Getting to the top of one's game? 25 2 26
Reaching the top of one's game? 24 8 4 (4)
A good day to start this blog 79 years to the day since my father died in 1945 whilst serving with the Royal Marine Corps of GB en route to Japan...and coming to the conclusion that reaching rather being at the top of one's game is more crucially important a concept since the sequel inevitably of the latter is one's decline!
My reaching the top of my game really began in earnest I believe, aged 20 with my first real bout of girl trouble: over the previous summer meeting this attractive girl in a foreign country, speaking a foreign tongue, writing while I was away from home to my previous girl friend, Joyce, who had worked in the same Company, to pronounce our relationship was at an end... And now back home in England infatuated, receiving letters in the Finnish language signed off "Sinun Mirkusi" for "Your Mirkku", me never any great shakes at picking up new words, let alone those in a language said to be the most difficult after Mandarin Chinese? Turning to late evening walks to endeavour to marshal my thoughts as to what to do, what to do, what to do???
But one thing became clear as those evening walks became ever more nocturnal and that is I saw more and more the efficacy derived from walking, and its relationship to sorting out the chiff from the chaff in one's brain, from such activity. And since girl trouble of one description or another would stay with me for the rest of my life, so would the daily walking stay, in the vain attempt once and for all to prevail.
When thereafter I succumbed to smoking cigarettes, and partaking of the grape, my life for a time became that of someone immortal, the wake-up call perhaps delayed until my 63rd year owing to all this exercise as the one redeming activity, else I may have succumbed much earlier, like the male branch of my father's antecedents, who tended to expire as his sister around the age of 50?
Footnote 25 2 26 one month before my eldest grandson, A, is due to stage a 26th birthday party for some of his friends when he suggested I might like to attend and become one of his 10 guest speakers who will be expected to give a talk lasting no longer than 20 minutes on their chosen topic.
When, after I had given the matter some thought I told him instead of exchanging our once a month day out together to visit museums in the Helsinki area, for a short stay appearance at his birthday party, I could think of offering one of two blogs with the title "Getting to the top of my game" or alternatively "65 years of living among the Finns"??
If I now summarise that "Getting to the top of my game" comprises my daily dip in the Baltic Sea: something I began when aged 70 I decided I had finally retired. Plus this last 3 years when I began counting my steps walked with a daily target of 10 000 in 2 walks: the first in connection with my swim and any shopping I needed to do with a target 100 metres of ascent each day in order to stay to an extent hill-walking fit for my forages into the annual visit to Finnish Lapland and/or Arctic Norway in search of more challenging ascents, the second in late afternoon. And when the latest innovation has been to add faster walking and/or running in connection with the part of these work-outs that involve the dip in the sea since the cold of winter can mean my feet don't stay warm after the swim when the endorphins released inspire me to increase my pace thereafter...
A good day to start this blog 79 years to the day since my father died in 1945 whilst serving with the Royal Marine Corps of GB en route to Japan...and coming to the conclusion that reaching rather being at the top of one's game is more crucially important a concept since the sequel inevitably of the latter is one's decline!
My reaching the top of my game really began in earnest I believe, aged 20 with my first real bout of girl trouble: over the previous summer meeting this attractive girl in a foreign country, speaking a foreign tongue, writing while I was away from home to my previous girl friend, Joyce, who had worked in the same Company, to pronounce our relationship was at an end... And now back home in England infatuated, receiving letters in the Finnish language signed off "Sinun Mirkusi" for "Your Mirkku", me never any great shakes at picking up new words, let alone those in a language said to be the most difficult after Mandarin Chinese? Turning to late evening walks to endeavour to marshal my thoughts as to what to do, what to do, what to do???
But one thing became clear as those evening walks became ever more nocturnal and that is I saw more and more the efficacy derived from walking, and its relationship to sorting out the chiff from the chaff in one's brain, from such activity. And since girl trouble of one description or another would stay with me for the rest of my life, so would the daily walking stay, in the vain attempt once and for all to prevail.
When thereafter I succumbed to smoking cigarettes, and partaking of the grape, my life for a time became that of someone immortal, the wake-up call perhaps delayed until my 63rd year owing to all this exercise as the one redeming activity, else I may have succumbed much earlier, like the male branch of my father's antecedents, who tended to expire as his sister around the age of 50?
Footnote 25 2 26 one month before my eldest grandson, A, is due to stage a 26th birthday party for some of his friends when he suggested I might like to attend and become one of his 10 guest speakers who will be expected to give a talk lasting no longer than 20 minutes on their chosen topic.
When, after I had given the matter some thought I told him instead of exchanging our once a month day out together to visit museums in the Helsinki area, for a short stay appearance at his birthday party, I could think of offering one of two blogs with the title "Getting to the top of my game" or alternatively "65 years of living among the Finns"??
If I now summarise that "Getting to the top of my game" comprises my daily dip in the Baltic Sea: something I began when aged 70 I decided I had finally retired. Plus this last 3 years when I began counting my steps walked with a daily target of 10 000 in 2 walks: the first in connection with my swim and any shopping I needed to do with a target 100 metres of ascent each day in order to stay to an extent hill-walking fit for my forages into the annual visit to Finnish Lapland and/or Arctic Norway in search of more challenging ascents, the second in late afternoon. And when the latest innovation has been to add faster walking and/or running in connection with the part of these work-outs that involve the dip in the sea since the cold of winter can mean my feet don't stay warm after the swim when the endorphins released inspire me to increase my pace thereafter...
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