FootGolf

On Sunday 8th Feburary a group of us went to Leen Valley Golf Club for a game of FootGolf! I know my spelling can be a bit dodgy at times in these blogs but there's no mistake here yes FootGolf! Put yourself on an adapted golf course with a football and smash your way around the course.

It's one of the fastest growing sports in the UK, with national and international competitions. Check out the links below for more information on the sport.

BBC News
TransWorld Sport
Real Madrid

If you enjoy Football and or Golf it's something you've got to try. In our group we had from age 10 to 50, football players, golf players and people like me who just wanted to have a laugh enjoying some sport. The same as Golf we played at our own pace and had a brilliant day out. I was sceptical about the game mixing with golfers but they really didn't mind us being there. The two sports worked well together. All I know when we go back hopefully it will be a nice warm day without the freezing winds or puddles, and I will buy some astro-turf boots as being a rubbish football player I got excellent value for money kicking the ball all day long.

Prices taken from FOotGOlf website at time blog was written -
9 Holes - Adults = £7 / U16s = £5

18 Holes - Adults = £10 / U16s = £7

See the video below for our footage from the day, there are a few others on my YouTube account too.

Commonwealth Games - Glasgow 2014

After missing out on London 2012 tickets I made sure I applied for Glasgow 2014 asap. I missed out on Cycling tickets but got Netball, Badminton and Squash, three sports that I love. I couldn't believe it so started looking for accommodation asap and £300 per night for a Travelodge erm no thanks. I ended up booking a lovely little B&B in Stirling - http://www.craigardstirling.co.uk/

Just before the Games started I got an email informing me about more Games tickets available so I had a look and purchased Athletics tickets. Happy days 4 events in two days bring it on!!!

We decided to drive up on the West and back home along the East coast staying at Whitby for a few days to relax after the crazy days in Glasgow and Stirling.

This also helped with finding a few more Gold Post boxes. On the way North we found both Jason Kenny and Bradley Wiggins boxes, plus a little stop off to see the football grounds for Bolton Wanderers FC and Blackburn Rovers FC.

Jason Kenny - Men's Team Sprint

More pictures on Instagram.

From here a quick drive up past Gretna and Glasgow to the B&B in Stirling. After a little nights sleep it was straight on the train into Glasgow for the First Event on Saturday 26th July England v Australia in the Netball preliminary rounds. All that needs to be said is WOW!!! What a match. My phone didn't stop buzzing with messages off friends, family and clients who were hooked watching the match. It ended with a very narrow and gutting defeat for England, final score England 48 - Australia 49. The next match was Scotland v New Zealand and it was a master class from New Zealand with a huge 68-26 victory.

England V Australia 26/7/14 SECC Glasgow 2014

We then had a couple of hours gap so had a little walk around Glasgow city centre before getting the train out to the Scotstoun Sports Campus for the Squash. Here we saw some of the best players from around the world playing a sport that deserves to be an Olympic sport. The players have amazing speed, strength, flexibility and CV systems. One match lasted 5 sets taking 92 minutes to finish, playing squash for longer than a football match! Having played squash for years as a child I have the highest respect for the elite players as they are incredible.

Squash in the amazing glass court - Scotstoun Sports Campus 26/7/14 Glasgow 2014

We got back to the B&B at 1 am for a massive 4 and a half hours sleep waking up at 5:30 to be on the train in time for the Badminton on the Sunday morning. Off to the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome for the Emirates Arena. It is a really impressive modern venue with a back drop of Celtic Park just behind, a relaly good vision of the old and new for Glasgow. The badminton was amazing with the Mixed team event between Malaysia and Singapore. Some of the top players in an incredibly fast sports battling it out in the Semi-finals. It was really nice to see the Malaysian team all wearing black armbands for the people horribly taken away on flight MH17. Malaysia won the matches 3-2 and they deserved it playing the better badminton.

Badminton Mixed Team Semi Finals - Glasgow 2014 27/7/14

We then had a mad scramble back into the city centre and out to Hampden Park for the Athletics. We made it in time to see Bethy Woodward claim Silver in the T37/38 women's long jump. As well as seeing Adam Gemili flying in the 100m preliminary round. We were gutted Mo Farah had pulled out of the 5000m as the stadium would have gone crazy for him, but if you're unwell you can't compete at your best. Seeing the men's shot put, women's hammer and the women's 100/400m preliminary rounds was so interesting from a work point of view while being incredibly entertaining from as a spectator too. 

Hampden Park glowing in the sun for the Athletics. 27/7/14 - Glasgow 2014.

It had been a crazy couple of days watching some of the Worlds best sports stars performing in an amazing event. Time for a little chill in Whitby but first a few more Gold Post boxes as I don't know when I will next be in Scotland so Andy Murray and Sir Chris Hoy's were found. A nice drive down the East coast and the beach was calling us. 

Bring on the next major sporting event for the UK to show the World how good we are.

Sports weekend

Not a bad weekend going to the Yonex All England Championship on Saturday 8th March followed by Nottingham Panthers v Fife Flyers on Sunday 9th.

Badminton

The badminton on show was incredible!!! Seeing World No.1 Lee Chong Wei play for the first time was truly inspirational. He lost the first set 14-21 before winning the second 21-19 and third 21-15 without looking like it took any effort at all. It was a near master class at how to make a sport look easy!

