I have got to the point where I am wondering, if the latest round of aches and pains threatening my training programme, are more a simple case of the underpinning getting weak, after so much stress and strain under the Covid cloud. Don’t bother to remind me that I am a little long in the tooth anyway and I cannot expect anything else. Well, I do expect better of myself actually because for the most part, I do really put my money where my mouth is.
Over the years Stephen and I have always advised triathletes to allow injuries the rest time and treatment they need to recover. My current naughty back problem, feels like life itself has been a factor and not a question of working injured muscles to see if they are better, because they won’t be, if you keep on testing them with a ten-mile run. The comeback should be little steps and time is the best healer.
As well as resting off running this week, I have invested in a smart new heated jacket that once tried, Steve and I have been fighting over whose turn it is. I have put the warm heated blanket, that is disguised as a sort of gillet, on each time I have sat down to work on my computer which is perfect for a fidget like me; two birds-one stone.
So, my Duo-lingo Italian work practice is a heated affair, and because I find the course completely absorbing, I am not trying to stand up and get untangled from the jacket wiring system or trip over and break my neck trying to answer the front door during that time. Then part of my therapy is a rest and a learning project.
My other therapy is that I have been back at the Qigong sessions on YouTube. I did a double session of that this morning that ate into an hour and a half, after which I had gently loosened up my limbs without overdoing any stretching. In fact, the class has the student doing gentle swinging around the body during which I close my eyes to do it, because I know it well and hearing the tutor speak, I know when it changes to something else. There is also some whole body shaking to loosen out stress and some tapping and slapping all of which work well for me.
The other area of useful movement that we have both very much enjoyed over the last couple of weeks, has been Eagle Spotting Walks! These have been taken a little outside Arundel, here in West Sussex, which is only a 5-10-minute drive from home to the start point on any of several walks. There the big birds; White-Tailed Eagles, have been seen by local people recently. We saw them the first time, by pure accident, we stopped walking, as our jaws dropped to our chests when we were thunderstruck by spotting them, soaring just a little way above us. The birds are so large that they made the local resident buzzards and a Hen Harrier look like sparrows in comparison.
Yesterday having thought that it was a no-show day from the big birds, we wandered on from where we had seen them a couple of times before. We wandered along past a big farm in Burpham and then down to the wetlands closer to the River Arun. We took a photo here and there with Steve getting to grips with the new baby zoom attachment for his phone. Since we are not proper photographers but still get some nice shots simply using our mobile phones that are thankfully far more sophisticated than our olds ones, years ago.
Having turned back along another path, we were alongside a smaller inlet from the river itself. As we strode along, chattering away as usual, Stephen suddenly threw an arm out to stop me moving, as he said quietly, “Oh my God, is that it”?
I followed his gaze to a tree just the other side of the inlet and there sitting sunning itself on a big branch, midway up the tree, was indeed an Eagle. It looked huge even with its wings folded neatly down, but unlike other smaller birds it appeared to have shoulders like a night club bouncer and a wicked looking hooked beak and a stare that made Paddington Bear’s fictional hard stare look pretty mild.
Steve tried to hurriedly to get his phone out of one pocket and then the little mobile zoom out of another. As it happened, he had no need to hurry at all because the big bird was taking a break it seemed.
It sat and looked this way and that and even saw us when it turned around but seemed to be unimpressed, even though I had a bright green jacket on and we were standing in the open. We stood in that spot for almost an hour waiting for the impressive creature to take flight but that did not happen,
the most he did was preen now and again and change position slightly. We thought that he or she must have a meeting arranged with the partner later, for the pair.
Steve must have taken a hundred shots of the Eagle on the grounds of that way we must get one good one. It was still a good way off from us and since we did both have other things to be doing after all, we had to give up bird watching for the morning. We were however, seriously happy with our encounter with one of the new visitors to the area. Eagle watch walks will continue hopefully. Having goggled the birds, it does seems like a good location for them with the river, the wetlands and the surrounding hills and woodland.
No comments:
Post a Comment