I coach two teams, I am semi-active(-ish)—per Fitbit, I’ve averaged 178 total active minutes a week for the last 4 weeks (and this is a period of time I feel rather inactive, but it still puts me over the 150 recommended minutes a week… although that is really moderate activity and mine is, um, mostly not?). But sometimes keeping it interesting is hard, and sometimes I just want to stick with the typical things because they are familiar, and familiar is easy (except then I don’t do the things).

Late last year, ParticipACTION (Canada’s leading physical activity promotion non-profit) took a vote of which physical activities were the country’s favourites—selected activities (and those voted on) range from the predictable (duh, hockey) to the “WHAT IS THAT?” (snow snake, stick pull) to the “BUT HOW?” (white water rafting, axe throwing, highland games).
These final picks are known as the 150 Play List. So now, I am setting off on doing them all. Sadly I have many from last year that I could have checked off that I have little clue how I will get in again this year (sailing?!).

Finishing week two of the year, I’ve checked three activities off the list so far (note: ParticipACTION apparently counts each time you do an activity as 1, so the site says I’ve done 7. Okay?):

1) Goalball. Well it probably is not any surprise that my favourite activity on the list got completed really early. I play goalball with the guys I coach almost every week, and last week (our first week back after the holidays) threw some pretty hard shots at me. I was surprisingly unbruised (except one tiny bruise on my hip, which I thought would be larger.)

Doug came to goalball for our first practice back. We spend a lot of time laying around on the floor in this sport, I will be honest. Unfortuantely due to my shortness this is not actually a great defensive strategy for me most of the time.

2) Walking. That was easy. Well, actually not terribly so, considering the dump of snow on December 26th and the lack of sidewalk clearing crews out (until Steve got on the news about it, anyways.)

3) Soccer. We only had a couple of athletes at Special Olympics practice this week, which meant that the athletes got to choose what we did. After playing floor hockey for awhile, we played soccer. My passes are as inaccurate as ever, FYI.

For the next 5 weeks at Special O, we are trying to get as many of these activities in as we can with our athletes. I already have goalball checked off, but I hope to be adding another 24 activities as we explore them with our athletes!

Now, we’re supposed to be getting some warm weather (after our wicked cold snap) so I hope it doesn’t kill off all the skating rinks or that’s going to pose a bit of a problem in regard to checking of “skating” and “hockey”…