Bear with me...

...and I will try to explain.

I will try to explain why it is that on Friday night, I am heading to bed with a bottle of water, a tube of Deep Heat, and a bottle of Surgical Spirits for company.

I will try to explain why it is that every piece of me aches.

And then, I will try to explain why it is all so fun.

Last week, I was feeling pretty chipper. Positive developments were threatening to materialise at work, training was going well, I had fun plans for the weekend, and I was generally on top of everything: health, life and work-wise. I was remembering just how absolutely good it felt when I was a student - very little stress, excellent health, busy social life, plenty sleep. Nothing looming on the horizon.

I spent five or six hours on the river last weekend - a long outing Saturday morning, and another on Sunday. Saturday's was great. Sunday's wasn't so good. Not only had I had less than five hours' sleep, but ten minutes after getting on the water, I felt sick. Properly sick. Like a fool, I assumed it was some combination of the previous night's lack of sleep, perhaps one beer more than was prudent, and the goat curry. So, feeling properly sick and rowing like a sack of spuds whilst our coach barked increasingly impossible commands at me, I spent the rest of the outing attempting to coax my ailing body towards the unreasonable feats which formed The Plan For The Outing. I muttered many expletives under my breath. In fairness to the coach, it should be pointed out that, as I assumed I was entirely responsible for my sickness, I didn't actually complain that I felt two strokes short of death for most of the outing. I was hoping to get though in one piece without anyone noticing I was a bit worse for wear. That's part of the mentality - mustn't show weakness...

Walking home after the outing, I felt well and truly spent, I assumed from the morning's exertions. I retired home via the supermarket, and picked up kind, gentle foodstuffs to recover at home with. Or so I thought. I went to bed in my post-prandial lull, about 3pm. I stayed there until Monday morning, leaving only to dash to the loo for bouts of the sort of violent explosive diarrhoea that make you wonder just what pressure the gut can withstand.... I have no idea how I went from feeling so well to feeling so rubbish in the space of a few hours, but somehow, I managed it. And my, did I feel rubbish.

To top it all off, as I lay in bed on Monday morning composing my email to my line manager, a few people I was going to be meeting later in the day, and my rowing buddies, to explain why I wouldn't be at work/training, it occurred to me that I didn't feel quite as appalling as I felt an hour ago. And actually, I could probably make it into work. Training might be a step too far, but work... Well, I thought I could manage eight hours sitting at a desk within running distance to the loo.

I didn't train again until Wednesday - a six mile jog along the river. It was slow, and it was unduly hard work, but it felt good to be working my body again, for it to be working for me and doing my bidding instead of declaring war on my ambitions, even though my bidding was something as truely pointless as running to Chiswick bridge and back again. As I suffered no ill effects from this on Thursday, I took the gamble of going to circuit training.

I should explain why this was a gamble:

1. I hadn't eaten in the afternoon and had resorted to gobbling an emergency maltloaf whilst jogging to circuits;
   
2. Circuits are my most hated form of exercise ever. It's hard to get motivated to do the jumping around bit, and the only thing which keeps me going is the thought that everyone else is and not going is letting the crew down;
   
3. The coach is a well-meaning sadist. It was entirely likely that there would be a new and excruciating exercise or ten added to the plan;
   
4. Once I had shown my face at circuits, there is no giving up, no pulling out with a sicknote from the doctor, no explaining that perhaps it's better for me not to push it too hard right now... That mentality doesn't fit.

Circuits consists of twelve stations, one minute per station. That's 48 minutes of high-intensity exercise straight off. Add on a couple of miles' jog there and back, and a hundred or so extra bonus squatjumps just to ratchet up the lactic acid in the thighs, and my quite ridiculous pride and stubbornness, and you have the makings of a very painful outcome.

And so it is that a day later it's Friday evening and I'm lying in bed covered in deep heat. And for good measure and olefactory delight, I have given my palms and soles a good surgical spiriting. I smell like I've had a bad accident with a cleaning cupboard (and I'm not convinced that the skin around my shoulders where I've just applied some more deep heat wasn't grazed. Ooooooh, that stings!) Tomorrow morning I have two outings - 7:45 am at the boathouse. On one level, I wish I could turn my alarm clock off and stay in bed all day. On another level, I love it.

It's that other level that I need to explain, but right now, it's bedtime (bedtime for rowers, at any rate), and because I love rowing, I'm going to sleep now and will blog that bit some other time.