UCT Hockey Article (pre-Varsity slaughter)

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to write an article for the Varsity paper about the UCT Internal Hockey League. I did so and it was eventually published. Somehow someone, between me sending it in to the hockey committee and Varsity newspaper publishing it, cut out half the words of the article. The talented editor took out paragraphs, sentences and random words in the middle of sentences leaving behind an article bearing my name that made almost zero sense and looked like it was written by a 12 year old on acid from the special English class – not unlike your average Youth League press statement. To save a bit of face I’ve decided to go ahead and post my original article pre-slaughter:

Many moons ago, in the time before our father’s fathers, the UCT Internal Hockey League was conceptualised. The vision was to create a platform for the beginner, social and seasoned hockey players alike to spend Sundays otherwise spent watching impressively unimaginative reruns of the blasphemously named ‘Chuck’ or losing internal football matches to Idiot FC.

Years later and the legacy lives on with teams of varying ability, vibe and colour – otherwise it would be hard to tell them apart – continuing to vie for the title. The league in question refers to real hockey played on a surface that doesn’t melt away in half-decent weather, played with a spherical ball and with only one player per side padded to the hilt. Anyone with a tendency to place the word ‘field’ before the name of the sport should:

a)      Practice consistency with the naming of sports – ‘field soccer’ might be a good start -, and

b)      Work on their accent

Apart from the res teams which drift in and out of existence, the honour of the oldest team in the league falls upon the defending champions, Average Joes. Incorporated soon after the release of the movie ‘Dodgeball’ by the exceedingly regular and unexciting Mr Joe, Joes are currently captained by Andrew ‘Grunter’ Grant and play in black and yellow (black and yellow). The team also includes two of Cape Town’s hottest DJ’s Carl Wiesner and James White – both members of the UCT 4^th team that recently took down Stellenbosch 3^rd XI.

Identifying themselves as challengers to the currently unbeaten Joes’ throne is Mavericks, the only other unbeaten side in the league thus far. The Mavericks’ run includes the prize scalp of 26:8 (a Bible verse that is harder to find than one might think – poorly referenced if you ask me) who were last years semi-finalists as well as the runner’s up Smuts House.

The Mavericks were founded three years ago in the memory of the very late Sir Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803 – 1870), the grandfather of U.S. Congressman Maury Maverick, who coined the term ‘gobbledygook’, and the source of the word ‘maverick’ meaning ‘independantly minded’ as well as the name given to his unbranded cattle, also known as ‘Hairy Dicks’ (Wikipedia, 2011). It is also a much-underrated strip-club in Cape Town. A gentleman knows.

In the league of Dolls, Ayoba! Lead the way with an unbeaten start including a 5-3 win over defending champions Tartans. Despite losing their multi-million dollar sponsorship from MTN due to naming rights issues stemming from serious overkill of the word and the fact that the use of the said word died with the advertising campaign in mid-2010 – the year Ayoba! (Apparently the exclamation mark is a necessary addition) were started by current captain Donne Brotherton, who incidentally holds the highly esteemed honour of two Mavericks caps to her name and the ability to hit the ball harder than most of her male contemporaries. The fact that Ayoba! Top the standings despite falling out of the top 4 last year comes as no surprise as their rumoured link to the talented, good-looking and manly Mavericks squad (which boast the likes of Brett ‘Hottest Dummie 2010’ Snyders, Jason ‘Cosmo’ Trautmann and Beki ‘Midnight’ Ngulube, whose name directly translates to: ‘have faith almighty bushpig’) seems to be rubbing off on them. “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing” (vince Lombardi) – just ask any Lions fan.

The Internal League has split into two leagues in both the Men’s and Ladies section in a move toward a strength-v-strength format. The much awaited finals day will take place in the 3^rd quarter, the men’s final being preceded by what is arguably the highlight of the UCT sporting calendar – closely followed by the Varsity Cup Final): Bushpigs vs Quaggas. The Bushies and Quaggs, the latter of which rhymes uncannily with a word that probably wouldn’t be published if I wrote it, are two social but serious external sides plying their trade in the dregs of the Western Province League against all odds and cheating officials. The opening goal of last years derby was scored by Andrew Smith – painted and dressed as an Avatar – with a guitar,m while this years warm-up match was settled by a fiercely contested game of ‘open gates’ during the half-time interval. No doubt a must-see!

