Sunday 19 June 2011

A Guide to Wimbledon

Pimms? Check. Strawberries? Check. Are your whites white? Check! Wimbledon kicks off on Monday and, as a bit of a tennis junkie and SW19 regular, I thought I’d share some stories and impart some wisdom (ha!) which may or may not be of use to people interested in visiting the Championships. Here we go…

How To Get There

Train
Trains run every 5 – 10mins from London Waterloo and a return will only cost you a few quid. There are also trains every 10 – 15mins from the Guildford / Woking direction. If you’re coming from somewhere else then best check the South West Trains website for times and changes.

Tube
Jump on the District Line (the green one) and head south. You can either ride all the way to Wimbledon Station or jump off at Southfields (two stops before) and walk. (Head down Wimbledon Park Road and after 5 - 10mins you’ll see the grounds on your right).

Buses
Once at Wimbledon Station, head out the main exit and there are shuttle buses directly in front that leave every 5 minutes and take you straight to the grounds and the queue. A single costs about 2 quid and a return is a bit more – please note that prices vary each year. (This is my transport of choice. One year we found ourselves walking back to the bus stop with Nikolay Davydenko wandering along a few steps in front of us without a care in the world… in the following December he went on to win the ATP Finals at the O2. Bizarre!)

Taxi
If you don’t want to wait for a bus, there’s a taxi rank outside the main exit and to the right. Obviously it works out cheaper if the cab’s full, so if there are only a couple of you why not befriend some strangers! (But don’t accept sweets from them!)

What To Take

Sun cream
If you don’t take anything else with you, make sure you take this! The last few years have delivered incredible weather and even though I’ve reapplied throughout the day I’ve left the grounds slightly toasted every time. My friend makes sure she reapplies every hour or so and yet she still burns. One year she even got burnt through her scarf (much to our amusement!).

Water
Forget what I said about sun cream – this is the one thing you need to take! Unless you’re on Centre Court all day and the roof is shut, you’re going to be in direct sunlight all day. Add that to queuing time and you’re probably going to be in it for 12+ hours, which means you’re going to be dehydrated before even considering a Pimms. Luckily, you can bring a bottle and keep re-filling at one of the taps around the grounds. You can also use the taps to cool yourself off it gets really hot… not that I have ever done that…

Lunch and snacks
Unless you’re lucky enough to be dining at the Wingfield Restaurant, you may want to bring your own picnic lunch. There is a food court but the prices are high and the food, honestly, isn’t anything to write home about. You’re better off heading to M&S Food for a selection of treats before you set out.

Camera
Obviously. You literally never know what’s going to happen at Wimbledon or what you’re going to see. Take a camera or regret it forever.

Umbrella
…ella, ella! Because, let’s face it, we’re in England. Plus it can double up as a sun shade (as long as you’re not on the show courts and obstructing someone’s view).

What To Wear

Obviously this depends on the weather. The last few years have blessed us with some absolutely glorious sunshine, meaning shorts, skirts, t-shirts and flip-flops have been standard attire. This year looks like it’s going to me more like the Wimbledon’s I remember from my childhood – rain delays, cowering under umbrellas and wishing you’d worn more layers.

However, this is England so there’s a good chance it’ll be brilliant sunshine one minute and freezing downpours the next. So the key to surviving the day is layers! Here’s what I’m planning to take:

- An outfit suitable for sunshine and heat
- A slightly warmer layer in case it’s a bit breezy
- A jumper / hoodie for colder moments and in case play continues into the evening (Isner v Mahut are scheduled for Round 1…)
- Waterproof jacket

Things To Check Out

Outside courts
If you’ve only got Grounds tickets then that doesn’t mean you can only watch stuff on the big screen. There are loads of outside courts featuring lower seeded players and doubles matches, some of which have seating and others where you can only stand. But they’re still good – last year we stood and witnessed an incredible doubles match where Dominic Inglot and Chris Eaton (two un-seeded Brits) defeated the world No.1’s – Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic. It was brilliant! The first week is the best for these courts – there’s more going on so the chances of seeing higher-ranked players is greater.

