April
30
Getting Tougher With Age
There’s no doubt about it, surfing gets much, much tougher as you get older.
Anyone that’s remotely health conscious will have seen (most likely: been shown) pics of 50+, 60+, 70+ folks that can throw kettlebells around, run marathons or set the pace at pilates. So yes, of course that’s possible. But as a fairly normal human with an interest in (but no particular aptitude for) a sporting lifestyle, it has seemed to get much harder on the last year or so, as I’m now 45.
And yet, whilst the body seems to set ever more restrictive physiological boundaries, the brain seems to think that any and everything remains possible.
In any case, I was back on a board for the first time this year last week, despite nursing injuries to one wrist and the other shoulder. Over the course of three ninety minute or so sessions, the first two amidst an unseasonal heatwave and the third in the rain, I also managed to turn my ankle on itself. And, surfing in the UK in anything but the height of (a good) summer, requires gloves and boots as a minimum.
Still, surfing remains the one activity though that will put a smile on my face irrespective.
And this time I got to take my kids out and watch them experience the joy of catching waves for the first time proper themselves, which was magical.
I guess my time in perfecting how to drop in on unbroken waves is probably drawing to a close. But then, there’s a whole industry geared around longboards, so perhaps there’s hope yet…
PeteGoold.com 
Actually I think there is much heart in the mind wanting to do things that the body can’t. It shows we still have that connection to life, though there are days I pray for the memory loss of old age so you can’t remember how much easier these things use to be.