For lack of a quirky phrase to end the article, I’ll do so in a [possibly incorrectly attributed] quote from Bushies captain Tarleton ‘Heartburn’ Hepburn when asked whether he prefers grass or astro: “I son’t know. I’ve never smoked Astroturf”.

I Survived an MRI Scan. Just.

Things I was scared of before having an MRI scan:

·         Knives

·         Needles

·         Waking up as a Bulls fan

·         Knives

Things I’m now scared of:

·         MRI scans

Some pieces I write are simply as an outlet for my thoughts. This one is different; I am now writing to teach. If you have consistent headaches for a couple months; take panados and keep your trap shut!

I was getting along just fine -bar a series of headaches that were more annoying than a Radio Algoa advert break – until my doctor suggested I get X-Rays of my neck in light of significant stiffness since my long jog (“Knysna: I run this city”). As the gay radiologist from Port Alfred – wearing a scarf indoors is a dead giveaway mate – told me to tilt my head back while I was standing against some board for the X-Ray a wave of tiredness hit me before I blacked out –only girls and men who wear scarves indoors ‘faint’ – and found myself being helped onto a chair by the scarf-clad radiologist and another older female radiologist from Kenton who was chatting to me at the reception trying to get me to add her son as a Facebook friend because he was lonely in Kenton. Not the most manly moment of my life.

The result of my black-out was – beside a heavy bout of embarrassment – an appointment with a neurologist – an Afrikaans man whose lack of friendliness suggested he was still smarting from the Sharks’ 19 point drubbing of the Bulls the previous week. The single appointment ballooned into an EEG - (Electro, something I can’t remember or spell that starts with an ‘E’, Graph) where some lady rubbed aqueous cream all over my face like a dry-skinned black man in winter before sticking a host of electrodes on my skull leaving me looking like a science experiment –, a blood test – recall my fear of needles -, and an MRI scan.

Now, in my mind, an MRI scan entailed lying on a bed that moves in and out of a massive metal donut type thing so that machines can take 3-D pictures of the inside of my head, not unlike technology standard to a CSI episode that ends in an annoying ginger with a weird voice putting sunglasses on inside a caravan.

When I walked into the room my first suspicion was confirmed: It was a massive metal donut type thing, though the hole in the middle where the human was inserted was smaller than I initially imagined. The scan itself, however, did not go nearly as I expected.

As I sat on the table in preparation for my scan, I was told that the process would last 45 minutes and that I’d be on a drip that would be laced with ink halfway through to make my veins stick out - weird, I thought, but chilled. I lay down and got a pair of ear plugs thrust into my ears to protect me from the noise I was warned the machine would make. Little pillows were then stuffed either side of my head to further protect me from the noise – a lie – and to keep my head still – dead still. As I was electronically thrust, head first, into the massive machine donut the ladies in charge told me to keep my eyes closed for the duration of the scan. I was told the same thing for my EEG, which lasted 20 minutes, and during which I managed to doze off so I expected much of the same. My inquisitiveness took over as soon as the bed stopped inside the machine and I opened my eyes. I shut them immediately as I realised that the reason the nurses tell patients to keep their eyes closed is not for the purposes of the scan but to keep the patients from realising that they are tightly enclosed in a small bubble. I instantly regained my forgotten fear of small spaces. Thanks largely due to ‘The Postbox’ tunnel at Cango Caves and trips to Tin Roof in the boot of a car I have learnt that I am not the biggest fan of being buried alive, something I tend to forget when asked to list my fears. As my body started breaking out in a panicked sweat I was on the verge of kicking out in a desperate attempt to escape my premature burial. I realised then that I’d have to suck it up because I had no doubt that it was the only way to get rid of my damn headaches and that my Dad would never let me forget the fact that he’d managed an MRI scan just fine and I hadn’t!

