Japan 2019 - Day 4

After a bright, sunny day yesterday, it ended with snow for most of the night. It snowed on us walking to dinner all the way through dinner and all the way back from dinner. That’s not a bad thing when you’re planning on skiing the next day.

Sure enough we woke to masses of fresh snow which helped ensure that everyone was up and ready for breakfast ahead of a day on the slopes. We even managed to get everyone outside before the bored boys ended up buried in snow again. Though I suspect it was a close thing.

To get to the ski area we have to travel about 100m down the road, cross over and we’re there. Then we have to ski down before catching a lift either back up to the side of the mountain we’re on or up the mountain on the other side of the valley. All this has been twice successfully navigated though it must be said that this morning with a good 20cm of snow having fallen over night there was a bit more powder about the place.

I managed to make it to the lift, up the lift off the lift and to the start of the first run without any issues. I then made it all of 10 metres of actual skiing before I managed to have my first fall of the trip. Turned sideways in the powder and simply went over. At least when it soft and fluffy it doesn’t hurt, especially at low speeds. Much better than my calf tear at Kicking Horse all those years ago.

My next fall was a little more embarrassing. I caught at end in line for the lift and down I went while everyone waited behind me. Always a good look.

My best fall of the day however was when I decided to cut down a little drop-off between some trees along a path that I’d taken the day before. Yesterday, it was all smoothed out and easy. No-one had been down it this morning and with all the powder I was expecting I wouldn’t be going as fast. If anything I was concerned I wouldn’t have enough momentum to get through to the actual run at the bottom. What I discovered though was that the top five metres wasn’t actually powder, but had a nice crust of ice on it. Instead of being slowed, I zipped down and accelerated. Until I hit the actual powder of course. That’s when I went all ends up. When you’re skis are buried in powder they can be quite heavy to lift up. What I discovered when I attempted to lift my legs was that one was much easier than the other because it had no ski attached. I unclipped the one that was and lay it safely aside where I could reach it and then started looking for the other. Well, after digging around in the snow for what seemed like forever, I was starting to get concerned. I dug, I poked with my poles, dragged the poles all without success. I looked around to see if there was help nearby only to see absolutely no-one. Taking a calming breath and not panicking at all, I started digging back up where I’d first come unstuck … and found my ski! That just left me working my way out of the powder and oh so slowly back to where I could join the family. All of this and no video or photos to show for it!

The next period of skiing was mainly focussed on Thomas and Michael doing some jumps with Michael wanting to land a 180 off one of them. Thomas was going for more air and attempting to cross his skis (excuse my ignorance, but it’s been too long since the last Olympics to remember what the trick is called). There were many stacks and thanks to Thomas’s Gopro there’s some good footage of some of them floating around. I just need to be able to get some of it.  And for the record, Michael did land a 180 and there’s video evidence to back it up. Thomas also successfully landed his jump.

My own personal quest was for speed while the snow was still friendly and hadn't been cut up too badly. Can't say I was disappointed with 91.4km/hr according to the Garmin!

With that jump landed and time marching on, attention turned to lunch. Caroline and Emily weren’t sure whether they’d be skiing after lunch and at the point in time that Emily discovered that she’d acquired built in air condition in her ski pants via the crotch area, she was pretty adamant that she wouldn’t be returning to the slopes. She and Caroline did however stop for photos with the Pikachu that had been carved near the sled course (though my camera battery died early in the day and I don't have as many photos today).

We went in search of and found the restaurant we’d intended to eat at yesterday with Michael and Sam having gone ahead while the rest of us travelled via our lodge. When we caught up with them they informed us that they were fully booked, but that we’d be allowed to squeeze in if a) we didn’t tell anyone and b) we all had the one meal that they were prepared to offer (which wasn’t the one that Michael had even picked the place out for. We opted to proceed and took our seats and were presented with menus which we assumed was so we could order drinks (otherwise it was clearly just to tease us with what we weren’t going to be allowed to order!) When we were actually asked what we’d like, we were delighted to find that we had choice of the full menu as the one item deal was if we’d been in there earlier when they were catering for a large group that was staying there. Talk about a win. That sent us scrambling back through the menu to order our lunch, which was delicious.

