December 2014 walking stats

I'm not planning on going far in the next couple of hours, in fact staying awake will be enough of a challenge! I'm not big on seeing in the new year.

Anyway, as December ends, it's time to look at the numbers once again. The bear facts are as follows:

Steps taken: 398898
Approx. mileage: 199.45

With no missed days that makes it 122 consecutive days over 10k and a grand total since 1st September of 1592575 steps. My biggest day was 18971, and there were several days over 15k.

So I quite pleased with the effort but now I need to up the intensity of I going to get any fitness benefit. 10k walking will always help keep my heart healthy, but I'm interested in improving my fitness too. Interestingly I set out today to run/walk to the gym for a swim. I actually ran almost all the way. That's about 3 miles, 4.5Km. Knee problems have stopped me running for a long time, but today it just felt okay to run. I'm not planning any long distances, but if I can begin to run 5k on a regular basis that would be great.

The only problem is that the more running I do the fewer steps I take over a given distance. At the moment I estimate I take 20% fewer steps per Km when I run compared to walking. Consequently I'd have to run about 10Km a day to do the 10k steps I do walking 8Km. Given that I ran 4.5Km is 30 minutes, 10Km would take about 66 minutes, which is still faster than I reckon it takes to walk 8Km, but that's all academic given that I can't yet run 10Km!!

What I'll probably do is continue to do my favoured interval training and then do some additional walking.

Just playing with a couple of apps

It's not easy to run two activity apps at the same time, you have to start one and then the other, but I thought it might be quite interesting to run Runkeeper and Polar Beat side-by-side this morning.

There's not a lot to say really about the two programmes. The possible value of PB is that it links to my new Polar Loop, at least I think it does. It's all a bit confusing to be honest.

Anyway, with so many ways to capture all your activity data the only thing that is probably missing is the motivation to get up and do something!!

I've had my Loop for a few days now and it is quite insightful to see how the day pans out. Long periods of sitting, punctuated by little bits of movement with the occasional bursts of frantic activity as I hurl myself around a tennis court.



The one thing Runkeeper can't do is recognise interval training. I have to set it to running or walking. But that's not really a problem. Most of these apps will work with a range of bits of kit like heart rate monitors and stride measuring devices. I think you are either the kind of person who sets them up really accurately and keeps a detailed training dairy, or like me, you just use them to keep a rough track of what you're doing and to help with motivating you to get out and get moving.

A simple pedometer works just as well, but I do love a good gadget, and my Loop is a nice gadget!

Anyway I need to get ready to go and do a job before setting off for a drive to a tennis tournament. No problems reaching my daily activity goal today! I might blog a bit more about these apps later if I'm not busy trying to run round the block to earn some stars on Everymove!!

It's been a Great Year. Really?

I've seen this a lot on dear old Facebook in the last week or so. Obviously an app of some sort that sticks a photo on a jazzy background and declares a "great year" on your behalf. Now I'm just being cynical here, but honestly can you really say it's been a great year? Have you been saying how good it's been all the way through from January to December or have you been moaning about work, money, church, family or football? Do you really need some data mining app to tell you about your year?

Perhaps the real value lies in taking time to look back over the last twelve months and asking some deeper questions about what you've experienced and how you've responded. How are things that within your control going to change next year? Or are you just going to carry on the same way and wait until Facebook or some other social media platform tells you what kind of year you've had?

The New Year is typically the time we look to make resolutions and set out some sort of plan for the coming 12 months. I know there are things I set out to do this year that I simply haven't done. I know I need to change something in order to make those things happen this year, if in fact they are that significant.

If you're planning some resolutions, and you know all about making them "smart", the perhaps you might want to add a few that go beyond the typical lose weight, get fitter, learn to river dance kind of resolutions. Maybe you could add an element of enjoying life a bit more. I don't mean going out and socialising, but taking simple pleasures in life. Taking time to see stuff when you go out for a walk, learning to be thankful for the little things people do for you, asking yourself how you can help those around you be the best that they can be. Maybe these things are a little too subjective for some and a little altruistic for others, but I fear that we are being propelled towards a self-centredness all too often and social media doesn't help.

So if you've truly had a great year, congratulations. Enjoy it, look back and give thanks. As for me, well, it's been an okay year. Not great, not terrible. Bits have been good, some bits really good. Others have have been difficult and hard, days when all I've wanted to do is slip quietly into a corner and sleep through it. Next year could go either way, but it's my intention not to let it drift along.

