One day one photo - 19: Hockey goes Pete Tong!

So I have a new hobby for this autumn and winter - hockey. As mentioned before, it was mainly to give me a different focus in sport, and have a bit of a break from the whole cycle (excuse the pun) of bike training and racing etc.

It's going a bit slow, as I have a lot to learn given that I haven't done hockey since I was at school. I am still trying to remember the rules - even how to hold the stick! Sometimes I get a touch of the ball when we do a mini match. A lot of the time I don't. It is not that people don't want to involve me, but more that when the ball comes my way I try and hit it but miss, or I run away from this fast approaching solid object on the relatively smooth astroturf.

I can't get no satisfaction with this gum shield

When I was at school we played on grass and without any form of protection. I remember being hit on the bridge of my nose by a girl when she meant to strike the ball but missed and hit my face instead. She apologised, I said it was okay and we just played on like nothing had happened.

In this day and age of health and safety everyone wears shin pads and a mouth guard, and is a fast game on astroturf. You also get 3-D shots, i.e. people lobbing the ball high into the air and could easily land on your head if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fortunately I haven't had the chance to "head" a hockey ball. Unfortunately, I have not done well in finding the obligatory shin and tooth protection (only the goalie wears a helmet). I couldn't manage to mould the gum shield into the right shape for my mouth. So when I wear it it doesn't stay properly in place, and when I try to force it into position it just presses at the back of my throat and almost makes me want to vomit. So I haven't been able to wear it.

I always thought there was something a bit odd about my shin pads, and now I have found the problem. They really are odd. When I thought I was buying a pair of size XS shin pads from Lillywhites in Piccadilly Circus, I had actually been given one XS pad, and a medium sized pad. And that's why there was something a bit silly looking about the fit. I was once told by an orthopaedic surgeon that I had different sized legs, so had attributed the imbalanced look to that. But in fact the label confirmed that the sizes were not the same. 

So as well as me needing to find another mouth guard, I need to also find a new pair of shin pads as it was more than a month ago when I bought them and I have worn the pads a number of times.

I haven't actually played that much hockey, but this hobby is already beginning to get expensive. Hopefully, over the coming weeks I will find my hockey nirvana.

One day one photo - 6: Back to hockey

We are now back into autumn, back to school, and with that I have also decided to get back to an autumn activity that I have not done for decades, literally.
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I am restarting hockey, something that I haven't done regularly since I was at school. I haven't had a complete 35 years without touching a hockey stick, as I had a couple of dalliances when I worked at DEFRA about 10 years ago, and they were looking for some people to form a team as part of their Civil Service sports day. I stepped forward, and got through it because I could run, rather than because I could remember the rules or had the skill!

Rush Hockey at Lee Valley (aka the Olympic Park, Stratford)

Recently, I have had a hankering to do a team sport and something a bit different from the cycling and running I've been doing all these years.

I wasn't sure which club to try out. If looking purely at geography it would be a toss-up between Tulse Hill and Dulwich club, or Beckenham. However, neither of them train on the astroturf at Crystal Palace which is a stones throw away from me.

The clubs that do are London Gamblers, and London Wayfarers. Gamblers only has two women's teams. Their players are fresh out of university, meaning that the level will be quite high - way to high for my almost inexistent ability.

So that left Wayfarers. They boast of being the biggest club in London. Indeed they have nine women's teams and they do a specific Back-to-Hockey training session. I guess that is a session that I could really benefit from. However, I am not free on the days that they do this, so I am just going to train and play myself into one of their teams - as long as they don't mind! They seem quite cool, even though I was p15s poor at their selection day in August, and during the two Wednesday night sessions that I went to.

What I have done, which I hope will help, is go to the Rush Hockey sessions at the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre on Thursday evenings. I actually found out about it while I was in Lillywhites sports shop at Piccadilly Circus, buying astroturf shoes. A fellow customer who was doing the same, got into conversation with me, and told me about how laid back this mixed hockey session is compared with being in a hockey club and they welcome all abilities.

He was absolutely right. When I went to the session, the guys were keen for me to join in the match they were playing, where I preferred to go to another part of the pitch to practice drills on my own. However, after a bit of coaxing I joined in. A female player passed me the ball and I completely missed, on another occasion I tripped over the ball. I wasn't even sure where to stand! Apparently I was a mid-field player.

But everyone was cool with it, insisting that I was doing fine, and just needed to keep coming back. That actually emboldened me into going after the ball and chasing, and they even deliberately set things up for me so that I could score a goal!

It's quite a contrast to the main club sessions with the Wayfarers where I have very limited opportunities to touch the ball during open play, and I feel so terribly inadequate about being a bit rubbish.

I am determined to stick with it, and I think that between the Wednesday training sessions and the Rush Hockey I will make improvements, and who knows, maybe Wayfarers may even let me out to do a league match one day. And if nothing else, this is a great substitute for boring intervals around a running track. It'll do wonders for my running!

One day one photo - 5: Save Crystal Palace Sports Centre

Over the 21 years I have lived in Crystal Palace there have been regular debates around the future and threat of closure of the local sports centre (aka the National Sports Centre).

I remember in 1999, the local triathlon club discussing whether or not to plan for a triathlon there, given the likelihood of its closure.

But here we are in 2018 with a whole raft of events taking place at the sports complex - swimming (in one of the few 50m pools in London), diving, squash, badminton, trampolining, weight lifting in the sports centre. There's also a gym and a programme of various fitness classes. Then outdoors people do hockey, football, athletics, tennis and even beach volleyball.

Beach Volleyball at Crystal Palace Sports Centre

The sports centre and the surrounding park is also host to various external events - The London Youth Games, Southern Athletics Championships, The Fire fighters Championships, a triathlon, and the regular Tuesday night cycle road racing series. Next week I will be doing a cyclocross race in the park, and the week after that will be running the Southern Road relays championships.

I love going to the sports  centre for my fitness classes, swimming, or for hockey training. Seeing various people out doing some sort of activity has a feeling of being part of an academy for sport. Who says the UK doesn't have an Olympics legacy!

But yet there are talks about what will happen after 2020. The Mayor of London has commissioned a public consultation to "rationalise" the existing and future facilities. That basically means cut-backs to the services.

That could spell the loss of sports facilities that we know and love and which have existed since 1964, when the centre was first opened, and considered state of the art. Of course, we now have the Lee Valley Sports facilities and Queen Elizabeth Olympic park, from the 2012 Olympics, and funds have been diverted in that direction to Crystal Palace's detriment.

Crystal Palace Sports Partnership have set up a website with the latest information. You can sign and on-line petition to save athleteics and sports at Crystal Palace Sports Centre, as well as complete a survey to let them know what sports you do in order for them to understand which activities are a priority in the community.

I really hope that money can be invested in our beloved local sports centre. It's great for the wellbeing of the local community, as well as it being a place that could train tomorrow's world class athletes.