Arch to Arc....in a gym?

Sunday we all went up to the Sue Ryder Home on Leckhampton Lane to meet with the fundraising contact - Lucy. We had a tour of the grounds and discussed some fund raising ideas....

Being men the thoughts turned to something a bit extreme and the word endurance was mentioned...it started as why don't we swim the channel as a relay team in a pool? 23.89miles between the 4 of us. Spreadsheet constructed and claculation done it didn't seem far enough or extreme enough.

That's when it evolved to doing the Arch to Arc triathlon as a relay in the gym.

The Arch to Arc is an extreme triathlon where you start at Marble Arch in London, run the 89miles to Dover where you then swim the 23.89miles of the English Channel before cycling the 179miles to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

With three of the team being Esporta members that is the venue of choice assuming that they will allow this to take place..

Watch this space - we'll do something extreme just a case of what? If you've got any ideas post them on here in the comments! 

Taken from http://www.shurdingtontriclub.co.uk 

10yr olds do know right from wrong

"...England's children's commissioner Maggie Atkinson had told the Times (Newspaper) that most criminals under 12 did not fully understand their actions..."
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8565619.stm)


This statement and lots of other comment has been prevalent in the media in recent weeks following the arrest of John Venables for a new crime.

John Venables served eight years in custody from the age of ten for murder of James Bulger. A crime so horrific and disturbing that it will forever be burned onto the psyche of the UK population. The argument that, at ten years old, they did not know what they were doing I find frankly disturbing.

I have a 10 year old son that asked recently what the news story regarding Venables and Bulger was about - we explained it to him and he got very upset and was moved to tears. He is ten years old and very much knows right and wrong.

Do the parents need to take more responsibility for how they bring children up? I know nothing of Venables home life, or indeed of Thompson his partner in the Bulger killing but at that age don't the parents need to take some responsibility? Whilst there will always be some people that are fundamentally bad a lot of it has to be about environment. A child from a violent (this could be being allowed to watch adult tv, films and games and not necessarily actual physical abuse) or disrespectful home life has to be affected by that? Don't children basically copy their parents?
I do think that at 10years old a child having comitted a crime should be punished, reeducated and rehabilitated but that the whole picture should be considered and by that i mean the parents have to take some of the responsibility. Children of ten years old do know right from wrong where there is a potential disparity is in their definition of it that will be handed to them from their parents.

Night hypo

As a diabetic hypo's are to be avoided at all costs!

This is where the blood sugar drops below the healthy zone and can result in coma and worse. The healthy zone is 4-7mmol so there are not huge margins to be worked with here. Once below 4mmol it is a quick slide down. Like a lot of diabetics I have experienced a number of hypo's and during the normal day they are manageable. A couple of glucose tablets to spike the blood sugar and then a decent snack to level things off. Symptoms are easy to spot initially with sweats, shaky sensations and blurred vision.

I have been lucky in that I have not had many hypo's overnight. Last night was an exception and a strange experience. I woke up with sensations that I knew were hypo yet could not respond to them. I laid there knowing what was happening and not able to do anything. I was half asleep, aware, but it felt like a dream.

It was only when Sue stirred that I woke up enough to do something and I grabbed some glucose tabs that were on my bedside cabinet, I ate a couple and stayed in bed.

Sue then asked me if i was ok and did i need food, she was clearly awake and thinking for me. This prompted me to get out of bed and go and get some cereal, something I should have done maybe an hour earlier. I went back to bed and slept just fine!

This morning was then incredibly difficult, I could not get myself out of bed and felt battered. Breakfast kind of helped but I struggled with tiredness and a sense that my body was not right. Nothing specifically wrong just not right. Even now as I type I feel I could go back to bed and sleep easily! The hypo took more out of me than I realised.

This is a very real problem for people with diabetes and one I know that some diabetics struggle with. For me it was a rarity and something to learn from. When in that state I need to snap out of it quicker and deal with the situation. What could happen if I do not does not bear thinking about,,,