I got a sub 7 2k erg!

"What? Huh? What does that mean? What did he say? A sub seven WHAT? I don't get it! I'm so dumb!"

The above is probably what most of you are thinking. Well, either that or

"What is this stupid blog? Where's all the horse porn? When I go onto a blog, I want horse porn! I don't go searching through all these blogs to be told that the author has got a sub 7 2K erg, whatever that might mean. I want horse porn. I mean, donkey porn is acceptable but to be honest, it's horses that really turn my crank. Man, I hope he stops telling me about his sub 7 2k erg and instead starts talking about horse penises soon."

If you belong to the second school of thought, I'm sorry, there won't be any discussion of horse related sex on this blog today. However, next week I will probably be running a five-day masterclass on women who get turned on by shetland ponies, which is nearly horse porn, so tune in then. No, today I shall be discussing the sub 7 2k erg that I got yesterday.

"But Thomas, what is a sub 7 2K erg? Please tell us because we are DYING to know!"

Well, loyal fanbase, a sub 7 2K erg is essentially composed of TWO main factors: the 2k erg, and the sub seven bit.

A 2K erg: A test of manhood. You know how ancient tribes used to send their young men out into the wild to capture and have sex with wild horses, or survive all alone in the arctic, naked save for a pair of socks and a penguin, or made them go skinny dipping in volcanoes to prove that they were worthy of the title of manhood? You know how they used to chase the young men about with sticks, beating them about the back until they passed out due to lack of blood? You know how they made them complete the Big Hand level on F-0 X without taking their finger off the accelerator? Well, those were all tests of manhood. If the young man failed said test, he didn't get to become a man; in fact, his penis fell off and he was forced to regrow a new one from scratch: FACT.
A 2k erg (or 'ergo' or 'ergometer') is basically one of these tests of manhood; you can either pass, or you can fail. If you fail, your penis drops off and you are subject to ridicule and mockery. Wild dogs will attack you in the park, barbers will shave off your eyebrows, and old women will urinate on your head in the street. You will not be worthy of the title of 'man' and you will be forced to wear women's underwear and walk about with a wiggle, talking with a lisp and calling everybody 'ducky', 'sweatpea' or 'hot hunka man'. Failure at 2K ergos is the number one cause of homosexuality in men. Success at 2K ergos is the number one cause of lesbianism in women, oddly enough.
However, if you are successful in the 2k erg, you get risen up to the status of a God amongst men. Your image is graven in gold and the air itself parts to allow you to walk past. You raise your muscled, manly arms, and women swoon at your feet. You can leap buildings with a single bound, you can, like, be really strong and stuff and you could beat the shit out of that pussy-boy Superman in both arm, thumb AND naked-oil wrestling.

"How do I do a 2K?" I hear you cry, as you too wish to be men. Like me. Simple. You will need the following things:

1. A muscled body, toned from years of hard weight-lifting and general manliness. (Which I have)
2. A lycra all-in-one, possibly with a tiny hole in it near the crotch. The most stretched and bleached of colour this lycra all-in-one is, the better it will serve, as it just makes you look even more rugged and snugglable. This all-in-one should also not have been washed for at least the past three weeks, as the aroma of hard sweat just gives you extra powers.
3. Some awesome music. This music must be a clever blend of intelligent, beautifully virtuistic music and clever alliterative, always changing vocals, sung by recording artists with a real personality and history. For this reason, I recommend "The Way (Radio Edit)" by Divine Inspiration. It's about a woman who apparently knows the way somewhere, if only the person in question will just put HIS HAND IN HER HAND. For some reason, he never does and she is forced to keep asking him to do so. It's a good song.
4. Balls. Doing a 2K erg is not for pussy boy footballers, pansy-pants rugger players or, heaven forbid, a limp-wristed pansy walking squareheaded panty wearing liver stuffing BASKETBALL PLAYERS. The rest of you sports take note; the only sportsmen manly enough to succeed in the hard world of 2k ergos are THE ROWERS. So basically, anyone else can go fuck off and throw a ball into a hoop. Ooh, big woop, you threw the ball through the hoop TRY DOING SOME PROPER EXERCISE YOU FUCKERS.
5: One of these bad boys:



This is called an 'ergo'. It is basically a medieval torture device. You pretend to row on it and it measures how fast you are going, while simultaneously firing red hot iron needles into the bottom of your legs if you don't move fast enough. It also features a nifty 'predicted time' setting which is always useful. What you do, right, is you sit on said ergo, strap yourself in, then program '2000 m' into it (YOU GET IT BECAUSE 'K' STANDS FOR KILOMETER AKA 1000M AND '2' IS THE NUMBER OF KILOMETERES AKA 2 OMG THATS SO CLEVER!). You then row flat out for 2k, or until your spleen bursts open and you simply split apart in a tendony mess of phlegm and membraneous tissue that takes a fucking hour to clean up with tissues.