The sounds kicked in just in time. I managed to get through the first 5 to 10 minutes of the scan by thinking of ways to describe the sounds in an article – hence me wasting no time in whipping out my laptop on the way home to get cracking on this piece! The sounds were repetitive in a sense, but also varied. My favourite combination made me thing of a very cheeky child playing a brave game of tok-tokkie with a combination of door bells buzzing loudly and incessant wood-on-wood knocking. Along with this was a sound not dissimilar to a razor and other sounds that made me feel like a hobo trying to catch 40 winks on a massive construction site – probably in the underground bunker of Julius Malema’s new 16 mil mansion.

The sounds kept my mind busy and, on one beautiful occasion, put me to sleep. My short slumber was rudely interrupted with a little snore but it was enough to allow me to fool myself into thinking I was almost finished. As I lay in the chamber with my eyes tightly shut I fought the urge to lift my legs. Part of me wanted to know if it was only my head and not my whole body that was enclosed while the other part knew full well that I’d have a comprehensive panic attack if that were actually the case. Every time the platform on which I lay moved I prayed to the Gods of medicine that I was being moved out of my giant metal donut grave, only to open my eyes and realise I was still inside.

Then it came. The bed moved more than it had on its 3 or so previous movements. I opened my eyes to the well-lit white ceiling of the room. My muscles relaxed. The sweating stopped. Angels were singing a Justin Bieber song. My nurse had somehow transformed into Scarlett Johannson. The needle that had been stuck into my arm for the past 40 minutes was far from my mind. Being a Bulls fan was almost comprehensible - almost. My fear of butter knives subsided. The world was a different place. The world was a better place. I had made it!

Now for another life lesson or two:

If you are a nurse or a radiologist; instead of asking whether I’ve had an operation in the last year or if I take any medication often, maybe make a small enquiry as to my fondness for small enclosures. At the very least, a mild warning would have been nice. On top of that, if you had half an entrepreneurial mind, you would offer to add some sedatives to the drip for a small fee and sell T-shirts saying “I survived an MRI”.

If you are for any reason contemplating an MRI scan, before you take the slow plunge;  take a heavy dose of sedatives, get some good songs in your head, psyche up your imagination, keep your eyes tightly shut and brace yourself for a shitty experience.

Therefore, in a conclusion that will shatter any made by Einstein or Hawking before me: If you want to rid yourself of any phobia you find yourself stuck with, get a new one! Have an MRI scan.

Knysna Marathon: I run this city!

It takes a dreamer to think about running a marathon. It takes a compulsive planner to enter a marathon. It takes discipline to train properly for a marathon and it takes an over-competitive and slightly demented minded person to actually run the damn thing. Needless to say I’m not very disciplined and am paying for my sins by feeling like a 95 year old with a walking stick lodged halfway up his arse two days after running the Knysna Forest Marathon.

The desire to run a marathon stems from my life-long competition with my father. Our relationship involves a lot of teasing and whenever I bring up his matric report (“Ed’s final results is going to be a cliff-hanger!”) and my degree versus his absence of tertiary education, it doesn’t take him long to bring up the fact that no matter what I’ve done in my life, it’s not as hard as running 89kms between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. That’s 15 laps of Kenton!

I entered the race after managing the Two Oceans half marathon pretty well on the back of no proper training but a fair bit of fitness built up from a variety of sports I indulge myself in at Varsity to excuse myself from doing Auditing tuts. I figured with a bit of training I’d be able to double my feat. I ran a 1h36 in the half, a good time under the circumstances but attributed completely to the fact that I could not stand the thought of friends of mine beating me! I clung to their coattails the entire race and pipped them with a couple k’s to go. My reward was a medal, a lesson never to eat a rusk after a long run and ligament injury in my foot.

My training period coincided with study leave with exam week being the week leading up to the run. As good as exercise is for studying, it’s pretty hard to get your body in a state of concentration after running 15km’s, so that was about as long as any of the runs lasted.

I signed up to run the race with Jonty, a very good friend of mine from way back when I used to go to Kingswood pre-primary every Thursday.

Wrapped in a blanket and black plastic bag, we left drove from Plett to Knysna and boarded the taxi to take the trip into the Knysna Forest for the start. Despite hoping for a powerful rendition of Chariots of Fire on the trip, we were subjected to some R&B song on triple repeat before a slow love song played to our exit from the bus.

