I went for an 8km (5 mile) run this evening. I'm working my way up to 10km, but I think this was a little too much, too soon. We'll see how my middle-aged joints are in the morning... Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .
There’s a huge golf tournament happening near the co-working spot I work from, the Riverside U.S. Senior Open 2026. It’s been cool seeing the course prepare for this event over the past 2 months. First the fences went up, then they started constructing bleachers and now there’s TV camera towers dotting the landscape. I think the tournament starts today or tomorrow, but there’s been a lot of golfers practicing on the course the past 2 days. The roads are filled with police guarding each entrance and potential parking spot. There’s cop cars from districts all over Ohio, which isn’t surprising. Upper Arlington, the host district, is rather small so there’s no way they’d have a big enough force to cover the event. I did quickly check out the player roster, despite not really being into golf. I didn’t recognize any names, but to be fair I pretty much skimmed it to see if Tigers Woods was there (I don’t even know if he still plays).
Been a few weeks since the last update.
Yesterday was sports day at my kids' school, and usually it consists of us standing in a field, being baked by the sun, waiting for our kids to come on and do their couple races each. All in all, I'm only ever interested in a couple minutes of the 2.5 hours we stand there. Usually my oldest doesn't try that hard as he struggles with resilience. So if he's not clearly winning, he won't push, he'll give up. And our younger son was always a little too young and therefore uncoordinated, and usually at the back. This year was different. Our youngest tried really hard and was rapid ! He ended up winning 2 of his races and coming second in another. Great result. But the stand out was our oldest son. At the end of the day, they give out all the awards and our son won the prized sportsperson of the year award. Not the day …the year . The headteacher talked in great depth about how he is always helpful to the younger kids, how he's always a good sportsman, even if he loses, and how he's happy to share his knowledge to help others be better. This would make most parents proud, right? But for us, even more so. Our kids are adopted, and thanks to a significant amount of early neglect, our oldest has always found it impossible to share and help others. He always put himself first. That's not because he's selfish. He's actually a very kind, loving boy. It's because in those early years he had to survive and in order for him to survive it was literally him versus his siblings. What a horrendous situation to be in. Anyway, to hear that he's not only been a good sport throughout the year, but also that he's sharing and working with his teammates filled his mum and I with joy and made us so proud. My wife shed a little tear - she thinks I didn't notice, but I did. Me being the clown that I am, I shouted "WELL DONE SAUSAGE!" at the top of my voice so the whole school could hear. Everyone knows I call them the sausages so this made sure every single person on that playground saw him have his moment. What a legend. ❤️ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup well on its way, the Panini sticker fever has been raging through nearby playgrounds and homes alike. The 2026 edition might be a little bit special as it was recently revealed that Panini lost the exclusive rights. After fifty years of faithful partnership, FIFA moves the deal to Panini’s biggest competitor: the American Topps (owned by Fanatics). The 2030 World Cup sticker book will be Panini’s last FIFA-related book you can try to fill. And perhaps that is a good thing? Local newspaper Het Nieuwsblad estimated that in order to complete your sticker book, statistically speaking you’ll need to buy around stickers—totalling to the hefty sum of . I never realised that filling your sticker book could be that expensive! That’s even more expensive than your average Magic: the Gathering modern deck— and that hobby can be expensive . Considering most feverish collectors are youngsters in primary school, it might even be called outrageous. For the previous World Cup, this would be roughly . Is has never been as expensive as now. Why? Panini cites The Usual Suspects: rising manufacturing and shipping costs. I don’t entirely buy that. My own little investigation, comparing previous Panini stickers I still had lying around, yield another nasty surprise: not only has the cost gone up, but the quality has gone down as well. My Aladdin Panini stickers I collected in the nineties had a nice gloss finishing that resists scratches. That finishing is gone now, but the biggest change is the sticker size. A quick dimension comparison (measured in centimetres): In 30 years, Panini stickers have shrunk in size by almost . The reasoning behind this is due to the massive team size of the World Cup, having so many stickers would otherwise cause the sticker book to weigh as much as a heavy textbook. So this “shrinkflation” effect is disguised as a way to protect our children’s backs. Clever. My notebook, scattered with World Cup 2026 stickers. Left: local ads from Euro 2020. Top right: Aladdin stickers with yellow border for comparison; a full centimetre taller. Another aspect of the nineties stickers I miss is the variability of them. In my Aladdin album, I sometimes could paste in just half of an image. A scenery from the animated movie, such as the Genie in a parade swirling around with fire-lit batons as depicted in the sticker of the photo above, would be split into