The afternoon’s skiing was slowly getting bumpier as the fresh snow was carved up. Michael and Thomas opted for exploring terrain well beyond my willingness to tackle – steep drops between trees into deep powder! 

Sam and I settled for the sensible route down the nice wide, groomed run instead. We all had plenty of fun.

All in all it was a great day’s skiing. Emily definitely did not crash, it did not end up on video and she is definitely happy for it to be shared with everyone! Not.

I'll leave this off today with a pic from yesterday when were all at the top of the mountain in the sunshine!

Michael’s dumpling count: 50

Japan 2019 - Day 3

Today was all about the skiing. The last time I’d checked the forecast it had said to expect snow, so I was expecting overcast and tricky conditions. So I was pretty damned happy when I looked out the window and saw the sun shining on a gorgeous winter tableau.

Everyone seemed to have had a decent night’s sleep and so rousing them and getting them moving wasn’t too much of an issue and we were organised and ready to hit the slopes nice and early.

When the kids were young and learning to ski, one of the less enviable tasks was helping everyone with their ski boots. I’d have thought that by now that it wouldn’t be an issue anymore, but I still find myself on my knees smashing the occasional boot clips closed and age and inflexibility certainly isn’t helping with reaching my own!

There’s six of us and the space in the ski locker is pretty small so there’s simply no way for all of us to get through the process at the same time. That meant that the boys were out the door and left to their own devices in the snow. Not sure if you’d recall or not, but this was the result last time I did that two years ago: 

We emerged to the sounds of adult children regressing to their childhood and bounding in the snow. They extracted themselves and we were about to head down to the lift when Michael wondered aloud if he’d left his phone in his room or lost it in the snow. Some frantic digging ensued but no phone was found, so he went back in to check the room, which of course required de-booting and the like. He emerged from the lodge to declare that his phone wasn’t there which meant it had to be in the snow. Commence more frantic digging and searching. Of course, this wasn’t just, by the side of the road snow, this was ‘I jumped off the path into the virgin, untouched, several feet deep by the tree snow’. Miraculously the phone was both found and still works. Rather than get angry I just thanked him for giving me something to write about.

Like I did on our last trip, I’ve been telling myself in the lead up that I need to get a couple of easy runs in before we get too adventurous so that I can find my ski legs, check the skills etc and make sure that I’m still capable before staring down the face of anything too stupid. That was the plan, but with the weather being as spectacular as it was, Caroline announced a desire (that I shared) to get to the top of the mountain early so that we could get photos before any weather closed in. That required us to navigate a couple of chair lifts as we explored our way to the top.

That’s where we met the chair that I like to call Bum’s in the sky. I’ve not ever really seen a single person chair lift before and certainly haven’t thought about how such a thing would look, but when we lined up for this one, it wasn’t what I expected.

That's all it was ... a single seat dangling off a pole, no back support, nothing!

Now considering that Emily isn’t all that keen on heights, the fact that she sat on this to the top of the mountain was quite astounding. The announcement that she was NEVER EVER going on it again wasn’t so unexpected. At least the views were worth it.

The next trick of course was getting back down the mountain. I’d seen a run that didn’t look too bad on our way up (other than being quite steep) and didn’t see many alternatives that didn’t involve black diamonds (as this one was). So I briefly checked with everyone before head over the side. Well, maybe I should have looked a bit harder for another way down. It wasn’t the worst run I’ve ever been on, but it was steep, there was powder and we really hadn’t skied for two years. Not to mention that we were supposed to be trying to preserve Caroline’s knee. We all navigated it and survived, it just wasn’t quite the enjoyment level that I (or Caroline) were looking for.

Given we haven’t skied for two years, the legs were getting weary pretty early in the day so we decided to seek out some lunch. Michael had a restaurant in mind that he wanted to go to so we worked out the best way of getting there without hiking for miles in our ski-boots. We found what we thought was the restaurant (it was only labelled in Japanese) and went inside. By the time that we had the menus and were considering ordering, we’d realised that we weren’t in the right place, but decided to just go with it. It turns out the restaurant speciality is okonomiyaki (In the Hiroshima style), but better than just getting to eat it, we were able to sit and watch it be prepared. It was the highlight of the day!

