At three o’clock on Friday morning, a short five hours after Show Two, the predawn peace and quiet is broken by a blood curdling scream - I shoot bolt upright in bed ready to defend myself and my family from whatever dangers befall us.
It is then that I realize the screaming is coming from my own throat - my left thigh is in an almighty cramp - no problem I think, I’ll stretch it out. No chance, as I stretch the quad, my hamstring joins in the fun giving it’s all to outdo the cramp on the opposite side of my leg.
I decide to straighten my leg and try to relax when my left calf muscle starts feeling left out and jumps at the chance to add to my woe’s. So now my entire left leg is in the most intense cramp ever and I, at a loss as to what do, bail out of bed hopping on my right leg but cramps have suddenly become contagious and this leg is also affected in its entirety -
Now I’m falling around the floor screaming like a stuck pig and praying out loud for some sort of relief from the most intense pain I can remember in my entire life when Jackie, my fiancé, wakes up and gently asks “What can I do baby?” to which I reply “Get the gun and shoot me!” And she replies “Ok love but only if you think it’ll help… um… in the head or the heart?”
This taught me two things. Firstly - dancing has a way of taking everything out of your body and leaving you completely depleted if you don’t watch your nutrition; and secondly, I’ve been putting so much time and effort into dancing that I’ve been neglecting my lady to the point that she’ll jump at the chance to put me out of my misery.
So I’ve decided to remedy this as follows - I’m going to make more of an effort to show my lady just how important she is and how much I appreciate her support and then I’m sure she’ll do a little more cooking and help me keep the cramps at bay.
It’s been rather a difficult week in the Collins household, we bade farewell to my daughter Jacqueline, who has jetted of to the US of A for eight months - a milestone that has me both bursting with pride at her taking life by the horns, and leaving me a bit melancholy. Amazing how one suddenly starts to doubt whether you’ve taught them everything they need to know and if you’ve forgotten anything that may be to her detriment isn’t it?
As far as the actual dancing goes, Hayley and I have put in five hours a day since Friday so as this blog goes live we’ve already put 20 hours into show 3 and we’ll most likely do at least another 10 before Thursday night - that’s thirty hours of dance training in 6 days people - it’s little wonder then that my weight has dipped just below 120 kg for the first time in years.
Not just the cardio value of dance but also the fact that we very seldom even take a break to eat properly. SCD is without a doubt the most difficult project I’ve ever taken on; hell I’ve even been too knackered to do my normal hour a day resistance training session.
As you can imagine, my reverse anorexia (that’s when you keep looking in the mirror and thinking ”Oh my word, I’m way too small”) is really taking over now especially seeing that I’m not just losing excess body fat but lots of hard earned muscle too. Training as we are it’s impossible not to become catabolic - one’s body needs time to recover from training via rest and proper nutrition, neither of which I’m managing to do at the moment.
Our next 2 dances are really quick and my size 13’s are having quite a time keeping up with Miss Bennett but there's been no quarter asked or given and we are really intent on giving nothing less than best come Thursday night which - as I’m sure you all know by now - is the first elimination show which means one of us will be dancing our final dance.
Hopefully you all see the value in keeping this big old lug around for a while longer so that he can continue to improve his dance skills and show you all just how far hard work and determination can take you.
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