two stickers, making it extra satisfying to “complete” just that one scene instead of the entire book (which I never bothered to do or didn’t manage to, I can’t remember how I felt about it). In addition, some of the stickers depicted just the characters in a translucent cut-out shape. I found these stickers to be more fun and desirable to paste in compared to the standard shaped ones that came with a yellow border. Of course, comparing a whimsical Disney animated film to a national football team where you just have to paste in every team member according to their position on the field diminishes the creative options Panini has to play around with the setting. To me, the FIFA stickers have always been one of the more boring sets. Perhaps the contract is not a big loss, although financially speaking, given the typical World Cup craze, I bet it is. According to another local news article , Panini’s expected turnover for this World Cup would be in the billions in euro. Yet this FIFA deal loss is one of the many losses: no more UEFA Champions League stickers, no more European Championship, and now also no more World Cup. In USA, they also lost the rights to print NBA and NFL stickers. There are rumours of yet another complete Panini sellout because of all this. The article also mentions the interesting history of the Italian company: in the nineties it was even briefly sold to comic giant Marvel Entertainment! Did you know there are Sonic sticker collections ? Super Mario Ones? Hot Wheels? L.O.L. Surprises? Harry Potter, Jurassic Parc, Toy Story 5, Stitch, Tour De France, Darts, Frozen, Spider Man, … You name it, they have it. Did you also know the second hand market is cutthroat when it comes to unopened vintage card packs? As I wrote before , this really does feel like unopened Magic: the Gathering booster boxes… If you want to complete your collection but can’t because of limited local trading opportunities, there’s also the option to buy singles directly from Panini. They know fans want a complete sticker album, so expect to drop more for specific requests. The best strategy? Wait until the World Cup fever passes and then buy everything. The interviewee from Het Nieuwsblad managed to procure all FIFA Euro 2024 stickers for just . Good luck with the sticker hunt. Don’t forget to play fair: never trade two-for-one! Related topics: / collecting / By Wouter Groeneveld on 18 June 2026. Reply via email .
A week or so ago, I posted about my currently ongoing fitness challenge where the goal was to go down from the almost 90kg I was weighing to below the oldest measurement I had on record, which was an 85.3kg. Side note: that’s the oldest but not the lowest, because I do have an 81kg on record, but that’s honestly not a healthy weight for me. I know that day-to-day weight can fluctuate considerably, I know that body composition changes a lot when you’re dieting, and I know that weight will also change a lot depending on how much I’ll train because muscles are denser and generally speaking “heavier” than fat. As much as I enjoy being an idiot and doing random shit, I am not entirely clueless about all this stuff. All that said, I hopped on the scale this morning, as I do every morning since I started this challenge, and I guess not eating pasta and pizza is working. Now, this is just one measurement; I can be back up tomorrow, and it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I’m still figuring out a workout routine that works for my brain, and it’s an enjoyable process. But the summer is yet to start, there are 100 or so days in front of me to get in better shape, and I need to keep training. I'll be honest though: this is such a fun experiment and I'm having a blast. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
The London Ohio Strawberry Tour has been on my radar for years. Yesterday I finally got a chance to participate! I opted for the 44 mile route as I'm not nearly as in-shape as previous years. It was a really nice, mostly flat ride. The first stop was well stocked with everything from home-made Belgian waffles (a staple of all Friend's of Madison County events) and chocolate covered strawberries! Stop 2 was a simple water stop, but I had some fun conversations with other riders as we filled up our bottles. Remember kids, don't waffle while biking! This year's ride was special as the money was used to help finish the Ohio to Erie trail gap in London, Ohio. Presently the trail ends in the south of London, forcing riders to traverse the streets to rejoin the trail on the other side of town. From what one of the volunteer's was telling me, the contract has been secured to finish the trail and (if all goes well), it should be done in about 1.5 years! Mmmm, chocolate covered strawberries. The Ohio to Erie trail is one of the most impressive things Ohio has to offer (in my opinion). It's a 326 mile trail, 245 of which is dedicated, paved bike path. It connects Ohio's 3 major cities, Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. There's also branch trails leading to places like Yellow Springs. The trail is dotted with beautiful small towns, free campsites and guest houses. <video controls width="250" class="mb-8"> <source src="/images/2026-london-tour/IMG_0609.MOV" type="video/mp4" /> </video> While there's a lot of terrible things about my country, the Ohio to Erie trail and events put on by volunteer organizations to maintain and expand the trail are truly incredible and give me hope. A well stocked rest stop manned by volunteers. Thanks for reading on RSS, you're awesome! If you want to be notified of new posts even faster, I have a newsletter as well, you can signup here!