Fed and somewhat rested, we hit the slopes again. I avoided any crazy jumps (that is anything over about 5cm) and remembered that steep descent from first thing in the morning and so kept pretty conservative (I only maxed my speed at 82kph) for the most part. Michael, Sam and Thomas had all explored through the trees a bit (which is something Madarao is known for) and Emily decided that she too would like to give it a go. After she’d done it once the pressure came on. You can do it Dad, it’s not that bad, you’d be fine in there. Now I’ve never really liked mixing trees and skiing unless its off to the side of a gentle green run and I can see what I’m getting myself in for. This run did not fit that category. But I got sucked in. I entered the trees, fumbled around a bit and then found that where the kids were going dropped away steeply in a fashion that meant I couldn’t see where it was going.

I bailed. I skied along the top and back out to the safety of the groomed run. Sanity prevailed and I finished the day in once piece.

I have to send a nod the way of one guy I saw on the slopes today. He was snowboarding and had a shield-sized stuffed tortoise shell strapped to his bum and two smaller versions, one for each knee. He looked more than competent, but maybe he was trying new tricks or something. It was awesome regardless. Unfortunately I didn’t nab a photo.

Michael’s Dumpling count: 43

Japan 2019 - Day 2

Today wasn’t exactly a planned day. By the time we rolled into Nagano last night it was about 10:30. Fortunately we’d booked a hotel that was within walking distance of the train station (like 200m tops). We wrangled the luggage and a well-tired group into the hotel and tried to work out what the following day would look like. We needed to end up at our destination, Madarao, but the timing of transport and the need for sleep were competing to determine whether there was likely to be any skiing when we arrived.

With some of our ski gear approaching a venerable age, we needed to procure some goggles and figured we’d have a better chance at finding the balance between price and quality in Nagano than we would on the mountain, especially as we hadn’t been up here before to know what was available. That meant delaying departure until the shop opened at least. Then there was the question of Shinkansen versus local train (17 mins vs 50ish mins). None of us were capable of planning out such things after the epic day of travel we’d had. So we slept on it.

This morning we scrambled the troops, left the luggage at the hotel and ventured out in search of breakfast and goggles.

Train stations tend to be well populated with take-away food options around here, so we headed in the direction of the station (especially given it was so close) and wandered into the Mi Do Ri that is attached to it and found a bakery. After all but inhaling the food (though I passed on the pizza with broccoli) we found the local sports store, bought some goggles* (yeah, of course it was as simple as that – not).

Next to the sports shop and conveniently located for a little peek was a Don Quijote (a discount store) where you can buy just about anything: Food, electronics, makeup, luggage, toys, clothes, funny costumes … the list goes on. We weren’t really looking for anything, but sometimes its just nice to appreciate the fact that if you’re caught short, there’ somewhere to buy your next fix of purple sweet potato flavoured kit kat, or if you’re thirst, a handy four litre bottle of whiskey!

Or a t-shirt with a meaningful message:

And when they say funny costumes, they’re not kidding, especially if you head into the tiny back corner on the very top level, the one that you have to pass through a curtain with a big 18 on in order to access it (as opposed to the general public merchandise pictured above). That’s where things can get very interesting. As tempted as I am to go into details, I won’t, that might spoil the surprise for you if you ever happen to head into one. I won’t even mention that a member of our party may or may not have, out of a sense of burning curiosity bought a souvenir. I certainly wouldn’t be so crass as to post a photo of it!

I didn’t even getting a pillow upon which to rest my weary head as we travelled around.

With the fun of the Don out of the way, we headed into the train station, determined that the slow ride to Madarao was going to work best for us (as it gave us a chance to actually buy some lunch to eat on the way). So we whisked back through the food section of the Mi Do Ri, grabbing some sushi, some pork cutlets and for Michael, mandatory gyoza. Having successfully managed that we boarded the train and headed up into the mountains.

