the last week

Its been a fairly quiet week. Last Thursday I went for a drink at the Webb with Soso and a friend of hers who's going to Australia soon for 8 or 9 months of working holiday visa goodness. I told him about the absolute necessity of doing the Cairns-Sydney or at least Cairns-Brisbane coast over a couple of weeks, all with not a small tinge of jealousy. Later on a bunch of familiar faces - Liz, Sandy, and a few others - joined us.

On Friday Liz and I went to Soso's folks' house for gallettes. Good gallettes, and nice to chat to Soso's dad. I also met her brother, who invited me to a basketball training on Tuesday.

The weekend was given over to playing cricket - on computer unfortunately, but still better than nothing. The game, EA's contribution, has a fairly steep learning curve, particularly in batting, and despite having played a game with the same controls a couple of years ago, it was only after a few hours that I managed to start registering scores in excess of 20.

On Tuesday I went out to Vezin le Coquet for basketball training with Jeremy. There were about 13 of us, with myself and one other guys the only newbies. I struggled with the early drills, my inability to hit a jumpshot somewhat of a hindrance. I also came to realise that I'm not as fit as I could be, and was blowing pretty hard at times. Later we moved onto some 3-on-3 games, and I did better, getting a nice tipback and generally not feeling too out of place playing in the post. We moved onto 5-on-5 and, likewise, I thought I was doing OK, but my calves started cramping up pretty badly and, despite a break to stretch and rub them a bit, I basically had to sit out the end of the session.

Since then I've been pretty sore. My back was tender after the game, but a little stretching down sorted that out. My calf, hip flexor and groin muscles are still tender a couple of days after though, despite my efforts to stretch them a couple of times each day. I probably need to start going for some runs if before I think about going to another training, or my fitness is going to be a problem.