I'd like to do my Level 2 tennis coaching qualification and get tennis better established in South Ockendon and Chafford. I do plan to get fitter, but that gets harder as I get older! I'd like my therapy business to increase too, but that is also proving tough to do. I have other goals to think about and plans to make. I need to review my journal, a more useful thing to do that look back at my social media postings. What I write in my book is often of the "not for publication" category. One of my goals for 2015 is to recover some discipline about keeping my journal.

As for this years goals, well I didn't make it to an 8.2 but I'm only 3 wins away from that, and I didn't drop under 14st, which was another goal I had in mind. Truthfully I didn't make that much of an effort to reach that one. As for any other goals, I can't remember what they were, I'll have to look them up!

Here comes 2015!

Polar Loop

Look what I got for Christmas!

Having done quite a bit of reading about different activity trackers, I decided the one I wanted to try was the Polar Loop. I looked at the Vivofit from Garmin, Fitbit and Jawbone and would love to be one of those folk who gets asked to test and compare them all without having to pay for them!

However, not being in that position, I had to choose. First of all I eliminated the Jawbone because it isn't suitable to be worn while swimming. The others, as far as can remember, were pretty much the same. I think the Vivofit didn't have a rechargeable battery, so that fell off the list too.

Anyway, I liked the look of the Polar and having made up my mind I pointed Anne in the right direction.

Setting it up has been fairly straightforward. Like most things these day, instructions are sparse, and it's a bit trial and error working out some functions. For example, the enclosed instructions point you to a website for the purposes of setting up the device, or so it seems. When you get there and register a new account it doesn't register the device. You do that at another website once you've downloaded the Sync software.

So far I've trimmed the strap using the enclosed guide. It's a bit loose, but I'll leave it as it for a while before any further trimming.

It will be interesting to see how the Loop performs against the simple pedometer I carry and the Runkeeper app I use from time to time. It will also be interesting to see if it actually motivates me to move more and if it helps me improve my fitness over the next few months.

There's quite a detailed website (Polar Flow) that tracks your data and keeps a diary for you.  So let's see what happens in the next few weeks/months!

Obstacle runs, boot camps and other madness!

I've just caught the end of a programme about the London "Survival of the fittest" obstacle run. It's a 10K run with a difference. Running through drains, streams, over hay bales, under wires and nets. Name an obstacle and it's probably in the race.

The best part about the whole things was the obvious fun everyone was having. Even the elite competitors had big smiles of their faces. Oh to be younger, more agile and considerably fitter! I suspect I might not even make it over the first hurdle in such a race. Interestingly, this sort of outdoor exercise is probably far better than working out in the confines of a gym. Every muscle group is put through its paces and worked hard. you are constantly climbing, crawling, pushing, lifting and moving in ways that are typical human movement patterns. No isolated exercises, just all-round movement requiring to shift your own body weight, nothing more, nothing less. It reminds me of the principle espoused by Mark Sissons in his Primal blueprint stuff about walking more, running sometimes, lifting heavy things from time to time or however he describes it. The idea is simple, exercise in a way that mimics what you do normally.

Of course, if normal is sitting on the sofa watching endless drivel on the TV, then things will need to change. But let's assume we all know that being a couch potato is not what we were designed to be.

I've just finished my 100-day challenge to move the equivalent of 5 miles a day every day. I'm currently on day 104 by the way! This is a good start if your goal is simply to be healthy, to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system. So now I'm beginning to think about what to do next. What to add to my routine. I'm thinking of planning my own variation of a boot camp. I've done some interval training before and I like being outside and doing primary body weight based exercise. I'm hoping I might be able to find a training partner. I think it will make some things easier, and it certainly helps with the motivation.

Watching the obstacle run made me wish I was able to do that sort of thing, but it also made me think about what I can do, or what I might be able to do. It's easy to wish away your fitness goals on the basis of what you can't do today. It's much harder to put a plan into place and get out there and do it.

So, over the next couple of weeks I'l work on a plan. I was going to say "perhaps I'll work on a plan", but that's a get out clause and is really just another way of saying I'd like to, but I know I won't.

100 days done!

Day 100 went smoothly with no injuries and no late night walks to make sure I passed my 10k daily target. A couple of hours tennis, a walk to the bank and back and an hour coaching took me over 13k steps for the day and over 1.3 million for the 100-day period.

