Fucking Apathy

When it comes to keeping up motivation and overcoming adversity, people often express the need to overcome nay-sayers; to prove wrong those people who say you can’t achieve whatever you’re attempting.

There are so many people out there who will tell you “you can’t”. What you’ve got to do is turn around and say “watch me.”

This is a lovely sentiment; it is bold, encouraging and motivating. It is also untrue.

Although there are certainly some people out there who will tell you to give up, or that you won’t be able to achieve your aims, the reality of the situation is that these people are quite rare. After all, there are only so many total dicks in the world.

You are, however, far more likely to encounter an equally destructive force; a perpetual, infuriating ambivalence towards everything you want to achieve and are excited about doing.

For every person who tells you “you can’t”, you’ll meet a hundred who will merely shrug and assume you won’t even try, or imply that trying is a waste of time.

It is this fucking apathy you must learn to conquer first and foremost.

Murorga Sim Bowa Loses EWA British Title!

Alas, there is always a downside to fleeing the lands in search of adventure. Last night, at EWA Pro Challenge Wrestling, I lost my British Championship title to Crazy Jonny Jones, after I landed head first on his knees…twice in a row.

The first time was from the top rope, when I mistimed a Doombutt. The second was when he jammed his knee into my face and fell backwards, effectively breaking me in half.

A collection of clips from the match, filmed by my own brother, can be seen here:

(Please note, you might not be able to watch this video on a mobile, because it uses a song I don’t own. Because of the lack of adverts on mobile devices, some fat bastard at Universal Music isn’t earning a fraction of a penny from my video, so they’ve blocked it. Because, y’know – that’s the spirit of art and music, right?)

More photos and videos from the event will follow shortly. For now, I need to heal.

Here Be Monsters: Body Building in London

In training for Adventurethon 2013, I decided I needed some help. Some advice. Some (dare I say it) training.

You see, no matter what I do to train for my Enduro Adventurethon (14km of open sea kayaking, 21km of mountain biking and 12km of off-road running) I will be totally and utterly unprepared for it, for three key reasons:

1. I don’t believe in being prepared anyway.
2. I own neither a kayak nor a mountain bike with which to train.
3. I arrive in Australia, after a 30 hour journey, less than 48 hours before everything kicks off!

Whatever I do, it is going to hurt. A lot. I therefore feel the best thing to do is accept it will be agonising and dedicate some time to learning to push myself through this inevitable pain. If I can get stronger and more powerful in the process – all the better!

Now, whatever you have read online about training and whatever little pamphlets have fallen out of Men’s Health recently, there is only one real way to get bigger and stronger. There is certainly only one way to increase your sheer grit and determination. You find what you think are your limits…and you shatter them.

How do you go about pushing yourself harder than ever before? Simple. You seek out the biggest, strongest and meanest sonovabitch you know…and try to match his workout, set for set.

That’s why I went hunting for monsters. Specifically, Robster…Le Monster.

Flood Running: Flunning.

Today was my first off-road run of 2013 and my first since a traumatic body-building workout with Robser Le Monster.

I decided to try a 10km route my dad showed me before I ran the Wycombe Half Marathon in 2011. So, to the sounds of Apocalyptic Love by Slash, I headed out into the chilly February evening.

After 2km, I was ready to go home; my knees hurt from sliding in the mud, my already painful spine was jarring with every step that landed in a hole, and the brambles were tearing at my arms.

It was about then I discovered the water. Yes, the water.

Unbeknownst to me, the River Thames is quite high at the moment about about a kilometre of my route had been flooded. When I say flooded, there were ducks and geese swimming across the fields. It was the first time I’ve ever wanted a camera on a run.

Turning back (or acting with any sense), however, is both tedious and lame. Thus, with the disturbingly green liquid lapping at my balls, I trudged on at a variety of paces from ‘adventurous stride’ to ‘pissed off wading’. At no point, luckily, did I have to swim. Things weren’t that bad.

The water cleared by around the 3km mark, but by 4km or 5km I was wondering why I was still running. Everything hurt. Apart from my lungs, which seems to be holding up.

Come 6km, however, I was back on a levle surface and had found my stride. By the time I hit 8km (running through a cemetary, I believe) I was on a high – I practically sprinted home, even finding the energy to sing along to the last few tracks of the album, hurdle occassional patches of flooded and nail a sprint finish up Abbey Road.

Overall, I clocked a bad time for under 11km. Then again, considering it was off-road and I had to wade through flood water for a a tenth of the route, I think I did OK.

PUSH THYSELF.

When it comes to exercise (and indeed life in general), I believe people can push themselves far harder than they think they can.

I believe people – myself included – set their personal expectations too low, rarely try as hard as they think they are trying, and give up too easily.

I believe people rarely ever push themselves to their limits and, as a result, have no real concept of how hard they are ever actually trying, to the detriment of their performance.

I see it every day; people spend hours training half-heartedly and, as a result, progress slowly if at all. They then look at the people making progress and ask (often out loud):

“What’s he taking/drinking/eating/reading/doing/training differently to me to look/lift/fight/perform like that?”

