So, my first training session where I’m going straight from work, as I relocated to lovely new offices in Changi over the weekend giving me an extra 80-90 minutes commute a day. Deep joy.

While walking towards the car park, the lanky form of one Alistair Looney appeared out of the pavement, so I gave him a lift to the gym. We talked about manly things like gum and sweating, both of which are always entertaining and fulfilling topics of conversation.

Arrived early, which I think disappointed Alexis, as he enjoys barking “Snell – you’re late”. Getting changed out of posh clothing is a pain in the arse, as you have to hang it all up neat and tidy like when you were a kid and your mother would bollock you for having a messy room, and you’d have to hang your school uniform up instead of stuffing it under the bed with the sweet wrappers and stolen stuff.

Went out and did a bit of skipping with the hoserope while I waited, and had to wake poor Alexis up, who was asleep on the weight bench (the first time he’d used that particular apparatus in a while.)

We started our warm up with Alexis handing out hand weights, and getting us to start the usual on-the-spot carry on. My weights were pink which manned me up a little. Bruce also had pink weights to start, but he asked if he could change them as the colour clashed with his hand wraps, so he got green. We buggered around doing jogging on the spot and star jumps for about 8 minutes, and it was no surprise that having a two pound pink weight in my hand felt nothing out of the ordinary. Paul Hodges was back in his sparkly new Nikes instead of the Hi-Tec trainers he bought at a car boot sale, so he was more springy. His weights were pink too.

While we were having our 1-minute break after the warm up, we compared the carpet burns we’d got from that stupid exercise Thomas invented (I’m going to call him only Thomas now, as he thinks he is getting too much negative criticism with all the porn stuff, and especially after Bruce said his fight name should be “the poof” on Facebook). With hindsight, comparing carpet burns is a bit lady like, but mine really hurt, especially when I sweat…. Having just googled “sweating into abrasions”, I was pleased to find 1.35 million matches, although smart arse google did challenge me asking if I meant “sweating and abrasions” which has only 124,000 matches, so google isn’t as bloody smart as he thinks he is. The first match of the 1.35 million was “penis abrasion” which if this is a league table, is quite a concerning number one.

I know it’s quite unforgivable to actually click on this particular link, but I couldn’t resist it (FYI – http://www.cyclingforums.com/health-nutrition-supplements/470496-penis-abrasion.html)

I feel a little sorry for the author who is apparently a light-duty cyclist, who has been riding 6-10 miles in the hot weather wearing his normal clothes, and now has a red stripe “down his gland” that looks like a burn, and it apparently gets worse the further he rides.

Well, with intelligence of that magnitude, I hope it rubs all the way off, and falls down his trouser leg into a drain. Silly shite.

Anyway, I digress…. Next up was our circuits, with this being 15-seconds of push-ups, f*cking burpees, crunches and squat thrusts, and we did two rounds of these totalling 2-minutes. We did 3 sets of these, and Thomas (the fella that is no longer called a porn star) left a perfect sweat shaped torso on the gym floor that resembled Pamela Anderson – you really had to see this to believe it. I’m not allowed to mention his porn star status anymore, but if I still was allowed to, I’d say that that wasn’t the first time he’d had a Pamela Anderson shaped torso under him…. But I can’t say that unfortunately.

After this, we split into two groups – the big fellas on the heavy bags, and us wee lads in the ring. Us in the ring did jab and parry, and cross and block work (basically stopping the other fecker punching you on the nose) and other combinations – we did this for a number of rounds of 2 minutes. I worked out with Thomas, and this was good, as we seemed to work well together, and he only punched me in the head about 5 times. I could see that he wanted to get his revenge for all the porn star comments, but he just wasn’t quick enough to catch my lightening fast bobbing and weaving (a term which up until recently, I thought was something to do with sewing or knitting).

After this we moved onto the heavy bags, where we did various combinations to the clock. Straight jab, jab and cross and other combinations. Alexis kindly pointed out that my jab was like watching my mother punch, which I can’t actually disagree on. My jab, for some reason has become particularly crap and I’m wondering if some of my punching muscles have been damaged by all those stupid burpees and one-armed Rocky pushups we’ve been doing. I may sue Alexis if I can get medical proof that burpees are stupid and damaging.

I’m sure we did something else after that, but I’ve forgotten what it was, and it’s pretty boring to just keep talking about the same set of stupid exercises. The final exercise we did was that one out of An Officer and a Gentleman, which I’m guessing Alexis watched last week. We lay on our backs and put our straightened legs about six-inches off the floor, and Alexis shouted at us about leaving the army. Actually, he didn’t, but it would have been more Officer and a Gentlemanly like if he had. I’m guessing this exercise is really useful if we get knocked out during our fight, and don’t really want to get back up again, but want to let our supporters know that there is no brain damage, because brain damaged, knocked out people will probably have issues positioning their legs six-inches off the floor. Quite smart really.

I finished off with some weights but because I wasn’t using a lot of weight Bruce called me something to do with a small feline which I couldn’t possibly repeat. I apparently have sparrow arms and a sparrow chest, which will be pleasing to all sparrows, but not really a compliment to my slight form. I would say I’m built for speed, but following my pathetic performance with Saturdays sprinting and all my slow twitch issues, you’d know I was a lying little gobshite. I’m built for uprightyness, and that’s about it. I’m a few tattoos short of ever being real hard.

After all that, I went and got changed, and given this was my first straight from work session, I got it horribly wrong. I forgot my towel which means I was a walking sponge (and believe me, I am an unnaturally sweaty fecker – odourless – but sweaty) and I only had my work shoes. So imagine a complete idiot walking around with 8-gallon socks inside my lovely Ted Baker loafers, dripping from all sorts of spots trying to get his rubbish into the car, whilst covering the car seat with the half-torn bin liner (yes, I’m still doing that!). Only when I got in the car did I realise that I’d left my water bottle on the shoe shelf on the Vanda third floor…. Balls. Out I get and straight to the lift because I couldn’t be arsed going up the stairs. Oh, forgot to mention, when I was leaving, the odd ball that hangs around the car park shouting things at people was up at Vanda looking for a car registration plate – I think he wanted to shout at the car.

Anyway, the lift was trapped on the third floor, but I was insistent that I wasn’t going up them bloody stairs in my sweaty gear, my 8-gallon socks and lovely loafers. Five minutes later, the lift started going up, one floor at a time, for about 20-seconds a floor, and gobshite here was still adamant that I wasn’t squelching my way up the stairs. After about 15 hours, I gave in and ran up the stairs, cursing that bollocks the same way as he curses anyone that comes near his car park – I reckon he’s got motor-tourettes. I got to the third floor, retrieved my bottle and started back down the stairs. As I got to the second floor, I saw the mad fella getting out of the lift, and trapping the door open again while he went to try and find this magical car to swear at. I ran into the lift, unjammed the door and pressed all the buttons. I am so bloody juvenile, but it didn’t half feel good!!!!