Statistically, comparing this time round with the first time I did the challenge, I've taken more steps and covered more miles. The difference is only about 20 miles, which is about 350 yards a day, but there are other differences. The second time around hasn't had as big an impact on my health and fitness. I'm fitter now than I was 4 years ago, but I'm also 4 years older. That probably wouldn't be significant if I was 25, but at 57 I think it's been a factor. The older you get the harder it gets to maintain and improve fitness. The first time I did the challenge, it was part of a programme to get fitter and healthier. Naturally, because I was starting from a lower point, the improvements and changes were much more obvious.

Motivation is something else that has been different. This time around it was all about proving to myself that I could do this again and that I could motivate myself to keep going with only the simple target of hitting 100 days to aim at. Although I do feel better for it, I'm not sure I feel noticeably better or that if I'd measured my baseline fitness it would have improved over the 100 days.

Anyway, here are the comparative figures for the record.

2010: Steps-1,260,290, distance-630 miles

2014: Steps-1,301,291, distance-650 miles

So, what next? 10k steps a day is all about maintaing a healthy heart. It is not a fitness routine. If I want to improve my fitness I need to change one or more of the so-called FITT principles (Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type). I was thinking of looking to maintain my 10k a day habit until the New Year, but I do need to consider doing something else too because I want to be as fit as I can be. I'd like to do some circuit training, and I'd like a training partner with whom I could do that. Mainly to keep me motivated and accountable. Walking is fine, but somehow I find the more intense training harder to keep up on my own. Maybe I could start a fitness group, train with them and make a bit of money at the same time!

Foodbanks and iPhones

Two things caught my eye this morning via social media that have caused me to stop and reflect a little. One is the staggering rise in the number of people accessing foodbanks. Up from fewer than 50,000 in 2009/10 to almost 350,000 in 2012/13. The other was a quote that read: I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change... I'm changing the things I cannot accept.

It's easy to respond to the first statistic with cynicism and disbelief that a society such as our can actually have people in a position where food is almost a luxury. Something is wrong, fundamentally wrong if our affluent first world economy can allow that to happen. I'm not sure I have a realistic solution that will fix it. I'm not sure anyone does, but there has to be something that can be done if only government had the will and society the selflessness to do it.

Another simplistic response is to point to consumerism and wealth as the problem. Apple have just sold their four millionth iPhone, footballers get paid vast amounts of money and companies avoid tax while policy-makers chase down benefit fraud.

Whether we're cynical, disbelieving or playing the blame game, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to make change happen. I can't solve the Ebola epidemic, but I'm not sure I want to accept it either. I can't solve the poverty crisis in the UK either, but I'm not quite ready to throw up my hands in horror and say there's nothing I can do.

I actually find the statistic about foodbank usage challenging both politically and personally. Yes, it might be a depressing statistic, but we can't allow it to paralyse us in a way that makes us inactive, passive bystanders. I can buy extra food and donate it. I can help stock the bank and make a difference to someone's life right now. But I can also ask myself what it means on a bigger scale.

Next year here in the UK we have a General Election, a chance to reflect on what this government has done and what could be done in the next parliament. We can either allow ourselves to be sidetracked by arguments over Europe, immigration, the free movement of citizens, or we can force politicians to engage on topics like poverty and taxation. We can ask the tough questions about who is willing to ask the wealthy to bear more of the weight of the financial challenge of the economy than the poor. If the deficit is still high, should we really be looking to reduce the tax burden of the richest while forcing down the wages of the lowest paid? We can vote selfishly, considering only our best interests, or we can vote altruistically, putting the needs of others higher up the agenda. You may not see things is the same way I see them, you might disagree on every detail. That's fine. Just don't be passive. Give it some thought.

In church circles there a prayer that's been quoted a lot over years that goes like this: Lord, give me the patience to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

That may be a good way to approach spiritual change and growth, but it might not be the best way to look at the issues that face us in our society. Too often we've taken the "I can't change it" attitude beyond those areas to which it truly applies. In the end, if we don't change it, who will?

November Walking Stats

It's the end of another months and time to review the walking stats so far. I've now completed 91 days of my 100-day challenge. I'm beginning to wonder what to do on day 101. I'm thinking of keeping going to the end of the year if possible, but we shall see.

