Tag: Citius Altius Fortius

“You’re in unchartered waters,” remarked Yvonne, my independent invigilator as my PB was passed in record time. My PB, for those that haven’t been following is 37 baskets in 26 minutes and today saw that milestone fade away in the mists of history.

I nearly remarked that the whole last 18 days has been unchartered waters for me but decided to concentrate on the job in hand.  Not unchartered in the way that an ice breaker ploughs through Antarctic ice floes in search for unknown uranium deposits I grant you, but there have been moments of physical and emotional challenge, that’s for sure.

Sporting prowess was never something I’ve been able to claim with much authority over the years. I was too slow, too short sighted, too asthmatic or just too bored with the whole damn thing when it came to being last in line at school to be chosen for a football team only to be stuck in goal on miserable November afternoons with nothing to do but carve your name in the mud with your outsize football boots, plotting your revenge.

Ironically, picking up a medal at school for playing in the Colts rugby team (for my enthusiasm I found out afterwards) was about as good as it got until much later on, much to my surprise again, I was named ‘Player of the Year’ for the eighth division squash team which played out of Liverpool Cricket Club. 

Again, the reason alluded me at the time.  Contrary to what you might expect, we called ourselves the ‘Oxford team’ as that was the pub where we tended to gravitate after Thursday night league matches to celebrate our occasional success but more frequently to tend to our emotional wounds of hurt pride, embarrassment or just sheer frustration at what was, woulda, coulda, shoulda been that night.

 But despite the squash lows, there were many team highs, and the camaraderie was something I’ve long since treasured. Perhaps it was that, in the knowledge that my PB was probably at the end of a long list of sporting achievements in the league table of the club’s best performing athletes which led to them to offer a vote of sympathy with the POTY trophy.

But whatever the reason, it was a great night to be alive that evening and one of my PB memories of how sport can bind us and forge a community, despite its fundamental tenets of competitiveness, winning, losing and tribal loyalties. In the arts, we like to think that the arts are fundamental to building community, new relationships and a sense of civic duty which of course they are: but we shouldn’t forget that sport can achieve that too, without needing to be faster, higher or stronger than anyone else.

A PB of 48 shots into a basketball hoop which is beginning to physically suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously tossed basket balls doesn’t quite capture those emotional heights of the POTY trophy but it does bring another kind of satisfaction, even if it is about revelling in the statistics of an Excel spreadsheet.

Speaking of which….

Day	Attempts	Near Misses	Baskets	Effort (Baskets/ Attempt)	Baskets/ Minute (BPM)	FeelGood Factor	Total time	Total Shots	Total Baskets	Success rate	Time for 26 (seconds)
1	N/A	0	8	N/A	0.308	N/A	26		8		26-Apr
2	194	0	15	7.73%	0.577	N/A	52	194	23		27-Apr
3	189	87	2	1.06%	0.077	46.03%	78	383	25	6.5%	28-Apr
4	190	107	7	3.68%	0.269	56.32%	104	573	32	5.6%	29-Apr
5	192	105	11	5.73%	0.423	54.69%	130	765	43	5.6%	30-Apr
6	167	108	6	3.59%	0.231	64.67%	156	932	49	5.3%	01-May
7	174	114	14	8.05%	0.538	65.52%	182	1,106	63	5.7%	02-May
9	180	108	16	8.89%	0.615	60.00%	234	1,286	63	4.9%	04-May
10	166	118	18	10.84%	0.692	71.08%	260	1,452	79	5.4%	05-May
11	181	121	20	11.05%	0.769	66.85%	286	1,633	97	5.9%	06-May
12	176	115	24	13.64%	0.923	65.34%	312	1,809	117	6.5%	07-May
13	179	111	24	13.41%	0.923	62.01%	338	1,988	141	7.1%	08-May
14	176	125	19	10.80%	0.731	71.02%	364	2,164	160	7.4%	09-May
15	167	101	32	19.16%	1.231	60.48%	390	2,331	192	8.2%	12-May	1,290
16	147	90	35	23.81%	1.346	61.22%	416	2,478	227	9.2%	13-May	1,160
17	154	102	37	24.03%	1.423	66.23%	442	2,632	264	10.0%	14-May	1,255
18	170	94	48	28.24%	1.846	55.29%	468	2,802	312	11.1%	15-May	730

You can find out why I’m taking the 2.6 Basketball Challenge here  Any help you can offer is much appreciated!.