Stirton.net » Sport

UK Skate Events for 2011

stirton — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:31:44 +0000

Carrying on from last year, pleased to announce that two of our more popular events will be repeated in 2011. These include the London to Brighton skate and the Oxford skate. Dates are yet to be confirmed but it is looking as though the Oxford skate will be taking place during May and that the London to Brighton skate will take place during July/August.

The London to Brighton skate is not for the beginner skater by any means. It is an undulating road skate measuring approximately 56 miles from the south of London to the central Brighton piers. Following on from a trial run in late 2001, this years event has already received a lot of interest without any publicity. We are therefore now due to commence a publicity drive to gain sponsorsip from sports related companies and associated sports sponsors (energy drinks/bars etc).

Our aim is to make this a charity event whereby you, the skater, choose which charity the money you raise will go to. Whilst entrance fees will be kept to a minimum to cover organisational and safety costs, there will be a minimum sponsorship amount in order to participate.

Our Oxford skate will help to take the London skate scene to the student City of Oxford. Last year’s event was cancelled due to bad weather and late planning, but 2011 will hopefully see skaters from all scenes participating in a street skate along with several side line events such as hockey and tricks.

Check out our articles from 2011 for more information on the outline of the plans, and be sure to email if you wish to subscribe to our newsfeed for more information about our events.

Initiating and Maintaining a Lifestyle Activity Program

stirton — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 06:14:20 +0000

One potential challenge to adopting a lifestyle activity program is to monitor progress effectively. Most individuals overestimate their levels of physical activity by about 50 percent. Therefore, when beginning a lifestyle activity program, it is important to objectively determine that planned increases in activity are actually achieved. This can be accomplished through record keeping.

Keep a Physical Activity Log
To begin tracking your activity, record your current activity using the Physical Activity Log provided below. The number of minutes of moderate-intensity activity in each hour should be recorded on the form. For example, if Maria takes a brisk, four-minute walk at 9:30 a.m. to deliver some papers, but otherwise sits at her desk from 9 to 10 a.m., she will record four minutes of moderate-intensity activity. Individuals report that using a timer on a digital watch or computer is a helpful reminder.

As with any type of self-monitoring, daily results are often surprising. A review of a few days of recording activity will identify the amount of time spent in sedentary activities. The Physical Activity Log also helps you identify times that activity can be planned into home or work schedules.

Print copy

Use a Pedometer or Step Counter
Pedometers or step counters are very helpful for measuring the amount of daily physical activity. When people begin recording their steps each day, they report anywhere from less than 1,000 steps (“on Saturday I just lay on the couch all day watching TV”) to more than 10,000 steps (“I got my walks in at work and also cut the grass”). The average is about 2,000 steps a day for beginners and should increase slowly to a minimum of 8,000 steps a day. Step counters can be especially effective for people who travel a lot and find themselves sitting in planes and airports for long periods of time. Low, daily step counts serve as helpful reminders to get up and walk, rather than sitting and waiting for the next flight.

Start Slowly
Sedentary people who begin exercising at moderate-intensity levels are more likely to adhere to a program than those who begin exercising vigorously. People who start exercising five or more days per week, or at intensities that they perceive as being “hard” are also more likely to abandon their efforts to become more active. Increasing lifestyle activity slowly from baseline levels (e.g., about 5 percent) each week will help reduce the risk of injury and may encourage people to continue to exercise.

Some Things are Worth Waiting For…

stirton — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:13:03 +0000

Sorry folks, but sometimes real life just likes to pick you up and swirl you around in it’s underwear. Having washed the stench off now I appear to be back.

Computers. Allegedly here to make our lives easier. What a crock.

Having been snowed under with studying, and trying to contend with a 4 month old baby who never sleeps during the day and cries half the night, I gave up on updating the site before Christmas, hoping the new year would bring more time where I could actually sit down and write something. Christmas as well didn’t help this. Today I sit down to finally write an update, get it all written, then failed to save it when I exited the system (I blame the inevitablack of sleep babies cause). So a nice update, the first one in ages, got trashed and I have to do it again. *sigh*

So, before I start swearing enough to make Bill Hicks roll over in his grave, here I am having to write all this again. Anyway, here goes.
The Update

Firstly there will be no year end awards. The absurdity of me having to pick the winners is… Well, absurd really. Hopefully I can get a voting system in place at the end of the upcoming season so all 3 of you who read this site can vote.