Golf content on social media is my online junk food and the other day I came across a video interviewing professional golfers that asks: “What does an amateur golfer have to shoot to be considered good?” It’s a leading question because the phrasing implicitly frames a number as the answer for a qualitative measurement , but I digress. All the pros give their answers. Some say you gotta shoot a number in 90’s. Others say the 80’s. Some even say the 70’s. Then along comes Collin Morikawa: I don’t think there’s a number, but I think you have to be able to finish out every hole without, like, picking up a two-footer. Love it! I don’t want to go too deep on a social media golf interview clip, but… I love how he breaks out of the question’s implicit framing and really strikes at the heart of the qualitative question: “What does it mean to be good at golf?” Being “good”, in his eyes, is not shooting a specific number. Numbers are standardized proxies for measurement across a wide variety of players, skill levels, and — to be quite frank — degrees of honesty. Anyone who has played golf knows that scores can be easily manipulated. On a casual outing amongst friends, my “82” may be very different than the “82” of the players in front of me — or even the players in my own group. It all depends on how you play the game. So saying “if you can shoot number ___” is a very lossy picture of what it means to be “good” at golf — at least for amateurs. That’s why I love Morikawa’s answer: if you finish every hole and don’t get a double bogey, you’re “good” at golf. Because guess what? Finishing is the hard part. The consistency. Showing up to every hole, finishing out based on the actual rules of the game, not taking mulligans, not picking up a two-footer and saying “That’s good.” (Or even missing a two-footer and re-putting and giving yourself the make.) Relieving yourself of the exacting burden of the reality of the game is the easy way to play, but it doesn’t make you a better golfer. I think that’s true of so many things we do as humans: programming, design, writing, etc. If you want to be “good” at what you do, do the hard, little things that others gloss over. Do them consistently and well, with discipline and perseverance. If you do, then I’d say you’re “good” at what you do because “good” isn’t a number. It’s quality. A disposition. A way of being. Reply via: Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
The NBA's conference finals wrapped up this past week, and as a Heat fan and a Seattle émigré I was pleased with both results. Happy that the Cavs lost, because I still resent them for being the destination to which LeBron fled in 2014; happy that the Thunder lost, because fuck Howard Schultz. 1 For the uninitiated: Schultz, as owner, presided over the sale of the Seattle SuperSonics in 2006, which led directly to their relocation to Oklahoma City. The Thunder are, in a very real sense, the Sonics. I am not over it. Both losses were noteworthy. The Cavs were, after game three, safely assumed to be dead in the water — no NBA team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in the playoffs. Their head coach, JB Bickerstaff, infamously (yes, it can already be classified as infamous) claimed that from an analytics standpoint they were really up — that the underlying numbers had the series at a 2-2 coin flip they happened to be losing. The Thunder, last season's champions, were being discussed around the halfway mark as candidates for the greatest team of all time: whether they could break the all-time regular-season wins record, or, more humbly, be the team that finally snapped the league's eight-season no-repeat-champion streak. Those discussions promptly ended in December, when — in what turned out to be foreshadowing — the Spurs beat them three times in ten days. Even gods can bleed. Now the conversation has gone the other direction entirely: whether they should blow up their core three and pursue a win-now trade for Giannis, or some similarly older-but-better superstar. All of this is, in my opinion, kind of silly, by all parties involved. Bickerstaff should not have tried to invoke the spirit of Pythagorean victories to motivate his team or deflect criticism about their dire straits. And yet — it's not like he was completely incorrect. In much the same way that, if you know with absolute certainty a coin is rigged to land heads 70% of the time, you shouldn't start betting tails just because tails came up the last three times. 