New plaque for Isner and Mahut
One of the outside courts is the now infamous Court 18 where John Isner and Nicholas Mahut played out their ridiculous 11 hours, 5 min battle. To celebrate their ridiculousness a commemorative plaque has been added – worth checking out if you’re around the court.

Practice courts
If you want to sneek a peek at your favourite players warming up, head down to the practice courts. There’s usually someone good down there – over the years we’ve seen Fed, Djokovic, Soderling, Monfils and Rafa. It’s a bit like a zoo in the sense that you have to queue up for a few minutes and the players are behind a fence, but if you can get past that then its brilliant!

Autograph island
You never know who’s going to be here but there’s usually someone signing stuff and smiling for photos with fans. So if you want someone to sign your giant novelty tennis ball, or even your arm, then keep an eye out!

Winners walk
If you snoop around under Centre Court you’ll stumble upon a wall charting all the winners of the singles and doubles matches throughout the years. Perfect for sheltering and killing time during rain delays!

Ticket Resale
Anyone with tickets who leaves before the end of play is encouraged to pop their ticket into one of the resale boxes outside the courts. They’re then re-sold for £5 (with the money going to charity) to anyone already in the grounds. The queues for Centre Court and Court 1 tickets are often long but it’s worth it if you want to see the greats in action, and around mid-afternoon they start to go down quite quickly. I do this every year and always get to see at least one entire match.

What Not To Do

Shout “C’mon Tim”
It is sort of mildly funny the first time round, but 5 days into the tournament and for the 3rd time during a match which doesn’t include a Brit, the joke gets a bit stale. It’s been 4 years since Tiger Tim played on these hallowed grass courts, time to move on.

Drunkenly complain about how much you hate tennis
Big sporting events attract corporate idiots. You may be there because of the free alcohol your company is providing and so you can boast when you’re back at the office, but remember there are genuine fans here who have literally queued for hours in burning sun / torrential rain and won’t even get onto a show court to see their idols. Shut up or hand in your ticket and get out.

Act like a crazed, tennis-loving 13-year-old girl
Okay, I may be slightly guilty of sprinting through the crowds to get a picture of Andy Roddick (people say they’ve never seen me move so fast) and I may have gasped quite loudly at Rafa removing his shirt when he was standing only a few feet away from me (In my defence I wasn’t alone and it was purely a reflex and thus out of my control – that guy has the body of a Greek god!), but I’m not proud of it. I would never run up to anyone and stutter “oh my god, I’m like, your biggest fan and I like, totally love you, please sign my face.” That’s not cool. Many of the players, particularly lower seeded ones, wander about the grounds along with everyone else. Respect their space, it’s not a zoo!

Take in massive banners and flags
First of all, this isn’t a football match. Second of all, anything that could obstruct spectators’ view will be taken off you at the security gates.

Shout, make any sudden movements or use flash photography during a point
This is a Grand Slam, not a quick rally in the local park. For the players, this is their livelihood and winning matches here can determine the path of their entire career. If the flow of the game is interrupted and the players get angry you’ll be glared at by the crowd and thrown out by security.

Litter
This really annoys me. Whether you’re in the queue in Wimbledon Park, sitting on Henman Hill or in prime position on Centre Court, take your rubbish with you. There are plenty of bins and there’s no excuse for being a slob.

Be annoying
Smoking and mobile phones are a massive NO. Don’t smoke in the stands, put your phone on silent and leave the stands before you make a call. It may be Wimbledon but the fans will lynch you if needs be.


So there we have it. Forget Christmas, this is what I consider “the most wonderful time of the year”. I’ll be down at the grounds for a couple of days over the coming week and following the rest of the action like an absolute hawk. Feel free to send any questions my way and I’ll try to answer them!

For all the official information from the Championships, visit the Wimbledon website.

