Tuesday 3 July 2012

How I learned to stop worrying and care about the Olympics.

or

How I learned to start counting and give myself a reason to pay attention to the Olympics.



Dateline July 3rd, 21.40 

or about 12 hours or so from when the nice scientists at CERN apparently change our understanding of the universe for all time.


This is a lot less important than that.


A friend of mine, (who takes all the blame) has been on at me for a while to blog and twitter and do all those things that we apparently do these days. I was all up for this. I love the sound of my own voice more than is really healthy but had nothing beyond 'What I drank today' as an idea.


Sunday night, watching Spain take Italy apart with that boring 'anti-football' of theirs one of us -I hope it was me- had an epiphany. The Olympics is all about numbers; faster, higher and stronger are all things measured with digits; I also love spreadsheets (I had a strange adolescence). Putting these together led to me scribbling a barely legible note to myself to 'COUNTT THE METERS!!! (sic)' and placing this where I would find it the next morning - next to the kettle since you ask.


So here I am, counting the metres. How far exactly?


Probably more than any other sporting event the Olympics is measured within an inch of it's life. People train with every bit of themselves for 4 years to be separated from each other by eye-blinks. Dedication beyond what most of us could comprehend goes into hoping to be half an inch ahead of some other guy who has tried just as hard.


As Al Pacino has taught us, life is all about those inches.


He also tells us to add them all up so that's what we're here to do, using metric rather than imperial. Metres and centimetres rather than feet and inches.


Couple of ground rules:

Human power only.

No bikes, horses or boats, no projectiles or ball games. If you run or swim or jump or throw something then we count it and add it all up.


If you don't finish you don't count. 

If you pull up 20 miles into the marathon then you'll have to live with me knowing you're a far finer specimen of human endurance than I will ever be. I won't be counting you though. This is more to do with my wish for discrete measurements than any disrespect for your achievement.


So far I'm making a spreadsheet and checking it twice. I'm going to find out exactly how many different events the games comprises and then I'm going to count all the metres and centimetres (m and cm from this point on). I'm sure we'll learn something from this; it may even be something interesting but don't count on it.


Three weeks to go - ish, feel free to comment, give advice or just generally abuse me once I figure out how this software works enough to post my e mail and twitter.


R

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