Sub 7: Well, 'sub' refers either to a type of ship that the military uses to dive underwater and blow up sperm whales with torpedos, or a type of sandwitch that is said to resemble the aforementioned ship. However, it can also mean 'below', which is what it means in this context. Context, after all, is EVERYTHING.
And the 7? That refers to the number of minutes that it took to complete the 2000m on the ergo (or the time it takes to explode in a tendony mass of phlegm and membraneous tissue). Now, usually one would think "well, what does it matter if the time is sub 7 or not?" IT MATTERS. Now, I could be talking in fluent hyperbole here, but it's scientifically proven that the difference between sub and super 7 minutes on an ergo is, uh, about the most important thing in the world ever. It's like the difference between black and white, between thick and thin, between life and death, between acids and alkalis, between blog posts that go on too long and blog posts that just don't go on long enough. There is a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between getting a time of seven minutes and one second, and six minutes fifty-nine. A WORLD of pain is contained in those two tiny iccle seconds. A galaxy of pain. A universe. Of pain.

To highlight the essential difference between a 2k ergo time of above seven minutes, and one below, I would like to take some time out for a brief history lesson. Back in the medieval ages, Charles Darwin, the high wizard of King Henry VIII, proposed a system of classification of all living organisms known, for some reason, as the 'Linnaeal system', in which animals were grouped according to their various characteristics. Darwin was burnt at the stake by a bunch of disgruntled debt collectors in 1972, and his system was mostly forgotten, replaced by the lesser-known Dental System, in which animals were rated on the sharpness of their teeth, before the Groove System was introduced in the 60's, which placed every living organism on a sliding scale according to their relative levels of groove. There are pros and cons to all these different systems of classification. However, I would like to highlight the strengths of the Redgrave System of classification as being far superior to all of these other systems, as it fits every living organism into one of two finite named groups. To exemplify, here's a picture of the Redgrave system at work:

The Redgrave System of Classification.


See? Easy, simple, accurate, and it works.

But how do I measure up? Well, according to the Redgrave system, as of half past four on Friday, I am NOT scum. I am a real man. I achieved a time on a 2K ergo of less than seven minutes. HEAR THAT? LESS THAN SEVEN. I ACHIEVED AN ERGO OF SUB SEVEN MINUTES. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, I FINALLY DID IT. I AM LESS THAN SEVEN. I AM A GOD AMONGST MEN. WORSHIP ME.
What was this time, I hear you ask? Ok, well, prepare yourselves. If you need the toilet, I advise you to go now, because you are about to be belly-punched with the awesomeness of my time. You WILL wet yourself in an explosion of urine and diahhrea and I'm not gonna be responsible for cleaning up that mess. Ok, you ready to hear my time? Are you? I would move any elderly relatives out of the room before you read this, because really they shouldn't be subjected to something this amazing. Ok. Are they out of the room? Actually, shoo away household pets too. Don't want your pet poodle being defribulated by my time. Which is awesome.

Ok.


Prepare yourselves.



My time was...






6 Minutes, 59 seconds, point six.


HAHAHAHAHHAHA! TAKE THAT, SEVEN MINUTE BOUNDARY, YOU UNHOLY CUNT! I BEAT YOU DOWN! I RAPED YOU! SEE THAT 0.4 OF A SECOND? THAT'S HOW MUCH BETTER THAN YOU I AM. MWAHAHHAHAH!

After I finished my ergo, following the world's most terrifying 100m dash (the predicted time gave me 7 minutes dead and I was forced to ergo so hard I think that I might have accidentally shat out my own liver (it happens) in order to jack up the rate and to push myself there), I celebrated in an unusually fervant manner (This account interestingly changes tense half way through. This is definitely intentional and certainly not carelessness resulting from me writing this at 1.25 in the morning):

• I saw the figure '6.59.06' imprinted on the screen of the ergo and I gave a piercing victory scream, while simultaneously unhooking my feet from the ergo.
  
