Trying Harrrrrr-darrrrr

I'm currently sitting on the couch in my jim jams staring out at some inclement weather with a sense of relief that it didn't hit yesterday morning. After an initial amount of confusion that saw me turn up 30 minutes late, I joined the now infamous 'Trim Trail' that the Brothers Sharland set out. From what I can ascertain so far, Tom and Neil are guys that both lean towards the quiet side, but their silence conceals a fierce inner competitiveness (particularly with each other) that drives them on to almost T800 levels of determination. I'm fairly sure that during these groups of exercises, Tom is actually picturing shooting a different policeman with every groan that eventuates from his tortuous routines. And I'm certain Neil performs eye surgery on himself.

The Trim Trail involves any exercise you have ever seen on any sports-movie training montage. Hill Runs, Shuttle Runs, chin-ups, sit-ups, and all other manner of exercises that stretch muscles that I wasn't even sure I had. It sort of reminds me of my junior rugby league days, just without the only member of the extended Ella family never to excel at sport ruining my self-confidence in front of my mates simply because I wasn't as quick as his future-reserve-grader-son. The hill runs were ok, and I even resisted the natural temptation to tell Zoobs to f*ck off with his camera (and I'm glad I didn't, he's only doing his job), the chin-ups were not so ok... although I managed a total of about 10 with a helping hand from Neil. However the real humour began after the million or so variations of push-ups and sit-ups. A course was set out that involved 3 hurdles that doubled in size. First one easy, second one difficult, third one fucking impossible for somebody of my height and (lack of) natural athletic ability. After 10 laps and 2 spectacular stumbles that would've had the euthaniser at Aintree reaching for the rifle and big white screen in glee, I was glad to see the back of them. Until the next exercise was announced, which involved jumping back and forth over said hurdles 10 times (pictured above is Tom making mince-meat of the first one, with Kirt looking tired in the background). Wanting to get it out of the way, I jumped in about fourth and after an hilarious stack on my first attempt at the third hurdle, one of the Sharlands (I couldn't differentiate between them by this stage) took pity on me and excused me from the last set.

As I mopped up the blood off my knees, I reasoned that I shouldn't be too hard on myself, as the other boys had a distinct height advantage. That was until Kirt took to the beams in extremely impressive fashion. Kirt is actually shorter than me but possesses a spring in his legs that, in another life, could've seen him take the US by storm as the next Spud Webb.

This hit a couple of points home, firstly despite me thinking that exercise is impossible for me, it isn't. And also, the mountain isn't going to lower itself for me for having shorter legs than the others, nor is the oxygen going to increase just for me during the game just because I don't possess any natural fitness or athletic ability. As if to further illustrate the point, I was flicking through the Steve Waugh autobiography today to see what he said on fitness, motivation, and overcoming obstacles. For those that don't know, Steve has a fearsome reputation in the cricketing world for mental strength and achieving the impossible. You could list several instances, Bouncing Viv Richards in the full knowledge that the retribution would see his life put at real risk, scoring a century in each innings batting with a broken hand in '97, telling Ambrose to get the f*ck back to his bowling mark (at real risk), scoring 150 on one leg (at real risk), surviving Allan Donald trying to kill him (at obvious risk), and telling Herschelle how he'd just stuffed up (at no real risk, the Saffir's will never win anything meaningful).

One section that has stood out, however, is the following. In 1991 he was dropped from the Australian team (in favour of his twin brother) and riddled with injury. A fitness guru was employed who demanded logbooks of his daily gym activities.... 'which was exactly the influence I needed. There were plenty of days when I'd get to 17 or 18 leg raises and think 'that's enough - no one will know I haven't done 20'. But something told me these were the little battles that needed to be won for the bigger picture to become clear. The only person I needed to impress was myself.'

The 'That'll do' attitude that has plagued me for a long time, and whilst I've recently made progress in amending that approach, it's plainly obvious that I'm still lagging behind the other guys in fitness. The one thing that scares the living shit of me is making it on the pitch at Gorakshep but costing us the record by having to pull out with poor fitness. I'm sure that will be enough motivation in the future.

On the topic of achieving long-term goals, I accepted an invitation from my mate Jonah Abraham last night to meet his 2 single flatmates, with the event taking the form of a screening of The Fall followed by a Q&A with the intriguing, and intensely interesting director Tarseem Singh.

Listening to him talk about his labour of love and commitment to doing things correctly, and in a way that he could be proud of, and in a way that he believed in hammered home the age-old point of not giving a fuck of how other people judge your achievements, as long as you can be proud of your own work.

Which is something that I'm sure the sound-director of channel 9 could take a lesson from, particularly after forgetting to feed a bit crowd noise over the top of the pre-record of The Living End's pre-match 'live' set, but especially after hitting 'play' before they'd even got on stage. Another golden moment in the long list of 42nd street never starting, parachutists hitting the roof, the cast of Neighbours singing the national anthem (jealous Lawson, Dav?), The South Queensland Crushers legends parade and team song, and Billy Idol almost getting electrocuted. So Kirt and Wes, if you're ever tempted to take a cheap option, just google search 'Rugby League pre-match Entertainment'