The numbers for November are:

Total steps: 390873

Approximate distance: 195 miles

Best day: 18374

Total steps from day 1: 1193677

Total distance from day 1: 597 miles

Countdown to 100

The walking challenge is going well enough and barring some major interruption I should make my 100 day target on December 9th. Do I feel fitter? No. Do I feel healthier? Again, the answer is no. Odd really, but there you have it. If feeling either fitter or healthier were the goals, then I'd be somewhat disappointed at this stage, but given that neither were of great importance when I set out, I'm not underwhelmed by the outcomes!

The goal was simply a matter of being active. I'm already pretty active, playing and coaching tennis, but I wanted to make sure I was being active everyday as far as that was possible. For me, tracking the level of that activity is a great motivator to keep going. Setting a goal like my 100 consecutive day challenge means that I can't start tomorrow or miss a few days and pick it up again. It means I can't get to 8 o'clock in the evening and think I'll do the missing steps the next day. It all helps to get me in the trainers and out the door.

I guess the obvious point is that you need not only a goal but also to know what will help you achieve that goal. If, having completed my challenge, I decide the next step is to improve my fitness, I will need to do two or three things. First, I'll need to measure my current fitness somehow. This can't be some subjective thing alone like how I feel after playing tennis or walking to the gym. It will need something a little more objective than that. There are some basic fitness tests you can do that measure things like strength, flexibility and endurance. Whatever you choose as your baseline criteria probably depends on what you're trying to improve.

From a tennis playing perspective for example, you might want to try and measure explosive power by using a jump test or endurance by doing short shuttle sprints. One test I used when I first did the 100-day walking challenge was to see if I could maintain 6.5Km/hour for an hour. I'm sure you get the point.

Once you've got your goal, and you've made it realistic and achievable (remember the SMART principle), you'll need a simple plan and a way of testing your change over the period of the plan. Simply repeating whatever you did to measure your starting point is the obvious way to do that. Thirdly, to get an improvement you will need to make a change to some aspect of what you are doing. The training principle is called progressive overload. In training terms you do this through changing one or more of the FITT principles. These stand for:

• Frequency
• Intensity
• Type
• Time

To get an improvement you need to vary one or more of these aspects of your routine. If you only ever do the same thing over and over again, you won't get any training benefit. You won't get fitter or healthier. Some are easier to do that others. If you walk 3 times a week you can increase the frequency by walking 5 times a week. If it's 30 minutes, you can increase the time by making it 40. Intensity goes up by walking faster or uphill, and changing type might mean running rather than walking.

My favourite approach is to use intervals. Intervals are simply alternating periods of high and low intensity activity. These can be evenly spaced, 2 minutes fast walking, 1 minute slower walking, or randomly spaced, 5-3-4-2-6-1. Each of the FITT principles are covered doing this type of training.

With the New Year fast approaching, don't just make some bland resolution to get a bit fitter or become a bit healthier, make a definite plan. You could even start right now and beat the New Year rush. Be the person who goes out on New Year's day for your mooring walk with a smug look on your face as you pass all the folk who've just started out!

You could even put in a request for an activity monitor for Christmas as I have done! That way you'l be able to track your activity everyday!!

Friday, Nov. 21st

So, I finally made it home yesterday from a day in Oxford on a CPD course about the shoulder. The course was helpful and it's always good to interact with other therapists. It can be a lonely life working on your own. What wasn't so good was the traffic. It's less than 80 miles from home to the venue but it took over 3 hours to get there and almost 3 to get home again. I had set off early in the morning in order to get to Oxford in time for a walk. But that didn't work out and I had to make up the steps in the evening once I'd driven all the way home. Still, at least I made my target and I'm still on course for my 100-day challenge. The moral of the story is don't drive to Oxford unless it's unavoidable! Either that, or drive to within 4 miles and walk the rest, it's quicker. What's worse is that Oxford made the M25 look like a free-flowing road!

The other nice thing about going on a practical CPD course is that you get a bit of free treatment! My shoulder feels a lot better today than it has for sometime. A reminder too that I need to book myself in for regular treatment.

I also discovered that you can get shoulder pain from gall bladder problems and even a damaged spleen. It's all to do with dermatomes and the way the brain processes information received via the nervous system. If that sounds weird then think about how a headache can sometimes make you see bright flashing lights. If the source of the headache has something to do with pressure on the optic nerve then the signal it sends to the brain will be interpreted as visual data because that's what comes from the optic nerve. So the pain of your headache is translated into visual images.