There was no snow on the ground in Nagano this time (there was the last two times we were here this time of year) but fortunately as we ascended any concern about snow volumes was quickly left behind. The view became whiter as we climbed the mountain and it snowed pretty steadily all day.

We checked into our accommodation, waiting patiently for the group of about 20 checking out to actually leave so that there’d be room for us to get our luggage in. Then we thought we should do something about hiring skis for the boys. One of the guys that we’d had to wait patiently for had been kind enough to hand over two lift passes and so Caroline and Emily headed out for a quick ski while I navigated the ski hire with the boys. It turned out to be pretty easy given that Madarao appears heavily populated with Aussies.

We were booked into a place two doors down for dinner and once again it turned out to be a quite small little restaurant, but it did a roaring trade. Dinner was a mixture of western and local cuisine with Sam and I opting for burgers, Emily for chips and karaage and Caroline and Thomas for soba and sashimi. Michael had dumplings. Michael’s penchant for dumplings led to me challenging him over dinner to keep a holiday dumpling count. I’ll keep you updated.

Now we’re back at the hotel, ready for an early night so that we can hit the slopes tomorrow. Here’s hoping for a bit of sun and a lot of fun.

   

*The purchase of goggles involves

a) us spending money and

b) kids (adult or otherwise) that have opinions about the sort of quality that they’re going to get and the actual practicality and functionality of said goggles in the expected snow conditions.

 Needless to say that finding something that met

a) the tight arse criteria of the parents and

b) the needs, wants and desires of offspring

is not a task for the faint of heart and involves much haggling, whining, demanding and occasionally begging. Being such old hands at this we the parents clearly come out of top of such transactions. Hah!

Michael's dumpling count: 40

Japan 2019 - Day 1

So starts another Temby adventure to Japan. We’ve been counting the days down for some time now and it almost seems surreal that we reached the point where we actually get to start our holiday.

The first joy of any holiday is the packing exercise. Will there be too much? Will there be any room for souvenirs? Will there be any measurable level of sanity left by the time we actually get to the airport?

The packing wasn’t as bad as it could have been, other than the fact that kids tend to do these things at the last minute, which means when it comes to things like ski-pants, trying them on 24 hours (or less) before you leave really doesn’t leave much room for alternate plans if you find out you’ve put weight on since you skied two years ago! Fortunately we have enough accumulated stuff that we will at least have the basics covered, though we’ve hit a point where there might be some goggles required.

Despite efforts to have everything sorted on the weekend to reduce the stress of the night before departure, kids buggering off to see friends and attend parties and the like didn’t see us quite get to where we wanted to. Given we had a 6am departure out of Adelaide, midnight wasn’t quite the right time to be getting to bed ahead of 11.5 hours of flying and some 2.5 hours of trains along with all the associated walking and lugging around of said luggage!

We woke early, with everything ready to go, with my Dad doing us the heroic favour of clambering out of bed early enough to get us to the airport on time. Given the scale and logistics of a Temby’s on Tour vacation a maxi-taxi was ordered to help with transport.

Sam altered us at 4am to the fact that we’d received notifications from Qantas that check-in would close in 25 minutes which spiked my stress levels a bit when having input all the relevant information I was advised that there was a problem, checking us in and to try again later. After attempting the process about six times I was really starting to worry that we’d be pushing the limits to be at the airport in time to deal with check-in if the system didn’t support us. Fortunately about 10 mins before we were scheduled to leave home it was sorted out and we had boarding passes! Whew.

10 minutes after that I was starting to worry about why I’d received no notifications for the cab I’d booked for 4:45 pickup. I’d been a little distracted from the matter because of the whole check-in thing, but quickly shifted focus to find out at 4:42am that I’d booked the cab to arrive at 4:45pm. Oh crap! Now getting a taxi would likely have been achievable but getting a maxi taxi at that time within 10 minutes … start to push the proverbial up hill I’m afraid. I was starting to formulate plans to abandon our car in the IKEA car-park and leaning on my Dad to collect it later when Sam suggested that one of his friends that lives nearby might be awake. Turns out he was and I have to send out a massive vote of thanks to Ned for scrambling to ours and helping to get us to the airport with just enough time to swing through the Qantas lounge.

