Wow 0 vanilla slices today

It’s day three of my holiday. I put on my jeans and felt the snugness that comes with eating too many vanilla slices (amongst other things).

I’m now on belt home 3, I had hoped not to revisit belt hole 3. Belt hole 3 signifies failure, a lack of discipline, a life of fun and games and not enough physical effort.

So what to do? Well I’m on holiday and I’m still going to enjoy myself, after all my Victorian friends have told me how good the food is here so it would be wrong not to enjoy myself. Discipline and hard work can wait for when I get home.

The deeper question is why have I let myself go after losing a few kilograms at the beginning of the year and keeping to belt hole 0 for so long.

The reasons are manifold and include a general lack of motivation to maintain discipline and a greater lack of motivation to exercise. In previous years I’ve got out and walked for about 40 minutes at least once a day even in the dead of a Canberra winter.

I’ve still been waking up early but this year I’ve just not felt motivated. I need to get back to getting out and walking. I also need to get better with portion control.

So what happened on day 3 of my holiday? I spent most of the day sitting on my well proportioned arse at the Geelong Arena watching women’s artistic gymnastics. For a portion of the day I enjoyed watching Miss13 compete for Delta Brisbane in the level 7 competition. Most years when I can get to this event it’s been Miss17 who I’ve watched but Miss17 is in grade 12 and in her last week of high school. Miss17 is as always carrying a reasonable injury at the moment too so she sensibly elected not to compete. For Miss13 though this is her first national club championships and it’s great to see her in competition.

For readers not familiar with gymnastics the event is broken up into two days of competition for each level. The first day it’s like heats of a race. On the second day the best clubs compete.

Watching gymnastics can be pretty boring, there’s a lot of warming up and for each apparatus a competitor may only spend a minute or so doing their thing. The vault is over in the few seconds but they get two goes. I find the beam the most nerve wracking to watch. Balance is such a fine thing. After losing my hearing in my left ear I find balance even more precious and watching these young competitors wobble and regain balance, occasionally performing flawlessly occasionally fighting gravity and losing, I am in awe of how the human body can with skill and training do amazing things. All hail the vestibular apparatus. 

The Geelong Arena is surprisingly small. Having watched the same competition at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra and having attended other competitions I’m surprised for a national championship such a small arena has been chosen.

For the spectators this is fantastic. You are very close to the floor and you get a much better appreciation of the competition. I’d happily come here again.

So what did I eat today. For breakfast I went for a bit of a walk and found a café close to the hotel. The Rio Café is a small friendly looking place that does a basic breakfast which is served all day as well as sandwiches and fairly good coffee. I asked for poached eggs and bacon and also enjoyed a couple of flat white coffees.

The eggs were poached nicely. The yolks we’re runny and there was no taste of vinegar in the egg white. The two bacon rashers were cooked well, not over cooked which is a cooking crime. The toast was white bread with butter. I elected not to eat the toast.

For lunch there is a tuck shop at the arena and they served potato gems with tomato sauce. It was very diffuse to go past them.

As I wrote above, I find watching the balance beam the most terrifying. Especially when there is a handstand involved or spinning. I watched some amazing ‘saves’ today, bodies on the edge, Gravity winning but human determination and strength winning. The emotions are high and low for the competitors and spectators alike. We all watched an amazing floor routine and at the end the gymnast fell. She cried, we cried.

Miss13 had a good first day. This is her leaping on the balance beam. She nailed the landing 🙂

After the afternoon session I went to get something for dinner. I found a greasy spoon called Scooby Sue and got a burger. It had lots of coleslaw and sour cream. It did the trick and hit the right spot!

I went back to watch the Level 10 competition and then returned to the hotel to write this post.

So do you enjoy watching sport? I think to get back to belt hole 0 I need to do more than just watch sport 😀

Here are some photographs of Miss13 going through her paces today.