It's been some time since my last post during which time spring has sprung and the daylight in the evening has brought forth increased opportunity for guilt at not training more. The running is going OK but I must avoid the temptation to rack up the mileage past experience has taught me that this the fastest way to an inflamed achilles.
The bike training is also OK and I have now managed to get up to British Camp (twice) the hard way - up a particularly steep hill at Little Malvern so I reckon I must be improving.
The same cannot be said of the swimming. I recently suffered the acute embarrassment of being asked to leave the serious lane and join the duffers lane with all the flowery swim hats and bobbing breaststrokers. Try as I might the technique is still not there and, therefore, nor is the speed. No amount of frantic windmill arms gets the speed and as for kicking; well that's just a senseless waste of energy particularly with a bike and run to come.
However, the shame of being too slow set me thinking of other examples where the veneer of sport-for-all cracks under the strain of sporting ineptitude.
In my more youthful days I was tempted to join a local tennis club by the promise of friendly club nights of social tennis. No matter what the standard, the claim was that club nights would be for all abilities for a friendly game of tennis. Of course the reality didn't match the rhetoric. Those of a more limited ability soon found that they were "engineered" out of games involving those who preferred not to tailor their game in the interest of a social game. After a few weeks the friendly welcome reduced to an embarrassed nod and frantic attempts to arrange matches within their elite clique usually accompanied with pseudo-helpful comments like "we'll try and match you with similar ability people as you'll enjoy it more" or similar condescending clap trap.
Later in a rehearsal for a mid-life crisis yet to come, I took up golf. If ever there was a schizophrenic sport it is golf. On the one hand it has a built-in ability levelling system in the form of the handicap. This should allow crap golfers to play alongside better golfers. But crap golfers take more shots, endanger more players on adjacent holes, loose more balls and, this is the real killer, take longer to play. Nothing but nothing causes competent golfers to hurrumph and grumble more that slow play. While Tiger Woods and his chums can happily trot round 18 holes in 4 and a half hours, such a time for your newbie high handicapper will bring howls of protest from club mid-handicappers who think you should be charging round in 3-3.5 hours. As with my tennis experience, this ability elitism is rife and is a massive disincentive.
So now we have to add swimming to the world of ability snobbery. A great fitness activity for all, swimming cannot be allowed to descend to these levels. We can' t all be Michael Phelps. Whatever next, rambling?
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