The taxi dropped us off in somewhat of a no-man’s land with the sounds of a bilingual Afrikaans announcer echoing through the woods. A 300m or so walk in the darkness was a bit unnerving as we pictured Fiela se Kind reaching out and grabbing us any second. If I remember correctly she turned out pretty decent looking in the movie so maybe that wouldn’t have been the worst thing after all. I’d just have to teach her a bit of English.

Very unlike the dog show of a start experienced at the two oceans - admittedly I was in the seeded group due to me having run 10 ultra-marathons, being over-50 and called Peter (the name of my girlfriends father) – creeping up to the front of the 1200 runners was hardly challenging, if not bitterly over-optimistic. The mood was relaxed as everyone around us seemed to have done this before, apart from the short podgy coloured lady cracking the same line repeatedly (“is this the seeded section? [laugh at own joke while everyone pretends to chuckle despite having heard it 3 seconds and 6 seconds earlier, finding it funny on neither occasion]”). The average age of the runners must have been over 40, which made me feel a lot younger than I’m going to feel when I become a 25-year-old first year article clerk in 2013.

The starting gun went off somewhere in the dark with no audible countdown. Knowing very little about the route, we figured that we’d treat the first 14 of the 42.9k’s - note the ‘.9’, thank you- as a warm up and figured that we’d be able to run the last 10 on adrenaline in contemplation of the finish. That left us with two sets of 10kms in the middle to negotiate with the combined effort of a little training and a helluva lot of self-motivation, denial and mental stubbornness!

Runners are encouraged to run with their blankets and jackets in the beginning before handing them over to needy locals who “line the streets” waiting for their gifts. This so-called tradition seems to have been oligopolised by a few of the locals who struggled under the weight of jackets thrown at them. I waited for a needy looking human but after 5 or so k’s of running with a blanket over my shoulders like an athletic, manly Mother Theresa I tossed it aside next to the 38km sign signalling distance remaining. Admittedly the traditional needy mobs might not have been so keen on coming out an hour earlier for the fewer mentally deranged marathon runners and waited for the 7000-strong half-marathon brigade.

 Jonty had little desire to run the race with me, knowing full well that I was too competitive to let him, so we split up a couple of kilometres from the start and I was left to my own company for the remainder of the race. The first 12-ish kilometres cruised by pretty easily despite the constant uphill, or in the case of the Knysna marathon, up-mountain. I learnt a fair amount about the demographics of the runners in those early stages as I completely ignored the first guy who spoke to me partly because I thought he was talking to the long-grey haired man on my other side who was most probably Fiela’s husband and partly because I had absolutely nought idea of what he was saying! To understand Afrikaans my brain needs to be tuned in to pick up the few words I do know and slow them down to a reasonable speed in my mind so that I can decipher what has been said to me! After a second Afrikaans man asked me something only to get a sheepish confused English reply from yours truly, I put the two above-mentioned experiences together along with the places the other runners came from – Brackenfell, Durbanville, Paarl, Strand etc - to realise I not only stuck out because of my age, but also because of my home-language, instantly fulfilling my curiosity as what it would feel like being a white guy at a Youth League rally. As far as the black runners were concerned, I saw them at the starting tent, some filling up tog bags of free Pick ‘n Pay treats provided by the race sponsors, but not again until prize-giving where they monopolised (nationalised?) the podium.

My two tactics as far as in-race entertainment was concerned was to name the runners around me - Oom Piet from Paarl and Elsabet from Maties passed me and got passed in return at regular intervals- and to play songs over and over in my head. Unfortunately the first song that came into my head was: “she’ll be coming (running) ‘round the mountain when she comes”.

The first sign of bad things to come was when a marshal atop the first climb pointing us down our first steep descent of four let off an evil Voldemort-worthy laugh. Supporters in the forest were few and far between with volunteers offering coke and water every two-and-a-half k’s doing their best to encourage and console. The halfway mark brought a fair amount of relief and a rather worrying realisation: I had just matched the longest run in my life but I still had another 21 (.45) kilometres to go!

