Yew Clothing » fun

Just a 60km walk

jt_wong — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:27:21 +0000

We recently did a charity walk in the South Downs for the Child Welfare Scheme, a Nepal charity that we like. You can find out more about them on our People Yew Like page (http://www.yewclothing.com/community/people-yew-like). As it was ‘just a walk’ (and incidentally, the event was called ‘Just Walk‘) we didn’t really prepare that well. There was a training walk of about 30km (all pretty flat) so we thought that it would be moderately challenging. Jun had previously done a 50 mile walk and was confident that 60 km wouldn’t be that difficult in comparison (he may have forgotten to add the aging factor in, since his 50 mile walk was done in 1995). All those ultramarathon runners out there may laugh at a 60k walk, but it really was a long way. And a bit hilly too.

For pictures from the walk, go to our Gallery page – http://www.yewclothing.com/downloads/gallery/

We started at about 8.30 in the morning from Goodwood race course: all smiles and full of tea and bacon rolls. For the next few hours there were quite a lot of people around. We didn’t really head off that quickly, but just tried to keep an even pace up. The weather was awesome, so we were feeling pretty good. And after finding some gorgeous woods full of bluebelled carpets, we were liking our nature walk.

Then came Arundel Castle – which is rather nice, but also at the top of a hill – and we were definitely starting to feel the legs. Knee problems, groin strains and puffy ankles were starting to niggle at Team Yew, but there was a tea break at the top of another hill, at which point the sun disappeared and the wind picked up – giving us a rather cold and gloomy rest by this turret:

Fortunately, down the other side it was all sunshine and lush again. Oh, and then another hill as well.

The amazing thing about this tour of the South Downs was that we got to see so many things. We had woodland, rivers, chalk cliffs, castles, lots of hills, muddy marshland (apparently of great significance – but we didn’t stop to read the sign). By the time we set off from our dinner stop, we were ready to finish and have it all done with. We’d picked up a lone straggler from another group and walked the remaining miles with her in tow. There was a slight dip in morale when we realised that some of the distance markers near the finish were slightly out (making us think we had less to go than we did) and also the fact that they shoved a big hill right before the finish at Goodwood. Fortunately, a few pear drops solved that.

By the time we got to the finish at 9pm, the sun was dipping down. We were rewarded with shortbread at the finish (though a beer would have gone down quite well).

42 floors, 920 steps for Shelter

jt_wong — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:50:22 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve done something silly for charity, so here’s this year’s. A friend and I have decided to run up 42 floors to the top of Tower 42 in London as part of an event organised by Shelter. It’s a short challenge – let’s hope it takes less than 10 minutes – but the burn on those legs is going to be interesting. And by interesting, I mean really painful.

All in a good cause – and, of course, Yew will be kitting out the team for the challenge.

If you’d like to join us on this challenge, we’re putting together a team. Everyone has to do all the floors, and will have to raise money for Shelter. We’ll support the team with free kit for everyone. If you’re interested, email us at info@yewclothing.com

Dodge this

jt_wong — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:03:51 +0000

Strangely enough, a lot of my friends are sporty active types. Most of them aren’t crazy inhuman types that train all the time (ok, so maybe a few at the running club are), but really just guys and gals that like to have a bit of fun. So it’s easy enough to pick up the phone and find someone to go for a run, climb, bike ride or just something. Anyway, I was in Hong Kong visiting family recently and while catching up over dinner with two friends learned of the sport that was gripping them. Dodgeball.

Ok, so I was thinking, isn’t that the game I played when I was 10? Anyway, it transpired that several of my friends are now playing dodgeball – and they are pretty serious about it. To be fair, they’re not training like Ben Stiller did with an old guy throwing wrenches at them, but they play every week and it’s uber competitive. Hong Kong’s a pretty small place and there are around 23 teams playing in their league (say 10 people a team, that’s 230 people actively and regularly playing competitive dodgeball). So we went along to the Women’s League Final and I have to say it looked great fun.

What could be more stress busting than throwing (soft) balls at people as hard and fast as you can? I’m guessing company dodgeball would go down quite well…Well on returning to London, I was slightly disappointed not to be able to find an active dodgeball league. I figure it could be a fun game to try out (and guys could revel in quoting movie lines through their games). There is a UK Association (http://www.ukdba.org), but there doesn’t seem to be much going on in London. I guess I’ll stick to the track this summer instead.