When you start the process of learning some form of manual therapy, you begin to discover all sorts of interesting and seemingly odd connections. The more I read, learn and practice, the more complicated it all becomes. Ida Rolf, well-known in bodywork circles, said something along the lines of "Where the pain, the problem isn't". In other words, where you feel the pain is often not the true source of the pain. Sometimes pain in the shoulder can come from a dysfunction in the ankle and the knock-on effects it has up through the postural positioning of the body. Fascinating!

I'm reading a couple of interesting books too at the moment. One on the importance of the gluteal muscles and the other on Anatomy Trains.

Time then to process the notes from yesterday and think about how I can use some of the techniques and tests in my own practice. There's way too much to remember in one go, but that's not unusual.

The cost of getting lean

Earlier this year I was invited to do a couple of seminars with some dance students at a local college. It was a busy day, but very interesting. One of the questions I asked the students was about their ideas of being fit and being healthy. The point I wanted to make was that the two are not synonymous. Some very fit people are actually quite unhealthy and some healthy people are very unfit.

When you start a fitness programme you need to know what your goals really are going to be. Is it about fitness or is it about health? Are you confusing getting fit with getting healthy? In the world of Personal Training you will sometimes hear a reference to the "mirror muscles". Big guns, six-pack abs, all the things you might see on the front cover of the latest men's fitness magazine.

Inside the magazine there's usually an article detailing an exercise and eating regimen that will transform your body from the flabby dough-like consistency it currently has into the chiselled and sculpted adonis that adorns the cover page. No doubt it will work for some readers, but many more will be left exhausted in a pool of sweat and seeing a rather less than finely tuned athlete staring back at them from the bathroom mirror.

The truth is that some people have a naturally lean and well-defined, muscular appearance. There's a technical term for this type of natural physique but most people just call them something Anglo-Saxon and uncomplimentary! For the rest of us we have to work with what we've got and settle for something less than perfect. You may be able to get leaner, but you won't have all those impressive muscles.

So what are the costs, the pros and cons of getting leaner or fitter or healthier? To reveal that six-pack (oh yes, you have one it's just that it might be hidden by a party-7) might actually require you to measure all your food, every meal of every day and to work out longer than you are able to sustain. In other words, it might just be too costly, both in terms of your ability to commit to the process and possibly even your overall health.

In an interesting article about the costs of different lifestyles, expressed in terms of body fat percentage, Ryan Andrews & Brian St. Pierre set out some interesting information. Personally I believe that body fat percentage is a far better measure that BMI, particularly if you are in any way athletic or playing sports regularly. If you're a 6'3" rugby forward weighing it at around 18.5 stone, then your BMI would say your obese even if your BF% is only 12.

So, as the weeks tick down to the New Year and you're getting ready to set yourself yet another lose weight/get fitter resolution, think about what you are truthfully trying to achieve, whether it's possible and what you will have to do in order to reach and maintain your goal. Me personally, I'd love to be leaner, fitter and faster, but I am also hopefully realistic about what I can commit to achieving. That doesn't mean I won't try and reach some goals that are tough, but I'm enough of a realist to settle for the possible rather than reach for the impossible.

The article mentioned above has a really interesting series of graphics that set out the benefits and trade-offs for a range of BF%'s. It's worth a read.

Passing the three-quarter mark

So, I've made it past day 75 of my walking challenge and one could almost say the end is in sight. But I'm not sure that's the best way to look at it! The thing is, if you only ever do a challenge in order to complete it, then isn't that only half a job, especially when it comes to health.

Here's my point: unless it produces a change in habit or establishes a new habit, it's only achieved part of the bigger goal. Take yesterday for example. I didn't feel much like going for a walk after I'd finessed coaching in the morning. It started to rain and the only thing that got me out of the house was knowing that it would mean mission my target. So the 100-day challenge did it's job of motivating me to hit the footpaths and pavements. But once I've reached the 100th day, what happens after that? Will I still put on the trainers and waterproofs, gloves and base layers? The answer to that question lies in whether I've formed a new habit or not.

I remember reading somewhere that it takes something like 3 months to form a new habit, but my experience is that a new habit lasts only until you break it. It's at that point that you discover how committed you are to your newly broken habit. Do you get up the next day and start again, or do you give up?

