Week 4: It is a good pain!

Well, the end of another week has arrived and it's time to write about what happened. Mostly, what happened is that I've done foolish and tiring things, which were nevertheless fun. This week was never going to be about planning; from the start, I intended it to be about purely physical preparation. It started innocently enough, walking down the street as dawn’s light broke with a shovel in hand. From there, it took a turn for the painfully fun…

I had my usual fortnightly visit to the local vampire clinic, where they’ve decided they don’t want most of my blood and just take the plasma. They replace it with saline so that I barely notice the change, but having a gargantuan needle hanging out of my arm for nearly an hour tends to leave the limb a bit useless for a while afterwards. By now, you’ve probably gathered that resting injured/tired limbs isn’t my specialty. There was just enough time to ride home, change and head down to the Monday Capoeira class. Half an hour holding a percussion instrument was a nice gentle lead in to the hour of intensive exercise. Normally I would have struggled with the movements we were doing but, with a weakened left arm and my right thumb still in a splint from a skiing injury back in July, it was especially difficult. Totally worth it.

What of Tuesday? Would this be a day for some Rest, Recovery and Relaxation? Not really…


Tuesday morning came around and I seemed to have gained weight overnight, quite a bit of it. Indeed, I was coming in a full 4kg heavier than the previous night. Something was definitely strange; perhaps I was wearing heavier clothes, but 4kg heavier? Surely the lead weights didn’t weigh that much.

Weight resistance training commenced today, using a weighted vest. I came up with the idea of making one of these years ago, but was stumped when it came to making it comfortable enough to wear constantly. Recently it occurred to me that this was probably something that already existed. Sure enough, there’s a plethora of the things. Most are just a vest with large pockets front and back for lead weights. They’re bulky and there’s no question of wearing one discretely beneath work clothes. I decided to use something more refined. The vest of choice is from a company called Ironwear, because they make a low-profile vest out of a breathable mesh rather than neoprene (aptly named a Cool-Vest). I’ve started pretty light at around 4kg. It’s just enough to notice but mostly I’m trying to get used to the feel of wearing the vest under my clothes while doing day-to-day activities. The aim at the moment is to add an extra ½ lb weight every day until it’s at 20kg, so that a 25kg pack won’t be such a shock come day one of the walk.

I tested it out by going back to the cenotaph during my lunchbreak to balance on bollards. The extra weight’s evenly distributed so it didn’t throw me off-balance, but did put a bit more strain on the leg. I didn’t time myself before to compare, but it was seven bollards in 22 minutes this time. I should set a fixed time (say 30 minutes) and just track how many I do in that time. Unusually, achieving less is doing better.

Tuesday night brought no reprieve, with a few hours of Scottish country dancing (still wearing the vest; from now on assume that I was wearing it unless I say otherwise). I hadn’t been up to Oatlands for the weekly session before, though a few friends from the Hobartian dancers always drive up. Scottish country dancing is far from the most vigorous of the dance styles I do, so it wasn't really a challenge to dance with the weights on. The real dancing difficulty begins when I try dancing Contra at the end of September, by then with around 11kg weighing me down.

A bit of walking around on Wednesday morning, before I settled in to sit for the day. First on a bus. Then (after having an extensive security check when they realised I was wearing a strange body-armour style vest) on to an airport chair, a cramped seat on a plane, a few more airport chairs, another plane and a bus to finish it off. It wasn't tiring, just boring. I was glad to dump my bag and set off for a wander around the unknown streets of an unknown city when I finally arrived at 1am. First impression of Wellington: they love their films
here. I counted half a dozen cinemas in my wandering, while only exploring a few blocks of the CBD...

Dawn brought new impressions, of course. Wellingtonites/Wellingtonians (anyone know the group term for the residents here) really like their films. I found more cinemas, large and small, and countless posters advertising film festivals. Then I venture out to the Uni campus I actually came here to visit. To think I used to believe UTAS was built on a hill. The stairs inside Vic Uni  are no steeper than the hills outside. There's an old cable car up to it. I was really left wondering at the wisdom of walking around the campus wearing a weighted vest.

I now dread the sight of stairs

Wisdom would have suggested I then learn from that, and not run up Mt Victoria on the other side of the city later in the day. Perhaps it was a glimmer of wisdom shining through, but I took the weight vest off for a while, not while running up the mountain, but while doing a two and a half hour capoeira session. Different format here, not so exhausting but no less enjoyable. At the end of it though, the pinky finger of my left hand had received the greatest workout, balancing a berraboi through a music session and a roda.


Friday brought a fresh round of walking up and down countless flights of stairs and steep hills at the Uni campus, before hell began. I checked out the local Parkour group before heading over, to see what events they'd be running. There's one that isn't really part of the training but is just general physical conditioning. They call it Hell Night. For anyone in Wellington of a Friday evening who thinks they're pretty fit, I recommend giving this a try. Frank Kitts Park beneath the yellow mast, 6-7pm. There's a range of exercises that use the features of the park for gym equipment. Fun, intense exercise. I realised it would be absolutely stupid to do it wearing the weight vest, so transferred the vest into my bag at the start. This demonstrated a certain lack of foresight; we were carrying our bags for half of the evening anyway, doing exercises as we moved from location to location, and the bag straps are a whole lot less comfortable than the vest.

Another week complete. No photos, because I left the cable for my camera at home in another country. I'll add them later.

Edit: A few photos now included