Big fall

A great weekend with friends in Agulhas. Braais, games, laughs, drinks, beaches, walks… all of the good stuff. The only thing that marred it slightly was me taking a heavy tumble on Struisbaai beach during a last-batsman rush to save the game of beach cricket.

You wouldn’t think that sand could be so hard.

I now have a large knee, a bruised shin and my dysesthesia is back with a vengeance. Walking is fine, running is a non-starter and I’m feeling rather foolish and more than a bit pissed off about the whole thing. And so we concentrate on the positives, which are plentiful and include:

1. The fact that I made the run, before retiring hurt and successfully avoiding vomiting in the Indian Ocean. Much like the contents of my stomach, I was not out.
2. The fact that otherwise, the weekend was a proper jol, and
3. The fact that we got back to Cape Town just in time to see this guy…

… brilliantly slot home the winner against Bournemouth.

I’ve always been a fan of his.

The Blades up to fifth, looking properly good, and the press now talking of Champions League footy at Bramall Lane next season. And for once, they don’t mean just on the big TV sets in the Blades’ Social Club.

I’m hoping that we’ve just about done enough to avoid relegation at this point and while the actual Premier League title seems just out of reach, I’d be very happy with any finish in the top half of the table. I’m not sure we have the depth of squad to take on the rest of Europe right now.

Still, that league position is fantastic (and actually, totally justified) and the attention is flattering (and actually, totally justified).

Missed ann-knee-versary

I missed this.

It was a year ago last Saturday that I had my knee op that didn’t go very well. Actually, I say “didn’t go very well”, but it was a wholesale disaster and has caused no end of problems since.

Still, all’s well that ends well and I’m now fitter, happier, more productive than for a long time. The knee, rather than being a pain when I exercise, tends to get more grumpy when I don’t. Which is no problem, because it encourages me to exercise, and that’s no bad thing.

In fact, the only issues I’ve had this morning have been entirely unrelated to my knee. A lot of people would consider their garage door literally falling off its tracks and knocking a can of blue spray paint onto the garage floor so hard that it exploded (the can of blue spray paint, not the garage floor) to be a bad thing, but compared with where we were this time last year, I’m pretty happy right now.

All about perspective. Right?

Positive news

Last night’s Premier League matches were amazing:

(I’m only putting this here because I will wonder what was so good about them if I look back at this post in a few years. Now, I’ll remember.)

But that wasn’t the best football stuff that happened last night. I also played football yesterday evening, and despite running around like a mad thing for several (or more) minutes, I appear to have come out of the whole experience without any immediate serious damage. Even my knee, which has a habit of being a bit grumpy after such exertions, seems to be cool with the whole thing.

And we won.

It’s actually almost the ann-knee-versary (sorry, not sorry) of the op which went wrong last year, but regular readers may recall that obviously, I only had the op because my knee was causing me so many problems. All of that meant that I hadn’t played much competitive footy since Autumn (that’s Autumn down here for all you Northern hemisphereans) a couple of years ago.

It also means that our resident statistician [nerd emoji] was able to work out that this was my first win since 21st March 2017. Yikes. Although, given that I literally played one game last year, and very few the year after March in the year before, this stat isn’t actually as bad as it seems. Really.

Anyway: next week, I aim to make it my first win since this week.

Positive news from the Physio

The last time I went to see the physiotherapist was probably sometime in May was this morning.

The time before that was probably sometime in May. That time, I was still using a crutch to get around, whereas this morning, I positively bounced into his treatment room, fitter, happier, more productive, many kilograms lighter, and actually feeling pretty good.

I left 45 minutes later, wondering where I could find my crutch again.

OK, it wasn’t actually that bad. But I got worked HARD.

The idea of seeing him today was to work on some more knee strengthening exercises. My leg is much, much stronger than just a few months ago, but all the work I have been doing on it has involved medial, rather than lateral movement. That’s great for road running and cycling, but not so good if you want your leg not to snap when you try a trail run or go and play footy. And so those are the exercises I need to do, but I needed to make sure that it was sensible to do them, and so professional guidance was required.

Now I have a month to work on these new exercises, before in the first week of January (all being well), we move on to “explosive jumping”.

And with that sort of reward dangling like a carrot in front of me, I’m 100% committed to kicking some knee ass. However that works.

Tonight though, a brandy and a couple of anti-inflammatories. Baby steps.

World’s Strongest Man broken by 15 year old girl

News in from Gaz Coombes, former frontman of Oxford trio Supergrass, and now artist in his own right. You may remember him from such posts as Supergrassed.

The video that featured in that post was Walk The Walk – something that Gaz certainly won’t be doing for the foreseeable future.

Ugh. Knees, eh?

Nice to see that the staff at my old stomping* ground, Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, were able to sort him out.

Gaz’s tour, ironically promoting his album World’s Strongest Man**, has obviously been badly affected:

Dates in Utrecht, Lille, Spain and Italy have been cancelled. UK dates are rescheduled to May.

Fortunately, since there were no concerts scheduled for South Africa, life here goes on as normal.

 

 

* something else he can’t do right now

** “the biggest misnomer since Pussy Galore”