Woohoo, woke up at 7am and it wasn't raining! Drove to Theale Golf Club and although the ground was pretty wet and a cold wind was blowing about 20 people turned up for a 3 ball texas scamble competition. John and Nick were my team members, and we had a great laugh and played some good golf as well which considering the dampness of the course we were very happy about. I left before the last group was in so don't know our final position - although I wasn't worried about that today. I was just happy to be playing again.
After speaking with Neal yesterday he convinced me to take a look at
Gary Edwin's site and to look into his 'Right sided swing'. I bought the video he has available to download and watched it, and noticed a lot of the points Neal was teaching me last year. I've decided to stick with this swing for 2010 as it is more in line with what I have been trying to do over the past 2 years - and the idea of Less is More in the golf swing is something that definitely makes sense to me.
With these ideas behind me and a couple of sessions down the range I was excited to see how I could play after 4 months off. Overall I was very very happy. My driving was as good, if not better than it has been all year - and I hit some good iron shots as well. Overall though I was pulling too many iron shots which got dragged further left in the strong wind. Putting was generally good, but chipping and pitching was a little rusty - no surprise really, nothing time on the course and practice green won't fix.
I was pretty tired at the end of 18 holes though I can tell you! The more tired I got the more I could feel myself straining on each shot and could feel my back aching. My lower back is pretty sore right now but I hope some stretching tonight will make ease it and enable me to get down the range tomorrow.
Last night I went through the questionnaire in
How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy. Apparently I need to focus on the carbohydrate foods (rather than mixed, or protein foods) - and the areas that need immediate attention are what I eat, when I eat, and stress levels. I'm just reading the section now after the questionnaire so am hoping it will cover what I need to do to improve these areas and will report back later. In the appendix it covers the foods you need to concentrate on for the carbohydrate diet plan - the big news for me is that I can't eat carrots! For years these have been one of the few vegetables I could eat. Tomorrow I'm going to go through all the foods I need to concentrate on and will put together some menus - also from tomorrow all I am going to drink is water, and plenty of it. Diet Coke and Tea is out of the window. Quite a challenge, but I guess if it makes me feel better then it is worth it :-) Sophie currently thinks it is all mumbo jumbo (I guess this is quite a holistic approach) but I'm willing to give most things a try for a while.
Happy New Year to everyone - hope you call have a fun and safe celebration tonight...
Holes played : 18
Range balls hit : 180
Time spent in gym : 0.5