I’ve been totally out of the loop, and were it not for a friend, I would still think Craig Pollock was with BAR. I’ve barely had time to check the F1 news, let along write about it. Since it’s going to take me a good few days to get back up to speed, I figured it was time to continue my season review, covering the the remaining teams in a two part update.
Jordan

Hard to believe this team was winning races a couple of years ago. A dismal season, compounded by the Frentzen fiasco must leave Eddie Jordan looking forward to this year. From winning races, even going so far as having a driver in with a shot at the championship in the late stages of the 1999 season, to this. Terrible. Frentzen issue not withstanding, in blunt terms, Jordan sucked in 2001.
Minardi

Minardi were saved at the eleventh hour in 2001. The question is, was it worth it? The team were the only group in the paddock to score no points, and the team was always at the tail end of the grid. Their season can be best summed up by their Monza performance. One Minardi comes out of the pit, and dies at the first chicane. Out comes the other Minardi, and promptly dies at the same place. I’ve always been a fan of Minardi, but really, when the team is on life support and in such a critical condition, in some ways, it would be best if the plug were pulled.
Jaguar

Jaguar’s season can be summed up in one word. Pathetic. With the might of the Ford Motor Company behind them, one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world, they should be sweeping all before them. Instead they’re down fighting in the midfield with the likes of BAR. Bobby Rahal was held up as a scapegoat for their failure, but little changed after he was given the boot. It seemed that the ever egotistical Irvine, who claims he’s the second best driver in the world (thus making his teammate the best if late season performance was anything to go by), went well in the first session or so, and then basically slid down the order for the rest of the weekend. For a company with as much money to burn as Ford, they should hang their heads in shame at the fact that their 2001 season was laughable at best and other teams do as well or better on a much lower budget. Proof that it doesn’t just take money to win in F1. There is, buried away somewhere, the need for talent, something Jaguar obviously lacks.
BAR

Ken Tyrrell died in 2001. A legendary name from the sport is gone, but then the cancer merchants known as British American Tobacco had pretty much destroyed that lineage anyway. Again, similar situation as Ford. Money to burn on a team, and bugger all to show for it. Unlike Jaguar, however, BAR at least put in good performances on rare occasions. Jacques Villeneuve has to be given credit for sticking around such a crap team. The departure of Craig Pollock will, like the departure of Rahal, mean nothing, but with Pollock gone

A Community’s Service

stirton — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:11:36 +0000

As a senior in high school, the author was searching for an adult identity and acceptance into a community when she discovered rock climbing. Little did she know then that the results of this discovery would alter the entire course of her life.

“The real epidemic in our culture is … what I call emotional and spiritual heart disease: the sense of loneliness, isolation, and alienation that is so prevalent in our culture because of the breakdown of the social networks that used to give us a sense of connection and community.” –Dr. Dean Ornish

I never really wanted to rock climb. Sure, I participated in sports my whole life, but always in the conventional ones like soccer, swimming, softball, and basketball. The most out-of-the-ordinary physical activity I did was horseback riding, which I loved but never quite fit into, not owning my own horse, not having parents willing to pay the big bucks it would have cost for me to excel. I really wanted that — to excel at some sport, or at least to love it enough to train hard and try my best. But I never wanted to rock climb.

My boyfriend coaxed me to go rock climbing at the end of my senior year of high school. I didn’t try it sooner because I hadn’t wanted to cut my nails, which were always painted bright red back then. When I finally gave in, I was surprised that instead of the scrambling up rocky slopes that I had pictured in my mind, we were actually toproping the vertical walls of a 35-foot granite aqueduct. My first day climbing, I made it about three feet off of the ground.

It only took two or three climbing sessions before I was hooked. Hooked on the intricacy of the movement, determined that I would make it to the top of the section of wall I was attempting (the “easiest” route at the Arches, as the bridge was called by the climbers). But I was hooked on something else, too: the climbers.

For the first time in my life, I felt like an equal among adults. I found a place where adults really listened to me, and did not expect to be called Mr. or Mrs., but merely first names. It went beyond the names, though. I experienced a deep sense of mutual respect, a lack of condescension that I’d never quite felt before. Here, at the Arches, among climbers, I discovered what it was like to be treated like an adult by adults, to have my opinion valued, to be taken seriously, to be accepted into a community of people of all ages driven by the same love: the love of climbing.

Their understanding of me helped me to grow and change, not only as a climber, but also as a person. I had no equipment of my own, but those guys — Norm, John, Barry, Leon — they lent me their too-big shoes, their harnesses, their chalk bags, and they belayed me and taught me.

“Ha ha ha,” my boyfriend laughed when we broke up. “You’ll quit climbing now. You just wait and see.”

But he was wrong. Actually, he ended up quitting climbing, and my passion remains just as strong now as it was back then, if not more so. Over the past seven years, I’ve come to realize that it’s not just the climbing itself that keeps me coming back for more.

No, it’s the people, the community, that I savor and love. Nothing beats a campfire out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of other climbers, trading stories and laughter late into the evening. Hanging out at the end of the day is as much of a ritual as rock climbing itself has become. The indoor climbing gym only reinforces those community ties during the week. And whenever I travel, I carry my gear with me, or at least my shoes and my chalk bag, knowing that if I find a spare moment, I can almost assuredly hook up with a local group of climbers.

I never really had a hero when I was growing up. I never had posters on my wall of my latest heartthrobs, and never thought, “I want to be just like him or her.” But I do know that those first climbers I met, back at the Arches, became the closest people to heroes in my life. They made me one of them, and as a teenager, I didn’t really want much more.