The next little hiccup occurred when I boarded the plane and went through the process of grabbing my ‘flight essentials’. The glasses that I usually have with me were nowhere to be seen. Not what one needs ahead of a couple of weeks overseas. Fortunately I had a back up pair stashed in my hand luggage – not something I’ve necessarily done before. Chalk that up for a minor win.

One of the joys of having flown so much over the last couple of years is the benefit of airline status, which in this case means I’m eligible to get into the International First Class lounge in Melbourne, along with a guest and any kids under the age of 18. By the time we got that far through the process with a short stop-over between flights, we were only left with about 15 minutes. I thought that might have let me squeeze the adult kids in given the short time frame, but sadly they claimed they were really busy and so couldn’t do so. Thomas was the one that felt most ripped off as it would have been the first time he’d been allowed in there since turning 18. Not that access to the bar would really have been needed at 0830.

The trip from Melbourne to Narita was uneventful which is always good. With Thomas having missed out on the lounge, I thought I’d remind him that the beauty of international flying with a full service airline was the free bar. I was mildly amused when he wasn’t quite sure of the protocol for getting drink, but rest assured, it was sorted quickly and he took sufficient advantage without being silly.

We landed in Narita and had navigated most of what we needed to in the airport and were just starting to head toward the train for our next leg when a young airport attended came up to us looking a bit concerned. Which turned out to be a good thing because we had apparently walked off with someone else’s suitcase from the baggage claim. It was exactly the same as ours and in our haste, no one had thought to confirm that the tags indicated that it was actually ours. We dodged another bullet there!

We sorted out train passes and found our train and made our way into Tokyo where we had about half an hour to dip the taste buds back into some of the local cuisine, grabbing some bits and pieces to eat on the way to Nagano, our final destination for the day.

We all found something we liked and were immediately reminded of just how much waste is generated from a small shopping venture in Japan. Let’s just say that there’s not a reusable bag in sight and single-use plastic is off the scale.

Anyway, we’re only 6 minutes from Nagano now, so time to rouse the troops, ready the luggage train and check in for some sleep before we head up to the snow tomorrow!

Run! No ... STOP!

So if you happen to have been friends with me on Facebook or followed me on Instagram you’ll be aware that over the last couple of years in particular I’ve been doing a fair bit of running. I’ve always run a bit here and there and when I started travelling a lot for work a couple of years ago, started running more consistently to offset the travel food if nothing else.

I found that it helped with balancing out the stress of work as well, breaking up the day so that it was more than go to work, go to hotel, eat, sleep, repeat. It meant that I saw more of the places that I was visiting too.  I never really had much of an aim other than where I would get involved in the Annual City to Bay fun run in Adelaide. At 12kms long, I’d always wanted to achieve a sub 60 minute time. 2011 was my first attempt after returning from Canada and I ran it in 63:37 minutes. The following year I bought my first Garmin device so that I could track speed and train and take it a bit more seriously. I ran 12kms in pretty much exactly 60 minutes, but the total distance I’d run was 12.2km because let’s face it, there’s lots of dodging around in a big event and the distances aren’t quite that precise. That left my time as 60:46. I’d missed it by 46 seconds.2013 proved to be the year though. I finally nailed the goal it! 59:15! 45 seconds to spare.

In 2014 Thomas ran with me and I wasn’t prepared (neither was he) so we only did the 6km version of the event. The next two years coincided with soccer cup finals that I was involved in and so I didn’t run. In 2017 I had my narrowest ever miss on the 60 mins. Despite the fact that I’d been doing a lot of running, I finished in a time of 60:04 minutes, missing by just 4 seconds the chance to have a sub 60 bib for the following year.

Something else happened in the last couple of years though. I ran further. In 2016 during a trip to Perth I ran 15km one night just to run further than I ever had before. Then later that year in Melbourne on a night of possible insanity I ran my first ever half marathon distance. That fed my desire to run that far during an actual event. In 2016 I did that in Adelaide during the Adelaide marathon festival. I wasn’t sure what time would be achievable and just went out and ran it, amazing myself when I turned in a time of 1:44:03 meaning I’d run sub 5 minute kilometres for the whole race!

