Category: sport

Winter is coming

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The clocks have gone back in the UK, marking the end of British Summer Time. Of course, that doesn’t really affect us here, where we don’t use British Summer Time, but it does mean that all the football matches in the UK start an hour later than they did just yesterday.

That actually gave me an extra hour before I settled down in front of a warm TV and watched a bit of the good stuff. But today does seem to have flown by. The beagle was thankful to have avoided a bath due to some unexpected, but very welcome, springtime rain.

Last night’s fundraising auction at Scouts was incredibly successful, but also a lot of hard work, and though I slept in a bit this morning, I’m still going to go for an early night tonight. Because that extra hour in the UK means that all the midweek games are going to start at 10pm and finish at about midnight. And I will miss my much-needed beauty sleep.

But right now, the second half of Arsenal and hopefully doomed Forest.

Punch

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It’ a beautiful sunny afternoon, and we’re off to a school function shortly, which leaves me very little time to blog today. So let’s lob in a handbrake turn and add a gritty image from last week’s trip over to Robben Island as a quota photo for today’s post.

This was one of the original punching bags from the communal cells in the prison. Boxing was one of the sports practiced widely by the prisoners, with the other being – infamously – football.

Steps

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This week, I’m guess that I’ll be doing upwards of 20,000 steps each day while I’m away. That’s a lot, but I do more than 10,000 steps just about every day anyway.
I did do 10,000 steps every single day for almost three years until I got Covid.

I stopped for a bit then.

But while the 10,000 figure was allegedly a thumbsuck from a Japanese fitness company, there’s new research out which seems to suggest – and hold onto your hats here – that more steps each day… makes you fitter.

I was also amazed.

They found taking at least 8,200 steps a day was associated with lower risk of obesity, depression, sleep apnea, and acid reflux, and the benefits increased with each 1,000 additional steps.
Walking was also linked to lower risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure

But if you thought that was incredible, there’s another surprise for you when you get to the next line:

Walking at a faster pace may increase the benefits even more

Wow. Just wait until they hear about running.

Getting there

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It does finally feel as if I am back to where I was pre-Covid. It’s taken a lot of patience and a lot of hard work – and it will continue to take a lot of hard work – but I do feel like I’ve crossed some sort of threshold.

My last three runs have all been inside 6:00/km, which is really as fast as I’ve ever managed to go anyway, and I’m not very close to dying like I was when I did that back in April. In hindsight, that was a fairly foolish effort, and I’m only half proud of what I achieved.

Run-wise, at least. Staying alive was a quite a coup.

Football is fun again, rather than impossible, and my legs ache because I’m exercising, rather than because they’re full of interleukins.

It’s only taken 15 months.

On the way to footy

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Indeed, and slightly early, due to a drop off along the way, and a weird lack of inbound traffic. So I pulled over here, and took a (phone) photo:

Beautiful.

There can’t be too many football pitches with this just across the road.

Still, there’s something to be said for an Arnold Laver timber yard right next door to the main car park, too.