Not all habits are the same of course. Bad habits seem far easier to maintain than good ones! Establishing a good habit takes self-discipline. It's about making disciplined choices, and when you miss a day or make a poor choice, it's about getting back into the routine and not beating yourself up over it.

Even now, 77 days into my 100-day challenge I still have to drag myself out of the house some days. Once I get going it's not too bad, but there are days when even as I stride my way around my chosen route for the day that each step is a drudge. Some days I look at my pedometer and think , "Wow, I've already done 5000 steps," other days I look and think, "What? I'm only half way there!"

So even though I'm into the last 25 days (23 actually) I know how hard it is to stay motivated and to see it through and to move beyond the challenge into a new settled habit of daily exercise. After all, that's what the walking is about.

Next Delivery, but from where?

I ordered something the other day and according to the website, provided I ordered before 3:00pm, the items should be delivered the following day. It didn't happen, and I'm sure there's probably something somewhere in some small print to explain why that is, but maybe it's in the miles travelled already!

Here's a screenshot of the delivery company's tracking information:

Apparently the fastest way to deliver my goods has been to travel across Europe from Eindhoven to Brussels and then, once in the UK, to travel from Gatwick to Heathrow and back again!

So far my package has spent 15 hours going between two UK airports and 38 hours in transit from The Netherlands. So much for next day delivery then!

It's quite nice to know where the parcel is, but very frustrating to think that it gets sorted in two UK locations before it stands a chance of being sent to the local delivery office. I'm assuming it won't come straight to me from Gatwick, but will go through yet another sorting process, maybe even a couple of regional or local centres along the way.

Thank goodness I ordered it well before I needed it. And what's the betting I'll be out when they try to deliver it. Let's just hope the neighbours are home.

Oh, and by the way, at the top of the tracking page is the encouraging message:

Here’s the fastest way to check the status of your shipment. No need to call Customer Service – our online results give you real-time, detailed progress as your shipment speeds through the XXX network.

XXX in order to keep the company's name anonymous and possibly save me from getting into trouble!

I do like the idea that 38 hours is a definition of speeding through the network!

October stats

Just realised that I hadn't reset the time on my pedometer so it's clicked over tomorrow already. mind you it's 11:20pm and I'm not likely to do anymore walking today anyway! Which brings me nicely to my October stats.

I've had quite a busy final day of the month, what with 3 hours of tennis training and shopping in Tescos. Together that's made today the best day of the month with a total of over 18k steps. My lowest day was 10191. For the month I managed:

Total steps: 415496

Approx miles: 208

I've managed everyday for 61 days now and done 802804 steps since the start of September. That comes to an amazing 401 miles. No wonder my trainers are looking worn. I'm not sure how this compares with the first time I took the challenge, but it's probably fairly similar. Over the 100 days the figures were as follows:

Total steps: 1,260,290

Estimated distance: 630 miles

That puts me about 34000 steps ahead at the moment and would suggest that if I keep going at the same rate I'll do over 1.3M steps by day 100. We shall have to wait and see.

Walk, walk, walk, walk!

With only three days of October left I'm well on my way to completing my 100 day walking challenge. I've already done 58 days, so by the time I hit the mid-way point of November I'll be three quarters of the way through and maybe even past the 1 million step goal. I've had a couple of injuries in October that could have set me back, but they were fairly minor things and with a little careful rehab I managed to keep going.

It has to be said that four years on and without the incentive I had that time, It's a more difficult thing to keep going. By talking about it and blogging about it I feel somehow more accountable and therefore more committed to seeing it through. After two months it certainly doesn't feel like a habit yet, and everyday I have to motivate myself to get out and put one foot in front of the other. Some days are easy because I play tennis. Take Friday for example. This week I'll have 3 hours on court which should mean more than enough steps. But then there's today. apart from the sheer determination to do it, I have no real reason to get out the house and walk anywhere. I might take my book, walk to Lakeside and sit in a coffee shop to do some reading, but that's about it.

I find the best thing to do is to get out as early as I can and do at least 45 minutes. That usually takes me past 6k steps and I feel well on the way to achieving my daily goal. If you only think about do 10k at a time, it's a lot of steps and would typically take me 75 minutes to do. Not many people have 75 minutes a day to set aside simply to walk. But maybe two lots of 30 minutes and then the odd stroll to the shop or round the block can easily push you past the target. You'd be surprised how many steps it takes just to get to the post box and back!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you jut have to get out and do it. Stay determined, set realistic goals, push yourself ocassionally and make it a discipline not an option. So I'm going to get my trainers on, get my stuff together and head out.