My goal for the race was not to walk at all. After trying to simultaneously run and drink coke from a cup I had to slightly readjust my sights to include a stop and go at the table to down my half-glass of coke. The sugar boost was essential and well worth the next kilometre of burping! At times in the middle stages of the race I would find myself 100m behind the next person and 50m ahead of the followers. With nothing but trees for company and “she’ll be running ‘round the mountain” stuck in my head I yearned for my i-pod and some Creedence Clearwater and Europe ‘treffers’ to keep the mood up and the mind adrift!

And then it came.

There’s little worse when, 25kms into a long run you start a steep and long descent knowing full well that every stride down will require 4 shuffles up to get back to the altitude from which you started! The hill, no, mountain we had to climb was long. It was steep. It was hard. I swear sparingly when I write but there is a time when swearing is necessary. This mountain was not only a mother-fucker; it quite liked to bend over fathers, sons, daughters and grandfathers all the same! My aim of not walking was shattered as after 4km’s of shuffling at a snail’s pace up the mountain with little sign of the summit I had to break into a series of 5 walking strides every 100m to shift the pain from my calves and hamstrings. To rub it all in, there was a camera man ready to indulge in our pain at the top of the mountain followed by a sea of half-marathon runners in which to get lost in!

Despite being over-taken by some people who looked like they were either wheel-chair bound very soon or part of an MTV episode of ‘Made’ there was one significant bright side: all of a sudden there were ‘steeks’ around us! From looking at balding Afrikaans men in a bid to find a suitable name the view just became a lot more bearable! As we met the throngs of runners who were on course for a 2hour plus time in their mild jog we had to negotiate another long, steep decline through the beautiful Simola Golf Estate. While the half-runners around me saved their knees by trodding down carefully, my quads did not have the strength and left me flying down the hill to the detriment of my knees and back!

My joy at seeing the 10km mark pass slowly by was somewhat drenched with anger as people around me started congratulating me for passing halfway! All I had to differentiate myself from the people who I’d run 20kms more than was a black number instead of a red one! I thought the least I should be entitled to was an entourage of photographers and a Greek-style wreath atop my head! Maybe add in a shirt reading ‘Hardcore. Lank Hardcore’ on the back and I reckon that might have been fair.

Nonetheless, as the clay slash gravel roads became brick paving and then tar road the legs began to weaken at quite a rate and I immediately understood the physics behind the energy efficient old-man shuffle-run. Feasting on the oranges, bananas and baked potatoes that got offered to us once we joined the half-marathon route - fair? Fu*k no! –along with the odd slap of the legs was required to inject some life into my body and avoid being over taken by an ageing humpbacked lady. The will to push myself to the finish depleted as I had to climb a set of stairs in a bottleneck of eager runners. My theory of adrenaline had worn off somewhat as I approached the field in the last kilometre of the race. The fact that the half-marathon had been delayed coupled with me not running with a watch had lead me to believe that I had no chance to reach my preliminary goal of a sub 4 hour run. As I rounded the final bend with the race clock in sight – in sight to normal people, not to my ever-weakening eyes – a shout from a spectator of: “Hurry up so you can get there under 4!” generated some residual energy from a hidden location within me prompting a gallop toward the line. I managed to get in 10 seconds under the 4 hour mark, something that was the least of my concerns as the relief of finishing nearly overwhelmed me completely and I searched the area for a grassy patch to collapse!

Collapse I did. Stretch I did not. I tried but I could hardly lift my legs 45 degrees despite help from my friend Bee, mysteriously glowing with delight at my state, or lack thereof! It took a massage in the medical tent, 4 Pick ‘n Pay Powerade clones (horrible things), a Reds Super 15 victory and the discovery that Jonty had also completed the run successfully for the feat to start sinking in. To cap the day off, we hung around for the prize-giving for the sole reason that we found chairs and could not yet contemplate a walk to the car, only for Jonty to win a camera worth a grand-and-a-half at the lucky draw! Our prior plan to celebrate our weeks of sobriety brought on by training and, to a larger extent, exams were cast aside by my very unhappy lower body. Two days later, legs aching and shoulders mysteriously stiff, I know I haven’t done my last long run. Jonty assures me he has! The stiffness and soreness has left parts of my lower body rather inflated – no, unfortunately not that part – leaving me with a valuable lesson: If you want a big boep – dop lank. If you want big guns – gym lank. If you want massive calves – run a marathon.