Enjoy! (And beware of Wombles!)

Wednesday 15 June 2011

Inspiration

After writing about TED at the weekend I got hooked once again on their content and wanted to share some of my findings with you guys. Not only does the site feature talks from its own conferences, but it also lists talks from other meet-ups and discussions and speeches from Ivy League graduation ceremonies. There are loads of grad speeches on there, including a lol-tastic one by Seth Macfarlane, but there were two I found particularly inspirational and dished out what I considered to be some pretty damn good advice.

First was from the Harvard graduation ceremony in 2008 and given by a woman you may or may not have heard of… J.K. Rowling. Drawing on her own experiences, she talks about failure and achievement in the big bad world, how to deal with it and how to not lose hope. I have so much more respect for people like her than the Paris Hiltons of the world. Check out the video and the quote I found had the most impact below.

“Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV are not your life.”

Next was a speech by Steve Jobs at the Stanford graduation ceremony in 2005. His talk covers the story of his life, from being adopted to becoming CEO of Apple and Pixar and fighting cancer. Here’s the full video and a couple of quotes that stood out for me, the second of which I believe is some of the best advice you can give a person.




“You can't connect the dots looking forwards, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will connect some time in your future... believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”
 
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe it great work. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet keep looking and don't settle.” 

And that’s where we leave TED… but I couldn’t talk about inspiration without mentioning a book (yes, a book) that inspired me back at the beginning of 2010.  As you know I’m not a big reader (understatement) but occasionally I’ll start reading something and won’t be able to put it down - which was exactly the case with Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open. 

Thrust upon me by one of my bezzies, I wasn’t particularly enthralled with the idea of reading a book, but at the time I was intermittently temping, at points snowed in, and thus had a lot of time on my hands. Plus I love tennis so I figured I’d give it a whirl. I read the first few pages and didn’t look back. Agassi’s story is fascinating. I loved reading it, to the point where I had to ration myself to a chapter a day because I was literally doing nothing else – very bizarre given my relationship with books!

Open inspired me so so much. For some reason I can relate to SO much of what Agassi writes about. Not the experiences, obviously, but his thought processes, reasoning and constant struggle to understand himself. In fact, as I went through the book some of his words spoke to me in such a way that I felt it necessary to make note of them. Here's a few I picked out...

"What you feel doesn't matter in the end, it's what you do that makes you brave."

"Even if it's not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything."

And finally this quote – which is one I now live by. When I’m running and I want to stop these few sentences run through my head… I may as well get one of those wrist bands and have ‘What Would Agassi Do' on it! Anyway…

"This run, even if it brings on heatstroke, will give me peace of mind tonight in that all important ten minutes before I fall asleep. I now live for that ten minutes. I'm all about that ten minutes. I've been cheered by thousands, booed by thousands, but nothing feels as bad as the booing inside your own head during those ten minutes before you fall asleep."


So there we have it: a collection of words that inspire me and have lead me to make the decisions I have made over the past year or so. What’s your inspiration?

Monday 13 June 2011

Haaaaaaaave You Met TED?

The other day I was killing some time and catching up on events from the Twittersphere (cool-kid lingo – check!) when I came across a tweet linking to a video about happiness. Now, for those of you who don’t know me, here’s an insight into my teeny tiny brain – as soon as it comes to figuring out life and why people do and think the things they do I’m completely hooked. I’m fascinated by how different things affect different people and the whole psychological aspect of what influences both our everyday and life choices. So discovering TED.com was like discovering a secret stash of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk during a lengthy stint in the USA.

TED (which stands for technology, entertainment and design) is a non-profit organisation made up of two annual international conferences and a bunch of smaller projects dedicated solely to discussing and spreading ideas. No matter what your background, religion or race, TED is about sharing knowledge and inspiring others in order to change attitudes and lives.