• I fell off the ergo and lay comatose on the floor on my front, basically crying like a little girl.
  
• Lying on my front made me feel like throwing up, so I sort of crawled like an epileptic catterpillar away from the ergo and heaved myeslf onto my back. I stared at the ceiling. Lights danced around my vision. Every muscle on my body was screaming for blood AND I ONLY HAD SO MUCH TO GO AROUND. Therefore, blood was taken away from key areas (ie my brain and stomach and the vital organs) to satisfy my legs. I'm pretty sure I gave myself an embolism.
  
• Somebody nearly stepped on my head. I raised a hand weakly. "Please help me get up," I whispered, realising that A: I had literally fucked my legs over so much, I was totally unable to move them, and B: I had to cycle seven kilometers home INTO THE WIND. The person ignored me.
  
• My rowing coach walked up to me and sort of looked in my face, grinning. I raised a weak, puppy-dog arm up to him to try to get him to help me sit up. He shook it and said 'well done', before walking off.
  
• The other rowing coach walks into the ergo room and looks dispassionately at me, lying on the floor and screaming for breath while my entire muscular structure implodes. "Did you get sub-7?" he asks. I very weakly give a thumbs up. "What time?" he asks. I weakly manage to cough out the figure. The amount of oxygen that was denied my brain while I was speaking will probably mean that I become mentally retarded later in life. But hey, who cares? The rowing coach winks at me and walks away.
  
• I hear the first rowing coach talking to the guy two ergos down from me, who is already walking out of the room, none the worse for wear. He got a score 0.2 of a second better than mine. I am so glad to hear about it.
  
• I'm still unable to even sit up. I sort of wave my arms pathetically in the air until somebody walks over and helps me up. I nearly weep with gratitude.
  
• I walk out of the ergo room. After my second step, my thigh cramps up and I nearly fall over. After that, a muscle cramps with every step I take. I look like a cactus.
  
• I sit on a bench. "Ok, breathe, don't concentrate on the searing pain in your legs and chest, concentrate on your heartbeat," I think to myself. I suddenly notice the searing cramping pain in my wrists and hands. And heart. The fact that I suddenly want to vomit fairy cakes and strawberry sauce (admittedly, not an ideal pre-ergo snack) all over myself also comes unpleasantly to mind.
  
• I stand up again and fall over on the grass, where I lie, curled in a foetal ball, for the next twenty minutes. My heartbeat still does not slow down. Ants start to eat my eyeballs and a thistle gets stuck up my ear. I don't notice; I'm pretty sure the top layer of skin in my body is technically dead.
  
• I dry heave about four times. A bit of toast comes out. In front of me, somebody voms yellow stuff over a bush. This obviously helps me to feel less ill.
  
• I sit up. "This isn't so bad," I think, before noticing the tearing sensation across my chest. I lie down again for another ten minutes. If I could move my arm, I would start sucking my thumb.
  
• One of the rowing coaches looks at me as I lie in my little ball. "You look like SHIT," he says helpfully, laughs, then walks back into the ergo room before I can squeak a witty reply.
  
• I finally stand up again. I collapse in the bench and sit there for ten minutes. WHY THE HELL AM I STILL IN HORRIFIC PAIN. That's what I would be screaming.
  
• Another ten minutes pass, and I'm alright again. Unlike the rest of the group, who all did ergos after my lot. They all ran out and threw up all over the school garden. Literally, there were like five teenagers vomming loudly over the garden. It was like the aftermath of a Bolemic All-You-Can-Eat competition. Watching them wryly, I eat some birthday cake and go to not one BUT TWO parties. I am such a party monster.

So, as you can see, the test of manhood is one that is not lacking in pain. There was a lot of pain involved. But I like to think that I have vindicated my position as the most manly man around. I rule. Unless any of you have a sub 7 2k ergo, you do not. You are just scum.

SCUM I SAY.

*I drew a really good cartoon to go here. Unfortunately, it made my computer freeze up, and I am typing this at 1.30 in the morning. Thus, I can't really be fucked to figure out how to get it to work. So just imagine an awesome cartoon here. --->
Wooow.*