In 2017 I backed that up and decided to run again, but injured myself playing soccer the day before the event. When I walked off the soccer field I didn’t think I’d be able to. After hosting the team and indulging in more red wine than I should have I decided to see how things went and totally expected to pull out after 2kms. Once I again I surpassed expectations and not only finished, but did so in a time of 1:49:31.

At the end of the 2017 soccer season I tore my hamstring off the bone and wondered if I’d even be able to run. I spent the summer in the gym building strength in the remaining muscles, working toward the goal of at least running and at best, actually managing to play soccer again.

So when the marathon festival rolled around again this year I decided to prove to myself once again that I could go the distance, that I’d built things back up to the point that I could do it. I ran into my physio a week before the event and announced excitedly that I’d signed up and was going to run it. I was expecting him to be excited for me and be pleased with being able to do it, but that wasn’t quite the reaction that I received. I’m pretty sure that although he didn’t outright say it, he thought it was too early for me to be trying the distance given I’d only run a single 15km distance all year. I ran it in 1:46:48, once again surpassing all my expectations!

This year’s City to Bay saw the introduction of the half marathon event for the first time and so I gave up chasing the sub 60 time and decided to be part of that event for the first time. I started with dreams of a PB, but in the end couldn’t find it in the back third of the run, but was very happy with a finish time of 1:46:23.

After that, I finished out the soccer season, destroyed a groin, retired from our competitive teams (I’ll write about that one day) and decided to just run.

As the year has worn on though I’ve struggled to maintain momentum. I’ve felt that my runs have been slowing down and I was starting to lose the will to push myself through to 10kms which had become my standard run length.

On top of that my feet were starting to give me hell. They’d been hurting all year after running and soccer and I’d put it down to bruising of the heel. But lately it was getting to the point that it was way more painful than it should have been just to stand up in the morning and my feet would ache if I sat for too long, resulting in me hobbling about like a senior citizen. But I’d set a goal for myself to run at least 1200kms this year and I was at 1100 at the end of November. I just needed to run 100kms more to achieve the goal. I gave it one more go, but the outcome wasn’t good. I was barely able to walk the following day.

I finally went to a doctor about it two weeks ago and was diagnosed with Planter Faciatis. I’ve been told not to run.

I’d been thinking for a while as my will to run longer waned and the pain increased, that at 48 years old, the days of cracking PBs were probably behind me. I have to say though that being told not to run wasn’t the way I wanted to give up on such things. I’d been thinking that perhaps in my 50^th year I’d run a full marathon now that I’m not committing to the competitive level of soccer I’ve been playing at. But now I’ve been told no running.

I’m in a new job and I’m travelling to new (and familiar) places where there’s some great spots for running and instead I’m reduced to a stroll. It’s a very strange frustration because let’s face it, running 10kms isn’t exactly enjoyable. It’s more a sense of achievement after the fact rather than enjoying the effort of getting there.

So now I walk and wait. Some day I’ll probably even run again, but until then, it might be time to pull out the bike and find some goggles!

Belatedly 18 and the end of school

Things have been a bit chaotic recently and despite meaning to sit down and write something, life has been in the way. But I have some time and so it’s worthy of spending a couple of those minutes putting a marker in the ground.

Thomas has turned 18. Not only that, he’s finished school as well. Thomas turning 18 filled me with a little more trepidation than his brothers, probably because he was so obviously keen for the event and the fact that it marked his entry into adulthood. And legal access to alcohol. Given the proximity of that event to the commencement of his final school exams. The planning for the 18^th party kicked of pretty early and certainly seemed to be attracting more attention than some of the school work.

The party went off without a hitch, a good time was had and no police were called and Thomas even remembers it. Mission accomplished.