Each year at the two main conferences, the world’s most captivating speakers are invited to each give an 18 minute speech on whatever takes their fancy… as long as it’s relative, that is. There’s no chat about favourite family holidays or who should have been voted off last week’s X Factor. The conference is extremely popular and ridiculously expensive, but luckily for us mere peasants all the talks are uploaded onto their website for our viewing pleasure. Excellent if you like to dabble in all things philosophical, not so excellent if you have a life to lead and deadlines to meet. I wrote off almost an entire Saturday because of this site. In fact I was so absorbed by it all that I believe I even missed a meal.

So anyway, this video about happiness had me engrossed from the word go. Over the past couple of years my main aim has been to achieve a good balance of happiness in general life and work, but it’s not something I’ve managed to grasp just yet. As a result, the ideas discussed in this video induced what I can only describe as an absolute headf**k. By the end of it I was questioning EVERYTHING. Is leaving England the right thing to do? Do I really want to do it? Did I really just miss a meal? Oh. God. 

This 20 min talk by Srikumar Rao, a teacher, writer and life coach, explains the concept of how people use what he calls the ‘if/then model’ (If I do this, then I will be happy), how it’s flawed because we’re constantly changing the ‘if,’ and thus how we’re ultimately setting ourselves up for failure by using it. This worries me a lot because my whole reasoning for leaving was something along the lines of: “if I go somewhere new, meet different people and follow one of my ambitions then I’ll be happier than I am now, sitting in this dungeon of an office and doing something irrelevant to my life.” But by this guy’s reckoning, once I do all that, I’ll find myself unhappy again and I’m just going to change my ‘if’ to something else, like: if I go back to England and get my dream job, then I will be happy. Ahhhhh! So am I just setting myself up to fail? AM I? I hate this website.

Mr Rao explains that the reason the model is flawed is because people do not accept the world for what it is. When you see a rainbow you stand back and admire it, you don’t stand back and say “that’s a nice rainbow but it would be better if you moved it a bit to the left and that tree wasn’t blocking part of it.” Which is exactly what we do with life… “I’ve just got my dream job but it would be better if it didn’t have a one hour commute” … “My boyfriend bought me some beautiful earrings but I wish they were the ones I pointed out to him last week.” We say stuff like this all the time.

As for accepting the world for what it is, I’m a little confused. During the several months after I graduated I definitely didn’t accept the world for what it was, but then that was hugely influenced by other people rather than my own judgement of situations. After that, my only way of digging myself out of the disaster that was 2009 was just to accept what was going on a roll with it, even though I was far from happy. Back then I was definitely guilty of using the ‘if/then model’ – if I get a job then I will be happy. Well, we all know how that’s worked out… But then on the other hand I don’t believe we should accept what happens to us just because that’s the way the world is. Yes, you can apply it to mother nature – rainbows are great and hurricanes are bad but either way there’s nothing you can do to change either; but when it comes to what we do with our lives surely it’s up to us to accept what we do or do not settle for? I’d rather strive to achieve my goals than sit back, accept my bad luck, wait for something to happen and then regret all that I didn’t bother trying for. 

But Srikumar Rao reckons there’s still hope. Apparently the way to combat this flawed model is to invest in the process rather than the outcome. That way if the process fails then it doesn’t mean you’ve failed to meet your goal, just that you need to try a different method of reaching it; and I think that is more appropriate to me. I don’t believe that moving will miraculously solve all my problems and make me happy. If anything, it’s going to be one of the hardest challenges of my life. I need to make new friends, find somewhere to live and find a job, and do all of it on my own. Even though I have a visa I’m fully expecting it to be just as hard, if not harder, than finding a job here in London. I know there’s every chance I may fail, end up travelling until my money runs out and return to the horrible job market and recruitment agencies of London with my tail between my legs. But at least I’ll be living. Ultimately, all I want to do in this next year is challenge myself and prove to myself that I’m not totally worthless as a human being – like I was made to feel in the months after graduation. 

