WEEKEND WARRIOR

Missing club beastings and feasting on Jaffa Cakes has led to our man Brunty needing to regain his race-season physique…

I have a confession to make – I’ve put on weight. As of the start of February I weighed in about a stone heavier than the same time last year, and my fitness had declined to the point where my bathroom scales were going from 0-100 faster than the watt meter on my turbo trainer. There are several reasons for this:

There’s been no swim club training for nine of the last 12 months, meaning I’m missing about 20,000m a week of armshredding torment, which keeps me lean, knackered and reeking of chlorine.

My run club hasn’t had any group training for a year, meaning I’m going without that extra lungbursting incentive of trying to outsprint my clubmates at hill reps.

The gyms have been closed, so I’m unable to maintain my normal abs regime of trying to out-plank other gym-goers while nonchalantly pretending I’m taking no notice.

I haven’t been doing much cycling because my dog Bertie loves to go on long XC runs with me more than anything in the world, meaning I’ve all but abandoned going out on my bike because I can’t bear to see his sad Spaniel eyes when I leave him behind. I have an active job that involves a lot of travelling on foot or by bike, and lockdowns have seriously curtailed my daily mileage.

I eat a lot of crap. It’s no exaggeration to say that Jaffa Cakes account for five of my five a-day.

I’m one of those people that needs a large, terrifying challenge looming on the horizon to make me train hard, so without any races I lack the motivation to push myself beyond the ‘treading water’ level.

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t exactly have the physique of a Chippendale stripper before, however I did start to notice some uncomfortable changes in my once bony body, such as feeling parts of it wobbling while I was running.

This hadn’t translated into me actually doing anything about it, though, until I unwisely went on to social media to post a daft video of myself diving off my garden wall into a foot of snow wearing nothing but trunks and doing a few minutes of medley on my frozen lawn.

Among the many comments criticising my turns, leg kick etc, I came in for a fair amount of flak from people gleefully pointing out how much timber they thought I’d put on. Fortunately, the only thing bigger than my winter belly is my ego, so I’m not the sort to start clutching my pearls over a bit of stick, especially given how much I’ve dished out. But this episode has provided me with what was missing from my training, namely a target – which is to get fit and absolutely crush everyone who took the p**s when I next encounter them on a race course.

Grudge-bearing is proving to be a highly effective motivational tactic, and in the past three weeks I’ve lost over 5kg, an inch off my waist, and added 20 watts to my FTP, having embarked on an eating regime that would impress a Shaolin monk and by training as though I were four weeks away from Ironman Lanza.

Being me I am, of course, doing all this in the old-school style of Rocky 3, eschewing things like Zwift, Pelton or online group workouts in favour of lone circuits on my icy patio, and thundering away on the turbo in my freezing garage until I’m a sweaty heap, which has the added benefit of doing away with the central heating because when I’m done the family just sit around me.

So watch out world, I may still have a body that looks like a Haribo fried egg, but I’m on a mission to restore my renowned physique! So it’s all change in the Brunty lifestyle – apart from the long runs with Bertie of course, because there’s no training regime in the world that is a match for a Spaniel’s expectant expression when he sees you reach for the kit drawer.

“This episode has given me a target – to get fit and crush everyone who took the p**s!”