Sporting Success for the Crawfords

The last few months have been very football focused for us here in the Crawford house.

Toby’s Robin Hood football team train hard and they train regularly. The team have been getting better, fitter and stronger….and from a fourth place position at Christmas they started climbing up and found themselves in second place. All very exciting! On Friday it was their final game of the season and they lay 3 points behind the leading team, and 1 behind on goal difference.

Their last game was against top placed Flanagans Onions. Therefore a win would be good enough to win the league, and on goal difference at that!

Before Friday though, was Thursday, which was Toby’s birthday. Do I have something to report? Well, with a big match the next day, this was a very quiet night and I wouldn’t even let him have birthday steak as it would take too long to digest! 🙂

So back to the football! It was an 8:30pm KO so me and fellow WAG Katie went for dinner beforehand. By 8pm though we were getting too nervous ourselves so the remaining pizza was boxed up and we set off to soak up the spirit. The Premier league side were out in force to support and had been getting into the spirit for quite a while before we got there! Needless to say it was a lively and noisy crowd with lots of ingenious and not so ingenious chants!

We were worried it might be a cagey game as the opposition only needed a draw to win the league but we were not disappointed. It was a great game and the Robin Hood ‘Hoodlums’ were definitely the ’12th man’ that cheered the team to a 3-2 victory.

Toby and fellow centre back Martin look rather proud!

After this the boys jumped into a rather noisy motorcade round town. Apologies for the swearing but here’s a little outtake

🙂

Needless to say, the celebrating continued into the early hours and Saturday was a bit of a write-off! Not for me though, this is where I came into my own….

So the knee is nearly 6 weeks post-op now. The previous weekend I’d done 50 minutes of walk 2 mins/jog 30sec/repeat. Impressed?! Having got approval from the physio, it was time to step it up….with Toby’s weary legs a perfect match for my unfit and recuperating legs, we set off to ‘Zoom around the Sound’ on our bikes. For those outside Bermuda, ‘Zoom around the Sound’ is a yearly race by foot or bike. And a visual is always good! Here it is on the map;

Admittedly we didn’t ‘Zoom’ – it was more of a sight-seeing pace….but I was extremely pleased with my 11.5km ride! So much so, today while Toby’s helping out with security for one of the football matches followed by cheering on the Premier side, I did it again. It might not compare to the Robin Hood team efforts, but I feel like a superstar!

On my ride I saw people getting in the water for a swim. And they weren’t tourists! And others were cleaning up their boats. I think we’re getting ready for summer! I better progress quickly with the exercise to get ready myself!

We found something cheap in Bermuda!

Another update in quick succession, am I back on form…or just in rehab?! The latter I think.

In the last post I mentioned our golf lessons. The boys were keen to check out their new skills so booked a round at the Southampton Princess. It’s a gorgeous course overlooking the sea and with most holes only par 3, it’s a good course to ‘practice your short game’ (or if you can’t hit it that far! :-)) I’m still practicing walking so wasn’t involved. Anton from work did want to get involved though and having apparently only ever picked up a club once, and that was for ‘crime prevention’ (?!), Toby and I thought a quick trip to the driving range was in order. As it turns out, Anton was quite the natural and after getting through a bag of balls he had quite a consistent swing. Impressed! Next challenge was a bag. The boys had enough clubs to share round but everyone needed a bag to get on the course. Hiring, as you’d expect in Bermuda, is expensive. Jon recommended we check out ‘The Barn’. ‘The Barn’ is somewhere I’d heard about early on in our Bermuda Days, but I had never made it. It’s a second hand store with the proceeds going to the hospital. Finding it was a bit of a mission, but once there, we were greeted with about 10 bags and 7 sets of clubs. The things people leave behind when they leave the island! Anton got kitted out and as I’m’ hoping to join them soon too, I got one too. Guess how much….

On the basis a loaf of bread can be $6, a bag of grapes $12 and I have paid $20 for a large block of Cathedral City Cheddar cheese I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear I paid $10! The barn will be getting a more thorough rummage through soon!

The boys set off, had a few beers, some fun and enjoyed their first round of the season. No pictures I’m afraid.

I meanwhile stayed at home looking after my knee. I’m now two weeks post operation and just like after a bad illness, every day I’m delighted with how much better I feel. Day 1 I was dosed with medication and so relieved I’d got through it all I was running on adrenaline and very happy. Exercises for days 1 and 2 were wiggling my toes! Day 3 the compression bandage came off and I had to try and bend and straighten my leg. Knee was pretty swollen and this felt very wrong. For some reason I hid my head under a cover when I did this! Day 4 I was hobbling more effectively with my cane and by day 5 the cane was gone and I was practicing standing on one leg (the bad one!). The following week I progressed to walking on my toes, on my heals and balancing on a balance-board-thing (to start with holding on to something and then without to ‘some’ success!). By day 12 I was doing gentle lunges but confused why ‘pin steps’ (heel-toe-heel-toe walking) was too much for me. It fascinates me how the body heals and what’s possible with medicine. Gosh, anyone would thing I’d had a cutting edge operation the way I go on rather than a standard churn-em-out type! 🙂 Either way, the rehab process has activated my mind and got rid of the bored-because-I-can’t-play-sport mentality…if I can see progress I’m happy! Today I mastered pin-steps! 🙂
This afternoon I went for a walk to get the knee moving. Walking now feels quite comfortable on the flat but I’ve got a slight limp. I don’t need it – it offers nothing! My knee isn’t quite strong enough to comfortably manage walking downhill, but on the flat, no excuse! Hence the reason I was walking along the Railway Trail doing high knee steps to try and remind my brain no limping is required….I’m not sure what anyone would have thought if they saw me…not that I care!
While out I had another rather strange objective. February has been a very stormy month and the winds have been howling round our little cottage on the hill. As I was setting out to north shore for my walk I thought I’d get some good pictures as it can look quite menacing. Unfortunately the wind died down and it didn’t look bad at all.

Sometimes this view is just filled with white capped waves and there’s sea spray in the air, well back from the road. I struggled to believe it for a bit, but sometimes you can see what looks like large white ships near the horizon. It’s actually the waves breaking on the northern reef! How glad I am we have that reef! Anyway, my weird mission to show our stormy February was a fail.
I then got distracted and saw a pretty flower.

Unfortunately while moving some dead grass to get a better picture I got a whiff of something that told me I was taking a shot of a dogs latrine. Charming.

At least the flowers in our front garden put on a good show for me when I got back. Spring is in the air and you’ll stop hearing me complain about the cold and the wind soon! 🙂