Defanged!
It's official. The gym scales reveal a horror: 71.2kg. In a month of hot-weather travel, my 183cm frame shed 3.6kg.
But far worse: it's been lost as a huge chunk of muscle tone, sculpted steppes of flesh turned to mere dripping greasy strings under my dermis. In the pool for the first time since July, I managed just 30 lengths before exiting the water, puffing, limbs turned to reeds thrashing pathetically in water turned to syrup.
I have degenerated to the lowest common denominator of 21st century urban masculinity. I am not ... different now. I have become ... ordinary. I am like a vampire sipping a silver-and-garlic cocktail in the hot sun.
I am emasculated. Neutered.
The desert has stolen from me.
Three kilos plus of solid body mass, lost to the heat and parch of North Africa. I am just a man, now. No faster. No stronger. Still smarter (obviously) but that counts for little in our celebrity-obsessed, image-conscious, surface-is-everything world. I can no longer walk the midnight streets with confidence. No longer ride the tracks to the wrong side, exaltant. I may have to learn what fear feels like.
I have to live life - the next two months at least - as a normal man. Three years of weekly swim / bike / run and a daily 99 crunches + pressups + squats mean... nothing any more. How quickly the elite become... shadows and dust.
And yet, perhaps something good can come of this. Walking among the Normals, I will learn from them, even understand them. I will become their friend, and save myself from irrelevance. I will learn humility.
And in the coming months, as my body walks the path back towards true health, I will remember. What I have gained, from weights and wheels and water and the grim enjoyment of pain. And how it all, so easily, can be lost.
Shadows and dust.
:-)
But far worse: it's been lost as a huge chunk of muscle tone, sculpted steppes of flesh turned to mere dripping greasy strings under my dermis. In the pool for the first time since July, I managed just 30 lengths before exiting the water, puffing, limbs turned to reeds thrashing pathetically in water turned to syrup.
I have degenerated to the lowest common denominator of 21st century urban masculinity. I am not ... different now. I have become ... ordinary. I am like a vampire sipping a silver-and-garlic cocktail in the hot sun.
I am emasculated. Neutered.
The desert has stolen from me.
Three kilos plus of solid body mass, lost to the heat and parch of North Africa. I am just a man, now. No faster. No stronger. Still smarter (obviously) but that counts for little in our celebrity-obsessed, image-conscious, surface-is-everything world. I can no longer walk the midnight streets with confidence. No longer ride the tracks to the wrong side, exaltant. I may have to learn what fear feels like.
I have to live life - the next two months at least - as a normal man. Three years of weekly swim / bike / run and a daily 99 crunches + pressups + squats mean... nothing any more. How quickly the elite become... shadows and dust.
And yet, perhaps something good can come of this. Walking among the Normals, I will learn from them, even understand them. I will become their friend, and save myself from irrelevance. I will learn humility.
And in the coming months, as my body walks the path back towards true health, I will remember. What I have gained, from weights and wheels and water and the grim enjoyment of pain. And how it all, so easily, can be lost.
Shadows and dust.
:-)
posted by chrisworth at 9:58 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home