Thomas had come along way in the last two years. It seems that since moving schools at the start of Year 10 he’s really come into his own and found himself and has a great group of friends. He’s continued with his refereeing and this year was named in the talent development squad which was a nice piece of recognition. At lease being able to drive himself to games has meant that our taxi duties have been significantly reduced. It’s put some good cash in his pocket, but also really helped him to mature as he deals with all the different personalities one encounters during a football season. You know that he’s embraced the role when he tells you how many red cards he’s issued not to mention coaches that he has ejected from games!

The passion for computer games remains while the juggling and card tricks have taken a back seat. There were times when I lamented the fact that I never seemed to be able to bust him studying no matter what surprise tactics I employed, but he assures me that the study really did happen and we just have to hope now that the evidence is borne out when the results come through.

Rather than doing schoolies he’s heading off to a rented shack with a group of friends from school and then eagerly awaiting his first Temby new years event where he will be legally allowed to partake of the grog without fear of repercussions from the parentals. We’ll have to see if he manages to make it to midnight or whether misplaced enthusiasm does him in early. Hopefully it will be the former.

So as we sit and wait for the results and Uni offers we look forward to Christmas, the New Year and a celebratory trip to Japan to indulge in some skiing. We’re extremely proud of Thomas and the young man that he’s becoming and wish him the very best for the next stage beyond school.

Fifteen

Every time I sit down to write one of these things, the temptation is to start with "it's hard to believe that this kid is this old." Probably because it's true.

Emily has today turned fifteen. It's a scary proposition to have your youngest entering the back end of high school. I've been conscious along the journey with the kids so far of not wishing life away. It's wonderful to celebrate the milestones as they get older and sometimes it's truly joyous to see them in the rear vision mirror. The temptation is of course to look forward and want to knock the next one off the list. As the youngest goes through her paces though I find myself wishing this less and less, because every time that she achieves one, it's the last time for Caroline and I as parents (Because there's no way I'm going back to start again!) I'm sure before too long we'll be watching them all start to move out of home and wondering what we used to do with our lives.

To Emily though. Emily has had a good time over the last 12 months.

She has done extremely well at school and it's always nice when she takes pride in her achievements. She may groan about the fact that she got stuck in the top maths class, but I think she is secretly (and justifiably) proud of the achievement.

I can't say that I know exactly what Emily might be looking at doing beyond school, but given she's in year ten she's far from an orphan in that regard. It's the first time that they've had elective subjects though I don't know that they gave any particular insight into where she might end up. She's talking about following in Michael and Sam's footsteps in terms of tackling IB in her last two years, so we'll have to see how that pans out and influences her future decisions. With so many options these days, I wonder if anyone get's it right straight out of the gate off high school.

One thing that has happened recently is that Emily has joined the choir. She's always sung around the house and enjoyed her music, but any suggestion of joining a choir or doing anything signing wise with the school to date has been met with a certain level of scorn (she's exceptional at that - you won't die wondering what Emily thinks on a topic!)  But this year apparently one of her teachers has suggested that she do so and she's actually joined. I'm looking forward to whatever opportunity eventually presents itself to hear her perform. It's certainly influenced some of the things she's been caught singing around the house compared to her usual fare.

Sports wise she has indulged in tennis, table tennis, netball and softball, making finals in both softball and tennis. The Softball fell short of the ultimate goal, but the tennis team plays in their grand final this coming weekend, so hopefully she gets that sweet taste of victory.

Emily remains enamoured with her fan fiction, continuing to both read it excessively and write her own which if anything makes buying a book for her a challenging prospect. I'll never complain that she's reading though.

All in all, Emily is developing into an intelligent, beautiful, strong-willed woman and I look forward to see the mark that she makes upon the world. I'm grateful that she's lucky enough to be entering into it at a time when we're making more and more progress towards equity so that she can hopefully achieve all that she dreams of.

Happy Birthday Em.

Hamstring Update

For those following along at home, or that are merely curious, I thought I’d provide a brief update on the hamstring situation.

So after running the city to bay and travelling a fair bit I finally managed to go to see a physio last week. His advice was that given I wasn’t attempting to play elite level sports that there was no point going in for surgery. He believes that with a regime of strengthening and stretching I should be back on the park for next year and probably even better off than I was this year.  We shall see.

