SIX PACK AMBI: THE REBOOT

Just like Pappu's various cam-pains around the country ended in utter flops, my attempts at gaining six pack for the next brahmōtsava gōṣṭi ended in utter flop. There were some extraneous factors in the last attempt. My aththai passed away on vaikuṇṭha ēkādaśi day. The related head baths in the 14 day period laid my amma low for almost a month. She recovered only at the start of February. Okay these are decent excuses but what the hell happened in the periods of October-December and February-March you ask? Well, I have an even more apposite excuse for that:

Indolence

What? No replies? Cat got your tongue? That's what I thought.

Haneeway, just like Pappu, I rebootedre-evoluted it exactly 10 days back. Before the numbers, a segue. I am no athlete but generally I am in good health. My BP has never been anything but 120/80. I rarely eat snacks and avoid soda (carbonated drinks) like the plague (this is about 95% true). I do have juuuust a bit of paunch. Just 100 cm around the navel 😉. If you see me, you'd probably call me hefty instead of fat. I weighed 88 kilos at the start of the latest re-evolution attempt. That's not heavy for a guy who's as tall as I am. How tall do you ask? I can (almost) see Ryan Reynolds or Hugh Jackman eye to eye. In fact, Ryan Reynolds' body is my dream body. Wolverine is too bulky for my liking. Ryan apparently weighs 190 lbs/86 kgs. So, technically you could say we're body doubles 😝. Having said that, I am very weak at doing basic stuff like push ups & chin ups. By weak I mean I can't do either. 

(Holding my Adam's apple) He's my body double

Now that we have aaaaall that out of the way, let's see how these 10 days have gone. For the first 7 days all I did was very slow jog. Average pace was 100 metres per minute. On the first two days I couldn't run more than 1.25 km. Which took me about 12-13 minutes. The only Colchonero from India suggested that I should first try to run at least for 20 minutes and not worry about the distance. That seemed like good advice. The last time I used to try and add 100 metres each day and every day the last 100 metres seemed longer than Jimmy Stewart looking down the tower in Vertigo. This is how the 1st 10 days have gone.

Progress has been steady. The beach near our home has a 1 km stretch with milestones every 100 metres and a fork after about 825 metres. One side of the fork has no milestones and the other side is not particularly well lit. Since I am a kannipaiyan I avoid going beyond the fork because my kaṛpu is more important than losing weight or being fit. So ~825 metres is one "lap" even though I don't end up where I started. I have settled at 4 "lap"s in 30 minutes. I wanted to up it to 40 minutes in the next 5 days but Colchonero Indio advised me not to. So 30 minutes is where I'm settling right now. Don't want to set a standard too high and get disheartened when I don't meet them. Yesterday I was about 150 metres away from completing "lap" 4 at the end of 30 minutes so I went ahead and completed it anyway. Today I shaved that minute. Let's see how it goes from tomorrow.

I know your next question. It's "What's your playlist?" innit? Well, there are just 2 songs. I added 3 to make it a nice even 40 minute playlist but later the running time was reduced to 30 minutes and Achilles' Last Stand had to go. I mean it's still there and makes the walk home from the beach enjoyable. Robert Plant is possibly the worst singer of all time but hot damn that "ah ah ah ah ah ah" hum in harmony with John Paul Jones' galloping bassline is bloody infectious. So where was I?......Ah the playlist. As I said, just the two songs:

1. A Change of Seasons by Dream Theater: 23:08

2. Highway Star by Deep Purple: 6:32

A Change of Seasons is one helluva song by Prog-Metal band Dream Theater. I have a couple of cut-off points in the song. There's a damn good solo by John Petrucci that starts at ~11:40 and goes for about a minute. Then, there's a keytar solo by Jordan Rudess that starts at 18:55. After it ends, Highway Star makes the total 20 seconds short of half an hour. I am using this app for time and distance tracking.

That is the story of pseudo-jogging/fast walking. On dia ocho, I started doing some basic chest exercises from this app. Like I said earlier I cannot do even one push up so there's that. I have my knees on the ground for support and even then doing 10 push ups is hard. That's how weakstrong I am. Been doing that for 3 days now. Let's see how that goes.

Early results then. I have lost 3 kilos. Our home weighing machine shows 82 kilos but my appa says there's a possible 3 kilo error in it. Underestimating it as 85 kilos is better I suppose and makes more sense. Ergo my current body double is some guy from Basel whose name rhymes with Shmoger Shmederer 😜. Every friggin' joint of my body hurts like hell. Even typing this post was done with much difficulty. But I endure and go on because:

No Pain
No Gain

Will update in another 10 days. Wish me luck. Keep Calm & Chum Jetze 🤘!

P.S: I am taking a break from twitter until shitty cricket ends. Will login a couple of times to keep the handle alive if I remember.

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