Well, maybe in a little while....

Upping my game

Okay, so you know I'm pretty passionate about playing tennis. Actually I'm rather passionate about trying to improve too. It's nice to be able to have a friendly social game, but I want to be the best player I can be. So I have to practice and train.

And here's the rub. It's really difficult to find a regular partner who also wants to do that or one who is willing to help me do it. Practice has to be purposeful and it has to be good. Just hitting balls with someone who can't hit it back isn't much use! It isn't practice that makes perfect, it's perfect practice that makes perfect.

I actually like practicing. I like trying to ingrain the proper technique and develop a better, more consistent stroke. So it was quite interesting when I got invited to hit with a group of players who train in a different environment to the one I am used to. I was nervous, who wants to embarrass themselves by being the completely outclassed from the first ball?

I've had three weeks and it's too early to say what difference it has made. They certainly hit the ball harder and more accurately than I'm used to, but that really helps me build a rhythm and develop my consistency. It's hard work too. After two hours of relentless practice I'm pretty spent, but again I actually quite like that. Having to try and maintain a consistent stroke when you're that tired is another plus.

I know I'm never going to win a ranking tournament unless I get both lucky and a lot better, but I know I can improve. I've managed to get my rating down a point and with lots of effort and hard work I'm hopeful that I can begin to make it past the first round of a tournament or two next year.

I guess it's like everything else, if you want to be good at something you have to set yourself goals and do the hard work of practice.

The tricky question about church!

From time to time I get asked the question: How's your church going? It gets asked by quite a range of people from all parts of our work and social life. To me it remains a somewhat odd question. Understandable –I know what they mean–but odd all the same.

Those of us who know about these things know that the church isn't really an organisation or a gathering of like-minded people with a shared interest. It is community. So asking, "How's church?" is like asking, "How's London?" or "How's the village?" We are so conditioned to thing institutionally that it's difficult to figure out how to ask and what to ask, and that's okay because I really do understand what I'm being asked.

So how is the church? Well nationally it's pretty much as it's been for a long time. It works for those who understand it and who fill the buildings it owns or occupies, but it doesn't work that well for the rest. It still uses language in a way that separates rather than includes and it is too often perceived int rems of what it appears to stand against rather than the things for which it truly stands. Church continues to struggle with its identity and its place in God's mission. This came home to me again in recent conversation where once again I found myself asking the question: For what purpose does the church primarily exist?

If your answer to that question is primarily about worship, that will shape your understanding about what it first on the list of priorities and what is not just as answering the question by putting mission as the focus will do too.

I belong firmly to the camp that understands mission to be the prerogative of God, its in his nature, and he calls people to himself to share with him in his mission. This can only be truly achieved through relationship and any relationship with God will naturally involve worship, discipleship, obedience and all the other things that go along with that. But they are not the primary focus, the mission of God remans the main thing.

Over the last couple of years, as we've moved out of the legacy model of church life and deeper into the missional model, we've learnt a lot. We've learnt that discerning what God is doing in our community is far harder than planning a programme and executing it. We've learnt that no matter how we explain what we are doing, there are still a lot of people who think the end result will be gathering a group of people together on a Sunday morning to sing songs and listen to a talk. We've also learnt he truth behind the old saying that God moves in mysterious ways!

At the outset of our journey, (which for the sake of argument we'll stick at the time we left the legacy model, although it started well before that), we had hopes and dreams and ideas about what we did and didn't want it to become. We were no so arrogant as to believe that we had it all sorted and that we knew exclusively what God wanted us to do. In fact far from it.

There have been times when we would love to have started a small bible study group at home or in someone's house and to be able to tell stories of people coming to faith and something tangibly church-like to show for it. That would have made it easier to show people that we'd done what we set out to do, provided of course that that was what we actually set out to do in the first place. We did not!

What we have, 30 months down the line, are some emerging relationships and opportunities to connect with our community. We still don't know where and to what it might lead. In some ways we don't really care. We're just trying to follow God in what he's doing, making ourselves as available as we can, learning to be explorers and pioneers.