I asked if I was allowed to run, because without that, well let’s just say that there would likely be a lot more of me come the start of next year. Thankfully he said yes, though I’m not allowed to run faster that 5:30kms. Fortunately with my current level of fitness following the poor run at the end of the year, that’s not really a problem after the first 2 or 3 kms.

For now, its stretching, rollers and weights with some dry needling thrown in for fun.

At least I’m not completely laid up though!

Well That's Torn It

For anyone that has had anything to do with my sporting endeavours over the last 25 years or so would be well accustomed to the high rate of failure that I’ve had in the hamstring department.  Over the last couple of years I seemed to have reached something of a compromise with the troublesome muscles where they might have niggled a little here and there, but in the main they’ve held up to what they’ve needed to without me missing too much, particularly in the way of soccer.

Retiring from touch football and recognizing that I was just too competitive not to try and chase down someone that I should certainly seemed to help with not getting up to a full sprint and losing a decent amount of weight helped too.

This year I’ve kept up the running despite the seemingly endless travel for work and managed to play most of the soccer season without incident. I only missed one game during the season (at least until recently) which gave me time to recover and then I played consistently again until there were about 5-6 weeks to go.

Something started nagging me through the back of the knee.  It wasn’t enough to stop me at first and certainly didn’t feel like any hamstring problem that I’d had before, so I played on. A couple of weeks ago it was bad enough that I didn’t finish a game (and trust me, there’s nothing I hate more than not finishing a game) but by the end of the night it was feeling substantially better than I’d hoped. I probably shouldn’t have played and taken the week off instead, but I was trying to do the right thing and help out given how short we were for players at the time. I managed to run a half marathon the following day at a reasonable time given I thought I was likely to pull out after about 2kms.

The week after that I again didn’t finish a soccer game, this time because of a slight problem with the other hamstring. I really didn’t expect to be playing the week after that effort. At least at that point we’d stitched up the league win!

Fast forward to the Friday though and Emily asked me to go and play tennis with her around at the local courts. I was feeling better than I’d expected to but let her know that I might not be as active as she’d like. As it turned out things went a hell of a lot better than I’d thought they would. By the end of the time that we spent there I was running down the ball, jumping and move more freely than I had in weeks. I decided that I’d be able to play the following day after all.

On the day of the game I was bouncing around with what seemed like a new-found lease on life, enjoying the warm up rather than tentatively working my way through it and eager for the game to begin.

I lasted about 5 minutes. The first time I went near the ball I had no problems, laying a lovely long ball over the top for the winger to run onto. Not long after that though, I tried to clear one across my body and something didn’t feel right at all. My leg was what I can only describe as ‘wobbly’. The weird thing was though that I could still run and it wasn’t an intense pain like I associated with a hamstring failure. I kept playing.

Moments later I stretched for a ball going past me and it caught the end of foot, twisting it laterally away from me. Good lord did that hurt. There was definitely no playing on from that one.  I came off and started with the ice.

That was two weeks ago. In the mean time I’ve tried not to do too much, only going for a couple of very light runs to test the limits a bit. It hasn’t felt like past tears and I’ve managed to run up to 5kms, though there’s been that constant threat that something could go wrong at any moment. It nagged me enough and was different enough that I decided that I needed to get someone to have a look at it and let me know what was going on. After all, this weekend is the city-bay run and I didn’t want to embark on a 12km run if there was something potentially structural wrong.

I managed to have it scanned today. I honestly expected them to come back and tell me that it was just soft tissue, that I’d be fine and I was worried about nothing. Instead they let me know that I’d pulled it off the bone.WTF?

Yep one of the three connections has pulled off the bone and retracted about 11cms. I guess ice and rest isn’t going to fix that little beauty.

I don’t know what my path forward is from here. The doctor said that the options are to basically carry on and just have the two bits that remain compensate (along with some scar tissue that will develop) or to have expensive surgery and a long recovery (like potentially 5 months).

I’m torn. Literally and figuratively. I need some more expert advice before I make a decision. And that is where I am at; a whole lot frustrated,  a little bit depressed and somewhat broken.

If it does turn out to be my last soccer game at least we won the league!