I suppose the biggest issue I have with this ‘if/then model’ is that I can’t focus on the outcome because I don’t really know what it is I’m aiming for. I have no idea what’s going to make me happy which means I must be investing in the process rather than the outcome… right? All I know is that I want live abroad for a bit and I enjoy writing so that’s what I’m going to do. Writing this blog is all experience and, even if it’s not a paid profession, one day it may help me in some way.

So that’s that. Analysis over. To be honest I’m not really any clearer on the matter so I’m just filing it away in my brain as ‘food for thought.’ Maybe you can make more sense of it…

Wednesday 1 June 2011

Mind The Gap

team run!
When I first started writing this blog one of the first things I did was set out a schedule so I had something to work towards each week. It was never meant to be a solid schedule, more of a guideline to encourage me to regularly post something of interest. So far, I think I’ve done quite well… or at least I’m happy with my achievements… that was until I realised I haven’t actually posted anything for two weeks. In my head that’s a poor show on my part, so here’s the blog I intended to post last weekend and a little bit about why I’ve been so crap…

Last Saturday, instead of having a nice lazy morning like most of the people I know, I got up at 7.15am and was on a train and headed for Richmond by 8am for my 5k run. As you know, I’m running the London 10k in July and am fundraising for The British Heart Foundation and RNLI, so this 5k was my version of a ‘warm up’ and a way to give myself an idea of my current fitness level and speed. All runners would be electronically chipped in this race (not like a dog, but with tags round our ankles like convicts) so this was a good way to figure out the time I was aiming for. Brilliant plan. What could go wrong?

We arrived at the race ready and raring to go (translation: sleepy and craving our beds), sorted ourselves out and warmed up. Eager to get started (so we could venture back into town, have breakfast and peruse the vintage car shop), we numbered up, tagged up and headed for the start line. The official gave us a quick rundown of the course, mentioned that that first kilometre had “slight incline” (joy!) and started the clock. We were off. And then the sun came out.

convict's electronic tag
After that it’s all a bit of a blur. All I know is that the at least 3 of the 5k were on a “slight incline” and 95% of it was in direct sunlight with no option of finding any shade. It was HOT, the sun was directly in my face for the 3rd and 4th kilometre and I almost threw up all over the second to last race marshal who was cheering me on. I would go as far as saying it was my worst running experience ever - I’ve never felt that bad whilst running before. In normal circumstances I would’ve stopped for a break but in this instance I was being timed by my stupid convict’s ankle chip so I didn’t want to let myself down. I somehow kept going, crossed the line at 29.58mins (my goal was to be under 30mins, ha!) and felt horrific for the rest of the day.

Now… a sensible person, having spent the previous few days battling a painful throat gland, would probably have taken it easy for the rest of the day, but me? No. I headed off that afternoon to a bbq and party, opting to cycle there through London and to immediately hit the Pimms. It was an excellent decision… at the time.

Four days later though, the sore gland was back, which spread quickly to my entire throat and gradually worked its way to my ears. I felt TERRIBLE. I left work early, headed straight to the doctors – who told me I had an infection that was starting to attack my tonsils and gave me a million antibiotics – and headed straight home to bed.  Five days later (today) and I’m actually out of bed, showered and have just eaten a whole gingerbread man. This may sound pathetic but it’s actually my greatest achievement of the week!

What’s funny is that as I’ve been lying in bed watching time slowly tick away, surrounded by empty strepsil wrappers and various ibuprofen and penicillin packets, I haven’t been worrying about the fact I’m missing work and getting behind. Other than being upset about missing out on all my bank holiday plans, what’s annoyed me most is that I’ve missed out on two of my scheduled blogs. I guess that speaks volumes (it certainly proves that my decision to leave my job is the right one!). So I’m going to do my best to get the other blog out by this weekend at the very latest.

In the meantime, you can still sponsor me for my upcoming 10k by clicking HERE. If you could also arrange for the sun not to come out on the morning of July 10th that would be GREAT! *cries*

post death run