Just back yesterday from 9 days in Cornwall for my annual surf trip. Surf wasn't up to much what with the wind being on-shore and the weather patterns not conducive to producing good surf. I had gone, as I did last year with no prep, e.g. no pull ups or exercises that would have helped with paddling and stamina and therefore knew that I wouldn't be doing a lot of surfing. Turns out that I went in most days for a paddle around and got to my feet in some slop when I went for the waves. What I did notice on the one day that was good at Gwenva was that there was no-one in. A couple of local blokes had a go at one point, one was older than me and the other was a Matman and he had a broken hand that was wrapped up and bandaged. There were plenty of 'Surfers' on the beach and tons more up at the campsite all posing with their boards and camper vans, but, weirdly no-one in the water when it was six foot + and producing powerful and rideable waves?
If this had been 1986/87 we'd have been out there, Paul the Oz always used to say 'You have to surf everything - the good, the bad and the crap to be any good', and we'd have been out there with several of the locals - Janus Howard, Squiddy, Kevin Mathews, Andy Fern, Chris Roynan et al. But today - no-one. I reckon this is because they were probably all too busy on their Facebook and Twatter accounts talking crap to each other to be bothered with surfing. Besides what with their sedentary lives that they lead, they probably couldn't even get out there?
I suppose considering I'm fifty and hadn't done any pre-training I did as well as expected, but I have to concede that my back suffered. Although I'm not 100% certain that it was totally down to the surfing as the day the bad back ensued I'd batted and played cricket with a bunch of kids on the campsite for 4 hours, more of that later.
