Sisters as inspiration…

Image courtesy of Paul Martin Eldridge/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have literally dozens of half-baked posts lined up waiting to be fully baked, but I must break into transmission with some exciting (to me, anyway) news.

My big sister is, as I type, in sunny Torino (that’s Turin, Italy, for the non-Italian savvy among us) for the world Masters Games.

In case you don’t know, the Masters Games is an international sporting meet for sportspeople over 30.

I’d like you to notice that word, ‘sportspeople’.  It’s kind of important.  Because, as looking at a picture of me will probably indicate, I don’t come from a massively sporty family.

Not, mind you, that you should infer too much about the rest of my family from me.  They almost all played more sport than I did and in the case of cricket and my brothers, I believe with some skill.  And in their time they have run and played squash and been gym members and all those things that people – even me – do to try to be healthy.  (Although not squash, in my case.  Don’t have the knees for it.)

But to the best of my knowledge, none of my family has ever participated in a world competition in any sport.  And now my sister, my older sister, professional, business owner, wife and mother of two grown-up children is competing as part of a rowing team in the Masters Games.

And I am so proud of her, I could burst.

She did a bit of rowing at uni, but this recent endeavour was really started as a fun way to keep fit with some friends.  Then their coach started to get ideas and now she has a training regime and she’s got muscles on her eyebrows and knows more about her heart rate than is quite decent.

And this is the woman who, as a child, was praised by her physical education teacher for being – and I quote – ‘a neat worker’.

I have recently decided that I need to get serious about improving my fitness.  The karate is helping, but I need better general fitness to do that better.  Exercising does not come naturally to me.  ‘Bone idle’ may not quite be my second name, but ‘naturally sedentary’ is in there somewhere.  But if my sister, who is several years older than me, can make the Masters Games, then I figure literally anything is possible.  The sky – or Torino at any rate – is the limit! I’ve reached that age where you need to decide whether you are going to be fit or slid into premature old age.

Thanks partly to my sister, I’m choosing fit.

So go get ’em, girly rowing team from country Australia.  I’m barracking for you!