -6 degrees Celsius as I write this post, and looking at the forecast, Weather.com is predicting -9 degrees Celsius for the day of the run. If this is the case, there are three possible alternatives for running the planned 10 km distance. 1. I run it, get sick, and the program ends. 2. Obviously, the first point without pneumonia. 3. I go to the gym and use the treadmill.

Option number three is the most pathetic, but before I get an aneurysm from the uncertainty, let's get back to day twenty. It's slowly becoming a tradition, and a regular occurrence, that the first day doesn't work out for some reason. That's why I should either repeat it or just have a proper workout once. So, the repeated chest-biceps day. I've mentioned the food several times, that I have serious problems with the swallowing part of eating. Now the situation has escalated to the point where, after the 3rd or 4th mouthful of chicken breast fillet and brown rice, I feel like vomiting and can barely swallow it. No joke, and I have no idea what to do now or what to substitute it with, as chicken breast fillet is a huge staple in my diet, and incidentally, essential due to its high protein content. I have the same problem with cottage cheese, and now even with salmon. I've been eating almost the same foods for twenty days, and I'm starting to eat them like I used to eat medicine as a child. There are 4 days left until the diet change, from which I expect some improvement, because if not, I'll be in big trouble for the remaining 40 days.

As for my mental state, it's starting to plummet to Ray Finkle-esque depths, meaning I'm inexorably heading towards an apathetic, jaded, near-depressive state. My friends are around me, my family, countless dickheads who surround me day in and day out on weekdays, but somehow, I still feel alone. During the six weekly workouts, I am perfectly alone; the workouts are spent in complete solitude, because if I run, I put on my iPod and I'm off for 40-60 minutes. In the gym, I shut out the outside world in the same way, because if I let it in, I wouldn't be able to train properly. There will be a separate post about gym society, but in advance, don't team up with anyone, because the whole workout will consist of greeting people, all the morons coming up with their idiotic topics, and you won't be able to concentrate on your workout. I was a bit apprehensive about today's workout, because I increased all the weights, and even increased the amount for bench press by two units. This change was much needed; I can now intensively load my muscles again, ensuring their development. I used to think people who groaned loudly under weights were huge assholes, and now I found myself doing the same thing. Either they were right, or I just joined the ranks of the assholes. The excess fat on my stomach has decreased by about a quarter, but my abdominal muscles are very underdeveloped. I will pay special attention to this exercise. I admit, I haven't been doing abs with full effort until now, simply because I was brutally exhausted by the time I got to it, but I'm changing that now.

Abs. I haven't touched on it yet, but you can very easily fool yourself when it comes to ab exercises. There was a guy at Telenor. One day he comes up to me and boasts that he did 500 sit-ups yesterday. Alright, asshole, have another drink, I thought to myself, and then at the gym I noticed that some people actually "do" hundreds. BUT HOW???? Just for comparison, I do 100-120 sit-ups, but they're also like that. Quantity-quality, you know.

Correct technique. As with all exercises, pay attention to your breathing here. Let's take a basic exercise, the crunch. Take a deep breath in a horizontal position, then exhale when sitting up, and at the end, HOLD for 1 second, then slowly lower back down. Sit-up does not mean your shoulders lift off the floor; when sitting up, only your lower back should be in contact with the floor, holding you there.

I don't know if you notice it, but I've observed a certain self-regulating, controlling behavior in myself. As I progress and the excess weight disappears, I feel it's increasingly justified and important for every exercise, every minute of work performed, to be productive. Until now, I thought, okay, I'll do abs, but I don't care, it'll go away with running. Now it has become almost the most important exercise among my workouts. I haven't had any problems with sleep for at least a week, so I'm not writing about it, but even at the beginning, it was only due to nagging hunger. This shouldn't be a problem now, because I haven't even been hungry for days. My stomach is starting to shrink, and especially during workouts, it's very noticeable how much certain parts of my body have become defined. I've expelled an incredible amount of water from myself lately. Today, I broke my previous record; in terms of training and diet, I used to only last this long, and gave up after 20 days. From now on, I don't know what to expect either, so I'll just keep doing it and writing about it.

On the way home, it must be at least -8 degrees Celsius. This won't be good, it really won't be good.

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