The answer is usually the same: nothing. He is simply training harder, because he has worked hard to discovered his limits, knows how to push himself to those limits and forces himself to do so – every single time he trains.

The undertone of this article at this point looks very much as if I’m referring to myself, in some barrage of arrogance. I am not – I wish I could be! (I just happen to have more pictures of me in suffering than of anybody else.)

Winning and Losing. Mainly Losing.

Today, I had my first cage fight, at Gods of War‘s Berserker Brawl V – Valhalla Rising!

I also lost my first cage fight…along with my general confidence in my ability to grapple. To be honest, this is probably for the best. If I can’t fight, it’s good to at least know that I can’t fight – rather than be semi-convinced that I am capable of something I am not.

You see, my opponent today was at least two, if not three weight classes lighter than me. As skilful and talented as he was – and he was – I really shouldn’t have lost with that kind of weight advantage. Not if I was any good. However, as annoyed as I am about my own terrible performance, I’m more frustrated by the fact that I never really feel I could have won…

Ed vs. Robster Le Monster

What’s the first thing that pops to mind when you think “triathlon”? How about when you think “Adventurethon”? How about when you think about the individual sports of kayaking, mountain biking and off-road running?

It’s probably brute strength, right?

Right. That’s why, in preparation for my forthcoming Adventurethon and journey across the world…I have challenged renowned body-builder and phenomenon of strength Robster Le Monster to put me through my paces in one of his horrific workout sessions.

The way I see it, if I can hang with Le Monster, I can do just about anything…including Adventurethon 2013.

Now, I may not look like much, especially compared to Le Monster and his usual opponents in the Monster vs… series. However, I’m pretty sure my combination of simpleton willpower, flawless beard and far, far longer hair will help me prevail over my admitted much larger, much stronger and much more experienced opponent.

That’s how weight lifting works…right? Guys?

Defending My Championship!

Friends, enemies and animals with all the qualifications for personhood, who are nevertheless spurned by those who confused the concepts of human and person. LEND ME YOUR EARS!

Murorga Sim Bowa (that’s me, would you believe?) has been challenged to defend his EWA British Championship against the manic and dastardly Crazy Johnny Jones.

Having only really won the title by sheer chance and lunacy, this is Murorga’s chance to prove that he is serious about being a contender in the ranks of wrestling’s greatest…rather than a deranged outcast of the Asgard Academy of Super Heroics.

This mighty battle will take place at Arts 4 every1, Desbrough Road, High Wycombe, Bucks, HP11 2PU on the 23rd of February. For tickets and further information, check it out on Facebook. Whilst you’re there, you can show your support for Murorga Sim Bowa if you like…

In case you missed him winning the title way back in July, here is (most of) the match again:

The Same Run As Before. BUT TWICE!

Today, I decided that running 6km at a time was going to get me nowhere fast. Or rather, it would get me exactly 6km…and rather slowly. Useless. The only thing within a 3km radius of my house is Tesco Express and, if I want to go there, I’ll drive. For one thing, it is a petrol station and, for another, I can’t very well run with bags of over-priced shopping.

So instead, I decided to run 10km – a more respectable distance. Living in the land of hills, however, there is only so much flatish ground to run on, so I decided to run my fairly level 6km route, then do the initial 2km out and back again.

However, by the time I reached the 8km point I thought “…I’ve come this far…I may as well just do the whole route twice”. [That is a heavily edited version of my actual thoughts].

So that’s what I did.

In the process, I listened to the entire of Rammstein’s Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da (only 45 minutes long, I discovered!) and the first few songs off Reise Reise. In total, 65 minutes – not bad for an unfit buffoon running 12km.

All in all, it felt pretty good. There were a couple of tougher moments but, given that it was twice as far as the last couple of weeks, not bad. I mean, still pretty bad. But not as bad as I was expecting.

I Want To Climb Trolltunga

1100 metres above sea level, jutting out 700 metres above lake Ringedalsvatnet in Western Norway…is Trolltunga. I want to go there…and caper. Here is why.

For one thing, its name means Troll’s Tongue in Norwegian. If that isn’t enough to make you want to ascend it, you’re in the wrong place and there is already a warrant out for you immediate en-awesomeing.

For another thing, it looks like THIS:

For a third and final thing (because all good things come in threes: Crème Eggs, Billy Goats Gruff and rhyming triplets, for example), Trolltunga is in an area called Handanger. That’s right, Hard Anger. Or Hard Danger, depending on how you want to interpret it and whether or not you can spell. Either way – BADASS!

Providing you don’t spend all day on the tongue, prancing around like a mad man (thus defeating the very point of climbing Trolltunga, in my opinion), the hike up and down takes around 8-10 hours and ascends roughly 900 metres through the mountains.

That’s a full working day of hiking up a kickass mountain to overlook an even more kickass lake from one of the most kickass rocks with undoubtedly the most kickass name. Compare that to a day in the office and let me know which ass comes up the rosier…

Naturally, I’d much rather climb the sheer rock face but, at this rate, I’m not going to be ready to do that until I’m old enough to make climbing ropes out of my own beard.

Still, it’s an ambition! Now, to see if I can work Norway into my plans…