There’s a great buzz and massive excitement that England won the European Cup – for football, in case you haven’t hear about it! The English women’s gallant opponents was the Spanish team who apparently played magnificently but were beaten on penalties. To be honest, I’m not very interested in football but it’s great to see these women set such a fine example to younger women and girls, of sporting excellence, team spirit, determination and a huge sense of enjoying their sport and having fun with their friends.
I’ve never been very good at running, especially sustained running, but swimming, that was a different thing! i could literally swim for miles – the longest swimming race I ever took part in was seven miles along the upper reaches of the River Cam, known as the Granta. I don’t know if these days swimmers have a watery equivalent of a Fitbit to record the miles they swim in training – I used to train most weekdays, sometimes twice a day, plus matches and fun swimming with friends. We also did weight training which I was good at, and running which I was utterly hopeless at!
If we’d had football at our girls’ school when I was there, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it, but would have been pretty hopeless because of poor running, so maybe I would have ended up in goal as I did when I played hockey. One sport I really wish we had been able to play, was cricket. I’m not bad at throwing and catching, I’d have probably been a wild and risky batter (as they are now called) and running fast and intermittently over short distances I’m sure I would have managed. There’s a young woman at the pub who is a county cricket player and I’m always interested to catch up with her news!
My featured image is of the swimming badge I gained in Brownies!
Lois Elsden 