2 Now, if it comes up tails ten times in a row, maybe that's a sign to reevaluate your threshold for "absolute certainty." And the discourse around the Thunder's prospects glosses over the fact that the second-best player on their team — and, during some stretches, arguably the fourth-best player on their team — were both out for the entire series. Which is a boring but plausible explanation for why they lost. (It should be noted that they lost in seven, and scored more total points than the Spurs across the span.) But the narrative of Wemby, the seven-foot-seven godkiller, has taken root. Let me be clear: the Knicks and the Spurs did win, and no number of hypothetical simulations changes or devalues that fact. But as soon as we turn the page onto next season, the nuances that led up to the result will grow hazier and dimmer and more nebulous, until recovering them requires archaeology rather than recall. The NBA is a league where we talk about rings, not net rating. Which is to say: victory, whether over the course of a single game or an entire season, is not a lagging metric assembled from the true granules of play-by-play data. It is the thing itself — the reified artifact. The banner, the line in the record book, the ring. And there is nothing wrong with this, in the same way that it is no crime that both PNGs and JPEGs exist. Victory is a lossy compressor: it takes the full, lossless record of a season and squeezes it down into something small and portable, discarding almost all of the granular detail in order to do so. It is enormously useful to be able to optimize for file size — for what travels, for what gets remembered. But it is not the only use. All of this is to say: I bring it up not just because I'm waiting for Zach Lowe to publish his Tuesday episode previewing the Knicks-Spurs series, but because in America sports are metonymous with many things, and one of those things is business. And I have found it far more revealing, in trying to understand a company that has — capital M, capital I — Made It, not to read their most recent batch of press releases, but to crank up the Wayback Machine and go look at the launches they shipped in 2018 that failed. The press release is the JPEG. The failures are the bits that got thrown away. If you want to understand how something actually won, you don't get to recall it — you have to decompress it, and the only way to recover what victory discarded is to dig.
A few weeks ago, I was at my brother’s place, watching NBA, and amongst other things, I was teasing him about the fact that he’s putting up weight. Which is just a fact. But he’s also in his 40s, so that’s understandable. He pointed out that I’m also gaining weight (but I’m not in my 40s), and since it was a long time since I weighed myself, I decided to hop on a scale, and the number that came out was 89.6kg. Now, I’m 190cm tall, so being almost 90kgs isn’t really a tragedy but I told him «I’m gonna get back into shape» just so that I can keep continue teasing him and he won’t be able to say shit back. Isn’t brotherly love wonderful? I gave myself the “extended” whole summer (so till the end of September) to reach two goals. The first goal is to be lighter than I was 10 years ago. I had a smart scale for more than a decade, and the oldest measurement I have logged is 85.3kg, recorded on December 21st 2015. So I need to be below that by September 30th. The second goal is to be in better shape than I was 10 years ago. Now, this is a bit harder to quantify, but I’ll let my brother determine if I reached this goal or not. I did take a “before” picture at the beginning of June. It’s my intention to take an “after” one on September 30th, and we’ll compare and see if I made any progress whatsoever. Do I have a concrete plan for how to achieve these two goals? Absolutely not. Do I have a personal trainer guiding me through a training program? Hell no. Am I following a diet prepared by a nutritionist? Nah, what’s the fun in doing that! We’re in the “vibe” era, so I’m gonna vibe training and vibe dieting, meaning I’m doing things my way, trying random shit, going for silly walks, training however I want, and having fun in the process. Gonna be a fun summer. And since we’re talking losing weight, I’m gonna mention two of my blogging pals here, one mr Kev and one mr Luigi , both of whom are going through a similar challenge (for more sane and normal reasons, unlike myself, who is fueled by spite). I believe in you guys! Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
by Gordon McLean Gordon has been hooked on F1 for 45 years, from childhood memories of Murray Walker to booking a trip to the Madrid GP. It’s a great look at how much the sport has changed and why he's still obsessed. Read post ➡ I discovered Gordon's blog after he commented on my recent note about F1 . I always check people's sites when they comment, as it's a great way to discover new blogs. Gordon's blog didn't disappoint - lots of great content on there, including this gem all about his love of the sport of F1. I've been following F1 for around 25 years now, and have similar memories as Gordon when it comes to thinking about some of the great drivers from the past. His post has me thinking about booking some ticket's to next years practice sessions for my wife and I (who's also a big F1 fan). Anyway, fun read. Thanks, Gordon. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .
Why does everyone in #F1 love #Monaco? It's by far the most BORING race on the calendar. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .
I recently completed my first long trail race, set in the Southern Drakensberg mountains with Emma, my siblings and their partners. It spanned 2 days with 30km on the first, and 15km on the second, winding through valleys and around mountains. It was spectacular. I love coming to the Drakensberg, which is a beautiful and unique mountain range, and I'm glad to have the excuse to be here. While I'm generally an active person, I've never been a runner. My first proper run (more than 3km) was in January this year after my brother twisted my (and Emma's) arm into signing up for this race. Since this was not a trivial distance, it meant I couldn't just wing it on my base fitness, and so Emma and I started running 2-3 times a week in preparation. We had 15 weeks until the event and settled on a fairly simple training plan: We didn't stick to this plan exactly, especially since the final 4 weeks coincided with our trip to Japan, but we stuck to the spirit of this plan, and it worked out quite well, with our running fitness increasing quite dramatically over that period without any injuries or overreaching. This is in contrast to other times in my life where I'd try to get into running, start off too ambitiously, become a sweaty, exhausted mess with creaky joints, and ultimately decide that running just isn't for me . Because we capped the increase of speed and distance over time to no more than 10% per week, each run was challenging but not insurmountable. It was also nice to see how quickly running fitness increases when compared to strength, which can take months to see measurable gain (after the initial neural adaptation). One caveat is that I hate cars too much to enjoy road running, and the symmetric, hard surface makes my right knee ache in a way that trail running doesn't. Plus being on a mountain is so much prettier than the asphalt city grid or suburbs. What I enjoyed the most about this experience was how it opened up a whole other world of events and community that is both accessible and affordable. There was suddenly an excuse to get out onto the mountain at least once a week with friends. To go out to parts of the surrounding countryside that I'd never been to before, stand in the chilly morning air while sipping on instant coffee from a chipped enamel cup, then run through it while the sun came up. The event we ultimately completed—The Giant's Cup—was a particularly good one in that it was a destination event, and a non-trivial run with people I love and enjoy spending time with. And while I may never become a Runner (I'm by no means placing), I'm certain that I'll be a runner for the next several decades. Run 5km each Wednesday, usually on the Sea Point Prominade, while increasing the speed gradually each week (it took me a few weeks to get to the initial 5km though) Longer trail runs on the weekend, generally on Table Mountain or in the Cape Winelands, increasing distance by about 1km each week Hop on the treadmill at a reasonably fast pace for about 20 minutes after gym one day a week
The other day that stupid thing called the Enhanced Games took place. As you might have guessed by the name, this is basically the Olympics on steroids, quite literally. The event itself is not even worth commenting on. I remember hearing about this concept ages ago and forgot about it, and only skimmed through a few headlines the day after the event. But reading about it got me thinking about what I’d love to see if we were to organise an Olympics spin-off. There are two concepts I’d be genuinely excited to see, and they go in opposite directions. The first concept is to let tech and engineers go wild. A lot of modern sports are infused with technology of all kinds: from running shoes materials, to laser stitched swimsuits, to tracks that are incredibly bouncy, the list goes on and on and on. I remember, almost a decade ago, Nike trying to break the 2 hours barrier for the marathon , and thought it was an interesting experiment. I’d love to see what kind of barriers we can break by letting the best athletes and the best minds join forces, but without doing silly things, like strapping rockets to someone’s feet. The other idea is the exact opposite. Remove all tech. Like all of it. No shoes, no fancy materials, no special equipment, no stadiums, nothing. We go back to ancient times, and we see how much just human bodies alone can achieve, with as little external help as possible. I’d very much enjoy seeing both of those events. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