Coaching Tennis

Last year I did a Level 1 tennis coaching course. Level 1 is the starting point for everyone, which can be a bit frustrating if you don't really see yourself working with young children. For me, the purpose behind doing the course was to be able to work with adult beginners rather than children. But that's the way it has to be done. Once I'd qualified I then discovered that the LTA didn't recognise my first Aid qualification and I was rather frustrated by the whole thing.

A year on and I'm actually doing a bit of coaching! I have 3 juniors and 3-4 adults. I'm not making my fortune, but it's enjoyable, more so than I imagined it would be. I'm not an extrovert, and most of the coaching practice on the training course seems to require you to be one! The truth is that you have to find your own way to communicate and it does come if you make the effort to engage with those you are teaching.

Probably the most challenging parts of coaching involve working out what the student is doing and what they need to focus on to make an improvement. The second hardest thing is not showing your frustration when you ask them to do something and they don't get it!! I have an increased respect for Neil who coaches me!

Hopefully next year, once the rugby season is over, I'll be able to do my Level 2 certificate, not just in order to be "qualified" to teach adults but with some extra skills to do that. I was once told by a tennis playing friend that anyone could coach and you didn't need a qualification to do it. He's right in one way, no one tends to ask to see your credentials, but he's also quite wrong. Doing the initial course gives you so much information that helps you understand how to get started and how to coach. Something you don't just pick up along the way as a player.

What was interesting was that over the summer we ran a sports week in the village and I was heavily involved. I was able to apply the coaching skills I'd learned to another sport (bowls), not realising how transferable those skills were.

Maybe I'll look at some rugby coaching next!!

Visiting the Barrier

I mentioned in a previous post that we'd visited the Thames Barrier, an amazing engineering project across the river that I remember being proposed and then completed in the early 80's as I recall (work actually began in the mid 70's). Well, although it was a rather wet day, I did take a few pictures with my recently acquired iPhone 5S and here are a couple.

 The barrier divides the river into a series of both navigable and non-navigable channels spanning some 500 plus metres.

The really clever bit is the semi-circular gate between the piers that rotates into position.





Based on the principle of a simple domestic gas valve, the large steel semi-cylinders control the flow of the water. Interestingly they are full of water when submerged, but empty as they rotate into the closed position.

The design was first proposed back in the 1950's apparently. A major flood in 1953 help focus attention on the need for better defences and the move to containerised shipping made a barrier more feasible.

The barrier is expected to be serviceable until around 2070 and there are already other ambitious proposals for a new barrier further east.

You can visit the barrier on either bank, the visitor centre on the south bank and the park and gardens on the north bank. Sadly there's no easy way to go between the two!

More rain!

I managed to escape the worst of the rain on Saturday and on Sunday too for that matter. But it's falling again this morning and I'm wondering if my tennis match at lunchtime will be possible. It's on a hard court, so provided it's not flooded we might just make it. 

We got our steps in over the weekend. A good walk around the village and then doing my pitch-side stuff at the rugby covered Saturday and tun on Sunday we had a walk through Purfleet for the RSPB place at Rainham Marshes. Apparently the marshes were the site of an ordinance store that was made to look like a lake to confuse enemy bombers. Or so I've ben told. It's now a wildlife centre that attracts birdwatchers and people like us who just like to walk by the river. 

I've no idea how wide the river is at this point, but it's certainly wide enough to make even some rather large ships look quite average. Purfleet has quite a military heritage. In the 18th century the Royal Magazine was established there. Not a glossy journal, but a storage facility for gunpowder. A garrison was also located in Purfeet to protect the magazine. There's a small museum that we've yet to visit. It's also the home to the Royal Opera House's High House Production Centre where the community chorus performed Verdi's Requiem back in July. Significant because Anne was in the chorus!

Back at the visitor's centre we had hot chocolate before setting off to visit friends for the late afternoon. The centre gives you a great view of the marshes, surrounded as they are by the industrial sights and sounds of the area. In the not too far distance the high speed gains into Kent and the Eurostar rush by along with the more sedate suburban railway. Looking eastward there's the QE2 bridge and the west, on a good day, the buildings of Canary Wharf and beyond into the city are clearly visible. If you want to, you can walk to Rainham station along the riverside. There's even a short path that takes you over the edge of the reclaimed landfill site! We've hill-walked and Fell-walked but until recently we had never landfill hill crossed!