Hard Yakka and Yakking Hard

Another eventful week draws to an end and we get ever closer to April 9th.

Last weekend saw the Tenzing Machine roll-up together for another fine tuning session in Dulwich. Cardio nets, shuttle-running and a general "get-together" to make sure that we, as a group, had thought about everything before April gets too close. Many thanks to Mike Preston for hosting the day on Sunday and for arranging the facilities at Dulwich College.

SatNav guided me into Dulwich quite beautifully and I reached the front door of Mike's one up, one down , high-rise, local authority maisonette in about 1 hour 30 minutes; not a bad run all things considered. The team promptly changed and we filled our ruck-sacks full of as much cricket equipment as we could find and set off for a "light" run to Dulwich College where the Sports Hall was all Tenzing's for the next two hours. The light run consisted of two 1:3 hills which had immediate effects on the legs, breathing and all round running enthusiasm and this was followed by a hard session of "breathless-nets" with considerable amounts of shuttle-running for both bowlers and batsmen, leg-strength work and basically all over body-abuse mixed in with the usual nets format. The quicker bowlers were instructed to come off much smaller runs; a matter of a couple of paces really and the batsman told to work hard at not getting out and getting used to the helmets and body armour they may not be as used to. Tenzing showed its collective teeth with some aggressive bowling, a bit of chin symphony and short stuff thrown down and the batsman showed dogged determination about not giving their wicket away. Wickets came by good balls and not rank shots; a good sign that we are not treating the game lightly and that everyone was really applying themselves. A little bit of light ground fielding to let off a bit of steam and throw some hard balls at those backing the throws up, finished our session. I think most of us were fairly well rinsed after two hours. Then JC turned up.

A quick run back saw us arrive at Mike's just as the wonderful view of London disappeared behind a cloud of utter shite and the BBQ I don't think ever got lit. One small niggle of the day was the lack of food when we got back to Mike's; just a small bowl of indistinguishable nuts is all I managed to scrape together; no meat of any description, no potatoes, not even salad, sweet f8ck all, basically.

Seriously, Mike and his wife could have built an extension with the amount of food they produced for us. Quite brilliant and mucho thanks again.

A wonderfully easy drive back home at at about 6pm, having not been sent completely the wrong way at all by the car's navigation system. It definitely didn't take me over an hour to get across the river. I certainly wasn't stuck in The City for about 40 minutes and I absolutely wanted to go towards Whitechapel and Stansted Airport. There's always a plus side; I saw the Tower of London.......twice and I just got back in time for my wife to produce what from the oven?............................................................................................meat.

Tuesday night saw me sit my much anticipated Umpires Exam. I met up with with the group at Letchworth CC and found out that there had been a room clash with about 100 runners having taken up the usual room. I therefore had to sit the exam in Letchworth CC's Second Eleven changing room. Nice. Being very experienced in cricket changing room shenanigans over the years and didn't want to know what was on the walls, on my seat or why my foot was stuck to the lino. However, we made the best out of a bad job and we walked through the exam, question by bloody question for nearly 2 hours. 75 questions in total, 60 right for a pass. First question..................ahhh, bollocks.
My heart sank. You know an LBW when you see one but why is it out.....................ahhh, bollocks. My heart just kept getting lower. However, a few questions like the one's on no-balls, wides, hard drinking games and famous streakers made me think that this might be OK. I've bowled enough no-balls in my time (16 in one match I seem to remember) to know when a ball is good or not. I've also played and lost enough drinking games to know when a Fuzzy Duck is a Ducky Fuzz (does he?), that 19, 20, 21 is Drink, Please, Thankyou and Whizz just carries on, Bounce misses the next person and Boing bounces back. Pay attention. Long story short, 62 right or 83% achieved which constitutes a pass in my book, as well as the ECB's. Job Done...just. I just hope, in some respects, that I'm not called upon to don the coat on the mountain as the game itself is my aim. I'm glad I've done it though and I look forward to discussing to rudiments of acceptable sledging and what my favourite boiled sweet is over a half of weak bitter with my "colleague", during the next cricket season.

The Bath Half is two days away now. My ankle is still uncomfortable but my Doctor thinks my pain is just bruising and not anything more serious. I would be lying if a little part of me, deep down, didn't squeak out a little "......damn", when the diagnosis was given. I feel that I should give it a go and if the pain gets too high or the interest gets too low, then I have given it a bash. So close to "lift-off" I do not want to risk anything now and the thought of having a painful ankle walking up to Everest isn't worth thinking about. I can always do the Bath Half next year.

No, I wasn't convinced by that either.

As a foot-note it was interesting to watch the Comic Relief team walk up Kilimanjaro last night. Very interesting to see who reacted in what way to the altitude and to see what the best way to combat it was. Chris Moyles breezed it with Ferne Cotton looking like shit for most of the way up. But all made it - the speed of their walking in some instances was comically slow but this is obviously how to ride this out. It gave me a really good insight into what we may experience - the sensation of being drunk, the head getting tighter, the need for water, and of paramount of importance was the need for a very slow approach and a sunny outlook. Some days it will be shit but the rewards will be well worth it and the obvious sense of achievement felt by these guys, who incidentally had only been training for just 6 months, was obvious to see.