The stars are finally aligned again, and I’m back on the road for chapter 3 of this 10-part saga. Clear sky, not too warm, I have someone who can come pick me up and drive me back to my car, the calendar is empty, so we’re going for it. Contrary to the previous two segments of this walk, this one’s quite lean on the churches department—we’ll only see 3 of them—but it’s by far the most challenging one from a physical perspective. That is, if you’re a sane person and you do these walks the way they’re intended to be walked. There’s an upcoming one that’ll likely be more challenging, but we’ll get there eventually. For now, in front of us, we have about 16 kilometers to walk and roughly 1600 meters of elevation to gain. So we better get going. Breakfast is in—coffee and bread with Nutella + peanut butter if you’re wondering—and after a short drive, we’re back at the same parking spot where we ended our walk a few weeks back. Flip flops are off, hiking shoes are on, sprayed some SPF50+ on my face and head, and we’re ready to walk. I say we, but it’s just me. Well, me and you reading this. I walked this one solo, but it is quite fun to do these hikes while keeping in mind that I’ll have to write this newsletter. I’m very much enjoying it. We cross the road, walk through another parking lot, and we immediately see sings that tell us that we’re on the correct track. Quite a few trails run through here, apparently, I counted at least 4 different ones. But we’re here to follow the yellow and white marks (for the most part), so over the bridge we go and across the fields. We’re not even 5 minutes in, and already there’s a steep stone stair in front of us. We have 1600 meters to climb after all, we better start sooner rather than later. The initial part of the trail was a bit overgrown, and I was worried it was going to continue like that for quite some time because this is not a trail that sees a lot of traffic but, thankfully, that wasn’t the case. I was also surprised by how varied the trail is at the beginning. We’re not even 15 minutes in, and we have already walked through fields, up stone stairs, and now we’re on a stone “bridge”. And shortly after that, here we are climbing another stone stair, but this time built as part of the dry stone wall. Big fan of these walls, they’re so cool. The forest itself is also quite nice here. The problem we have at the moment is that as soon as the warm season hits, the vegetation explodes, and sometimes the trails become an absolute mess. 15 minutes into the walk and we have now connected with a proper road, and we’re no longer on a trail. There are a lot of these roads around here. They’re service roads for people who have properties, but they’re closed to general traffic. Still, it’s quite rare to see cars on these and you usually only see mountain bikes. Actually, you usually see nobody on these roads. We’re now almost at the first exciting part of this journey. The yellow and white marks take us right, but that’s the normal path. We’re going left because we have one of those pesky variants to take care of and, as you know, I don’t want to walk the same road twice which means I made some changes to the original route. The problem is, I am not 100% certain the trail I saw on the map exists. It’s there on the map, sure, but a lot of times I saw lines on maps that were not there in reality. Thankfully for us, the trail is there—and it is steep—and we can continue forward since the first church is not far from here. We have already gained enough elevation to see things from above, and the view is lovely. And just like that, we’re at the site of the church of San Leonardo Abate (12/44) likely built around 1540. The church is similar to many of the others we saw in previous walks, but the interesting aspect of this one is that it has the old bell visible on the outside porch. Apparently the was a bell tower that got demolished, and I guess they decided to put the bell on display. I tried to take a picture of the inside, but it was too sunny. And in case you’re wondering, the church still has a bell outside. This church is the one that’s part of the variant, so we’re now standing at the end of that part of the trail. Which means we need to walk back to the main path, so off we go in that direction. The weather is still absolutely gorgeous. Out of the woods, across some fields, through a tiny, tiny village, and we’re now back on asphalt for a little bit, heading towards the next church, which is just right around the corner. But first, no, not a Mary, we get our first Jesus out in the wild. There’s gonna be a few more, I think we’ll see more Jesuses and Marys this time around. I should probably start counting these. 1 hour and 15 minutes in, and we have reached the church of San Zenone (13/44). Which, I’ll be honest with you, is everything but small. Consecrated in 1493, it’s probably the most luxurious one of the bunch I’ve seen so far. And it has a nice view. If you’re team Mary, it’s your time to be happy because look what we have here, just outside the church. This also doubles as a memorial for the fallen during both world wars. We’re only 20% into this walk, and we have already seen 2 of the 3 churches we’ll visit today and the next one is waiting for us roughly 3kms ahead. So we leave civilization behind us, we climb up through the forest, and we emerge on another of those service roads. I decided to try something different this time around since I was alone, and I recorded a couple of minutes of the walk. It’s unlisted on YouTube; hopefully, you don’t get