One of the other highlights for the day was seeing the Para-badminton. The players were brilliant and the crowd loved it. The wheelchair and short stature players just reminded me of how good the London 2012 Paralympics were. Hopefully Para-badminton can make it into the Paralympics in the near future.

Ice Hockey

Boot Camp Sunday morning was filled with talk of "How many fights will we see later at the Ice Hockey?" haha. A group of 12 of us travelled to Nottingham with 4 people seeing their first Ice Hockey match. It was Panthers v Flyers and the last home game of the season in the league for Panthers. Just like when I saw my first match I could hear people talking about how good are they at skating, how do they not fall over, where's the puck? haha. It's such a fast and brutal sport but 100% family focused with a crowd of all ages enjoying a great sporting event. Panthers came out 5-2 winners making it look very easy in the 3rd period.

Photos from the weekend can be found on my instagram

Men's Health Challange - Survival of the Fittest 2013

A couple of weekends ago I took part in the Nottingham leg of the Survival of the Fittest with a couple of clients and friends. For the week running up to the event I had been suffering with a bad cold, so on race day seeing the rain pouring down wasn't the best start but I wasn't letting a cold stop me from running. It was a wet, cold and just dull day but who cares!!! The point of the run is to get wet and muddy while having a good laugh.

We started the run as a clean looking set of bloke, that didn't last long. Challenge was set could I better last years time of 1 hour 29 minutes which would also be a new PB for Dave, Ben, Lewis and Matthew as it was their first time for this run.

From left to right - Dave, Ben, Myself, Lewis & Matthew.

 

 

The next photo is at about 11.5k just a few hundred meters left in the run and we're in a big paddling pool. As you can tell by the colour of the water it really didn't help to clean us.

The end result 5 muddy, soggy blokes in need of a drink, food and a long warm shower or bath. All I know is after washing my hair 3 times all the grit was gone and I had one good nights sleep.

 

 

So the important bit did I get a new PB? Yes I did we finished in 1 hour 24 minutes. Next years target is a sub 1 hour 15 minutes maybe faster and hopefully I won't have a stinking cold like I did this year.

 

Bring on more mud runs in 2014 with different clients achieving different challenges.

 

 

Each run I do it's to support Cancer Research UK - If you wish to donate visit my JustGiving page thanks you :)

Cricket

So far this Summer I've made 3 appearances for Nutbrook Cricket Club, could have been more but I have had other things on and knew I couldn't commit to play each week. After giving up the sport for a few years for many different reasons the 8 matches I've played between end of last season and start of this season have been so much fun and you've got to love a good competitive match.

This season has been a lot of fun especially giving my legs a real good run around playing for the 1st team in the cup taking 2 catches and covering about 7k. Also getting the nickname of "Pro-fielder" off half the team and "The Gazelle at deep cover" off Max the Overseas player (Unlucky for him being an Aussie as they have just crashed out of the Champions Trophy, hopefully their Ashes are just as poor so England thrash them). We won the match by 13 runs, big hitting in the first innings by Henshaw and Sanderson gave us the total required for victory.

This weekend I played for the 2nd Team in the cup and hit a quick 19 runs at the end of the innings before running around in the field and taking a catch at Cow Corner which ended the match with a 104 run victory.

Hopefully over the season I can help save a few more runs in the field and take some more catches. Unfortunately none of my catches are in the same category as this beauty by Brendon McCullum but I can try my hardest as I hate dropping a catch!!

 

To find out the results and general updates for Nutbrook Cricket Club follow them on twitter @NutbrookCC

Netball

Towards the end of 2012 I was chatting to a client about Netball and the fitness level required to play the sport. I didn't know much about the sport other than at School "girls play netball boys play basketball" which turns out to be rubbish as I now know there are male netball teams.

At the start of 2013 I went along to Ripley Netball Clubs training to see how they train and to see what exercises could be adapted to be sport specific for their training.
Since that first visit it has to be said I have got a lot of respect for the sport. The game is so physically demanding yet played with such grace and aggression. 

I won tickets to see Loughborough Lightning play Manchester Thunder, thanks to a Twitter competition by Sophia Candappa. It was such a good night and I will happily go and watch again next season especially when it's such a good laugh for about £6.
Loughborough Lightning -  http://youtu.be/oHZnm59pT_4 
England - http://youtu.be/d8jrfe2Vtgc 

If anybody was thinking "I need to get active, make friends and let my competitive side loose" I would recommend Netball all day long.

Racquet-sports

Badminton v Squash v Tennis

This morning I have been reading about Ramy Ashour being "the world's greatest racquet-sport player?" http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/squash/22526762

He is one amazing Squash player and I would love to play against him. I know I would be running round the court like a headless chicken while he had time to showboat but it would be worth it.

BUT in the article they don't even mention Badminton. Lee Chong Wei is an incredible badminton player (currently World #1) and one hell of an athlete with how he moves around the court. In theory he's the Badminton equivalent to Ramy Ashour.

So can you really say one player is the "best" racquet-sport player in the world when each racquet-sport requires it's own unique set of skills to make the shots look so easy. A tennis ball, squash ball and shuttlecock all act totally differently to each other. I would love to see a three way battle between Ramy Ashour, Lee Chong Wei and Roger Federer over their three sports.

 

But Lee Chong Wei is just as fast with the reactions - http://youtu.be/oyFH9KaF6Fo

 

And we can't forget how good Roger Federer is - http://youtu.be/nQ7HvffZpRI