A painful realisation

Over the past couple of months we've done a lot of walking: the streets of London, must-see Vancouver, most of Seattle's downtown and the pretty bits of Cape Town. We haven't, however, done much running. I had foolishly thought our pedestrian pavement pounding would be an adequate exercise substitute during our travels. I was wrong.

This weekend I was back at floorball training here in Jajce. We have about a dozen, mostly athletic, teenagers who form the core of our team. As well as being committed to training twice a week they often organise running together too. A couple of them also train in handball and football teams. And they are competitive.

With a game against a team from Prijedor, a town a couple of hours north of us, just a week away I was rejoining a team focused on delivering a winning performance. Training was intense. I didn't expect it to be otherwise. I just expected to find running a little easier, my recovery times a little shorter. Keeping up with hyper-energetic sixteen year olds is never going to happen but maybe in a couple of weeks I won't feel so painfully slow when I challenge for a 50-50 ball. Hopefully we'll also be celebrating another team victory together.