Over the hill?

I think the common perception is skateboarding is a young man's game, I'm constantly aware that people may be thinking to theirself, "he's too old to be doing that". Other's might think "that guy's having a mid-life crisis"!

Dunfermline skatepark

Middle age is a concept I've never really understood, I mean, Kurt Cobain was twenty seven when he died, making him middle aged at thirteen and a half. If I'm already eight years older than he was at the end of his life, where do we go from here?

Is it all downhill?

Language!

Well, nowadays it is. I moved to the north of Dunfermline a few months back and everything is literally down the hill from there. Before I moved I had a short walk to the local skatepark through the train station, and over the hill. Nowadays, it's a longer walk down the hill. A fair bit of skating can be achieved on the way to speed up the journey, but it's a long way back up the hill afterwards, especially if you're knackered!

Whay can't we all just get along?

 My general fitness is not great just now, I'm (a little) overweight and suffer from something called Sacroilliac Joint Dysfunction.  The two SI joints are located at the base of your spine where the pelvis connects onto it at either side. It isn't supposed to move much and is held in place tightly by ligaments. Unfortunately over time these ligaments can be torn through heavy lifting or general wear and tear. In this case, the ligaments can't hold the joint in place as tightly as it should be and the joint moves more than it should. This movement cause the joint to get irritated and inflamed and the resulting pain is excruciating.

Anatomy lessons.

I seem to be over the worst of it and have attended numerous physio sessions to try and improve the symptoms. Thankfully, anti-inflammatories seem to be controlling it now while the muscles around the joint are strengthening to give it extra support. I'm thinking that stopping skating and losing a lot of strength in my legs/glutes/abs as a result hasn't helped. Maybe that will improve the more I skate?


Having said that, I went to the local skatepark yesterday with my eight year old son, Kyle.
I bought him a new helmet, as his old Power Rangers one doesn't fit the image he was wanting to portray nowadays, and off we went. It's good to be able to pass on some sort of legacy and although he's not much into skateboarding, he brought his BMX and enjoyed riding around the park.

My son Kyle.

A couple of kids from his school appeared, so I just let him play with them get on with it while I got a bit of a skate in. I work a lot and I don't get as much time to spend with Kyle as I would like and when I do I'm often too tired after a ten hour shift to do anything physical. The back thing put a lot of activities on hiatus anyway, But I think I should try harder.

At one point I heard one of his little buddies say "you've got a cool dad". This struck a chord with me and I felt very proud. I hope some of this new found enthusiasm for skating might allow me to develop my fitness so I can spend more time doing things like this wth him so I can consider his friend's words to be true.

Did some more work on no-complies today, nailed a couple on a wee ledge and on the small transititon. I hung on long enough to ride out one FS 50-50 grind  on the small transition, but it took several attempts. Getting there slowly but surely...