Imagine Winning A Big Award
Imagine being voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Well, if you’re Sir Lewis Hamilton or Sir Andy Murray, then that kind of thing happens to you, but if you run your local parkrun or go out on your bike for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, then you probably won’t get that kind of nationwide recognition for all your effort.
Your running, cycling or whatever your chosen method of exercise is, just isn’t going to draw the mass attention required to win Sports Personality of the Year. But, from your point of view, you should regard your own exercise as being more important than that of all the elite performers.
You may, like me, be planning to vote for a top sportsperson this evening, someone who has achieved something phenomenal this year, but as impressed as I might be by their performance, it is far more important to me that I have been out there taking exercise at my own level throughout the year. After all, Sir Lewis and Sir Andy can’t do my push-ups for me, I have to move my own body if I want to use exercise as a means of protecting my own health.
Like millions of people around the globe, I watched the World Athletics Championships and Women’s World Cup Matches during the year, but before becoming a spectator in the evening, it was far more important to me that I walked five kilometres in the morning or ran ten kilometres in the afternoon.
So, before I vote for one of the nominees this evening, I’ve been reviewing my own year. An award that I give out and receive every year is my own sporting highlight of the year. I look back over the year about to end and choose what I think was my greatest achievement in the year.
I like to post that achievement on social media with one photograph and the hashtags #MySportingHighlight2023 and/or #MyActivityHighlight2023.
The reason for the two hashtags is that some people don’t regard their chosen exercise, or movement, as sport. That doesn’t matter. If you see what you do as activity rather than sport, and movement rather than exercise, then you can celebrate your achievement just the same.
I would like to see the day when there are as many people posting their own achievements as there are people voting for the elite nationwide awards, because it is by taking our own exercise that we do our bodies the world of good.
By all means spectate and recognise the achievements of others, but do something that will deserve a big round of applause from yourself. Take some time over the next few days to review your own year, and then make some plans for the exercise, or movement, you’re going to take in 2024.
First Male Over 60 in the Santana Vertical Kilometre Race on Madeira