bombarded by ads. The video is embedded below, or you can watch it on YouTube . Part of me was tempted to title it “You’ll not believe what happened on this trail”. On our way up, we stumble on this interesting-looking tree. I have no idea what could have caused this. If you happen to know, send me an email. I’d love to learn more about this. Also on our way up, in the middle of nowhere, stuck inside a retaining wall, another Jesus. Finally out of the woods and back into civilisation for a little bit. We’re almost halfway through our walk, and I was planning to take a quick break after 2 hours, but the remaining church was not too far, so we keep going. Like my dog, they’re also not massive fans of the hot weather. We’re less than 200 meters from the final church, where I was planning to take a quick break, but look how lovely this spot is! There’s a bench—yes, there is a bench hidden in the tall grass—two big trees that provide some much-needed shade, and a swing! We’ve found our resting spot. And since we’re stopping here, I'll use this opportunity to let my shirt dry a little bit. This place is so relaxing, I contemplated taking a nap, but we still have 8kms to walk and some 800 or so meters of elevation to gain, so the nap will have to wait. Shirt is back on, backpack is back on, we’re walking again, ready to visit the third and final church of the day, the church of San Lorenzo Martire (14/44) We’re now done with the churches, and we can set our sights on the top of Mount Matajur, our next target. The official trail would not take us up there and walk around it but, come on, if we get that close to the summit, we might as well go up to the top. And so into the forest we go again. I’m not sure who’s getting a point here between team Jesus and team Mary. I’ll let you decide. I never walked on this side of the mountain. I walked this general area many, many times, but never walked here, and I’m loving it. I also found this interesting construction. It’s currently used as a shed, but I wonder if it was used for something else in the past. It does look quite old. Time to record another short video , I think one day I should attempt to make a video of a full hike recorded in 60 seconds chunks all stitched together. Could be fun, I might do it the next time around. We’ll be out of the forest soon, but first we need to walk through a lot of flowers. There are so many colours out here at the moment, between the flowers and the butterflies. What a lovely time of the year this is. We have emerged, we’re now fully under the sun, and it is hot. I’m also starting to feel the fatigue a little bit. But we’re powering on because we’re almost there. We also have a great view on a ridge I’m dying to walk, but can’t figure out the logistic of the trip. It’s a 30+ kms walk from one end to the other, I can’t take the dog with me, and I also can’t leave him alone at home that long. So this is a walk that will have to wait for a better time. But damn if it is tempting. The summit is in sight, we’re almost there. That’s not the end of the walk, just the highest point, but once there, walking the final part is gonna be super easy since it’s all downhill. And here we are, at the top of Mount Matajur , quite literally on the border between Italy and Slovenia. I hiked this mountain more times than I can remember, at all times of the day, during all the seasons and with all sorts of weather. I walked it with snow, with rain, with winds at 100kmh, at night, at sunset, at sunrise, you name it. And on the other side, we have a view of lovely Slovenia. Way too many people up here today though, but that was expected. This is a very easy hike, and plenty of people come up here over the weekend. We’re not gonna spend much time up here, but I might come back another time and take you for a hike with me from a different route. That could be fun. Today’s hike is gonna end down there, at the parking lot next to Rifugio Pelizzo. Down the mountain we go, which feels so nice after having walked uphill for the entire hike. I could go on another 6 hours, but there’s no need to do that because we only have 1km left to walk. And just like that, we’re at the parking lot. I actually walked down some more to a secondary parking spot because there were too many people yelling and screaming at the main one. And the next chunk of this walk passes through here anyway, so next time we’ll start from this same spot. And there you have it, we have walked from Pulfero sitting at 185 meters above sea level, up to the top of mount Matajur at 1643 meters and visited 3 churches on our way up. This was fun, and less tiring than I was expecting. The data recorded by my watch during the walk is available if you’re interested in that type of stuff, and I have dumped all my photos on the shared iCloud album . The only thing left to do now is eat a proper post-hike snack. See you next time! You love the outdoors and RSS. You're one of the special ones.
Easy 5K run after the holiday
A lot of pushups and dialing back my run pace
Protein shake recipe, more running
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