Sweden often reminds us of Ireland. More accurately, Swedish hills often reminds my calves of a distant childhood of hillwalking, mountain climbing and walking basically upwards. Let me explain. The area where we live in Germany is basically 90 percent flat. There is a few slopes, but one has to put effort into seeking them out. Nothing challenging to the point of making you feel you are walking practically up the side of a mountain. You may be confused here, but there are walks and roads in Cork that demand a bit of hard going vertical upward walking. Some of them are located in close proximity to the house where I grew up…
My calves you ask? Yes, it is my calves that work the hardest at this upward walking, or at any rate, the muscles who complain the loudest. Their time in the flat regions of Germany has provided them with an extremely long holiday. In actual fact, they are probably practically dormant for most of the year. Until we go to Ireland or Sweden that is. The first hike up a mountain track (and I mean up) alerts them from their slumber like a fire alarm going off in the middle of the night. They are in shock, but they must react, perform and endure. After a while they acclimatize to the new terrain and dig up some far distant childhood muscle memory (if such a thing exists) and away we go. I am of course far too lazy to look up the correct anatomical and physiological muscle reactions to walking up mountain paths so we will just be going on the feedback coming from my groaning calves….
But my friends . Now that I have been alerted to this deficit, I see no reason not to add a nice calves stretching exercise to my routines back in Germany… I already have one in mind! Ssssh… can you hear it? A tiny wee voice of a set of muscles in the background grumbling… “Busted“
We also came across some rather strange wooden contraptions in the playground this week… They kinda look like war machines from medieval times. A wooden frame with a bar that goes up and down. Perhaps resembling the wooden frame that goes around an old-fashioned window, minus the glass. I visualize Asterix and Obelix using them to catapult things at their distant enemies and wonder what they are doing in a playground in a public park. Today however, we were enlightened as to their ultimate purpose. They are weight training exercise machines in different sizes and with lighter and heavier wood for muscle training. We were not clever enough to figure this out for ourselves, there was a sign with pictures… So in conclusion, an outdoor gym with weight lifting machines made almost completely of wood. Is there nothing the Swedes will not builds with wood! (Yes we did test them out. Yes they do work. No I am not strong enough to enjoy playing with them….)