sports (activities) I just don't understand

What’s up with paddleboarding?

You stand on a wobbly surfboard, and paddle. Why?

I mean, couldn’t we stand on our bikes, with one foot on the saddle and the other on the stem, and push ourselves along with a barge pole? On that basis – as far as I can make out – anything could be a sport.

I can see people doing paddleboarding whenever I ride my bike down the Ely Trail to the barrage at Cardiff Bay, and it just looks like the stupidest thing. But I’m sure it’s just my ignorance. 😐

What sports (or physical activities, or whatever you want to call them) do you not ‘get’?

Cycling on a turbo

Why take something that was designed to take you places then use it to go nowhere?

I knew a guy who worked for Cognation who was into Paddleboarding – for him it was to surfing what turboing is to cycling, something to do when the weather didn’t suit. It’s probably not the same for everyone.

Fishing, but then I have the attention span of an 8 year old.

Pretty much anything with a ball

Walking football. If you can’t run, take up bowls you old git.

Paddleboarding – for him it was to surfing what turboing is to cycling, something to do when the weather didn’t suit.

Don’t you paddleboard in the sea, same as surfing?

Running. All sorts of wrong.

wwpaddler – Member

Cycling on a turbo

Why take something that was designed to take you places then use it to go nowhere? The turbo will take you places all right – the mountains of pain, the valleys of suffering, and at the end of it all – the palace of enlightenment.

I don’t try and understand people’s motivations for other sports in general, but seeing 4×4 off-roaders in the Peak just provokes a visceral response. The absolute state of these trumpets inching their way down Roych clough in a land rover convoy.
[Think they’ve subsequently being banned from driving there now].

Cycling on a turbo

Why take something that was designed to take you places then use it to go nowhere?
Just a training tool for a sport, not a sport in its own right.

Race walking for me. Quite amusing to watch though.
And most equestrian sports. Nothing against them, I just don’t get them.

Race walking for me. Quite amusing to watch though.

They circle around the common by my place on the odd Sunday; an amusing sight indeed. A few weeks ago there was a ‘race’ going on and I spotted one bloke suddenly peg it down a bit that was largely out of sight 😀

Don’t you paddleboard in the sea, same as surfing?

Yes, except you paddleboard when there’s no surf, and surf when there’s waves to surf on.

The turbo will take you places all right – the mountains of pain, the valleys of suffering, and at the end of it all – the palace of enlightenment.

Only if you have packed your suitcase of courage.

Pretty much anything with a ball

So you won’t be a fan of FootGolf*, then?

*I thought it was a piss-take, but apparently not…

time trialling on a Dual carriagway…all sorts of stupid

Snooker, I mean, really?

Agree, paddleboarding isn’t for everyone. But that’s dependant on what you want to do with a)your time b)your inclination to get wet in the sea c)do other stuff.

I am biased, I surf paddleboards so for me..

A = the sum of awe..

B = the sum of bore..

Enjoy whatever sport takes your fancy, your free time is your own.

wwpaddler – Member
Cycling on a turbo

Why take something that was designed to take you places then use it to go nowhere?
– we used to have a contractor in our office who would grab his bike and rollers and do 30mins in the car park dressed in lycra. Bizarre

Totally agree that race walking is the pits . If you want to get somewhere fast you run , if not you walk . As somebody once said race walking is like having a contest to see who can whisper the loudest .

Race walking for me. Quite amusing to watch though

If you want to get somewhere fast you run

British 5000m race walking record of 18:39

Think about that during your next Parkrun 🙂

“What’s up with paddle boarding?” Love what you did there!

Whats up? SUP? Get it? Ha Ha Ha!!!!!

There are lots of ‘sports’ that are just fun things to play at for a while. Then there are others that become part of your lifestyle and perhaps define it to an extent. Cycling and climbing are in the latter category.

I used to think the same about paddle boarding as when I googled it there was pictures of flat calm seas and people doing yoga on them. So looked fairly dull. Bike buoys pictures look like great fun and I quite fancy trying it now.

Watching someone else doing it.

Whether it’s on TV/video or live, I just don’t get the idea of watching other people taking part in competitive sports.

Baseball – horrendous.

American football – even worserer.

I used to think the same about paddle boarding as when I googled it there was pictures of flat calm seas and people doing yoga on them. So looked fairly dull. Bike buoys pictures look like great fun and I quite fancy trying it now.

Why not just canoe, or kayak, or windsurf? These sports already exist in their own right.

Sure, additional ways of doing an activity might develop due to some incidental condition (so, for example, snowboarders might develop an amusing way of getting over ‘dead’ bits of a downhill run), but does it have to become a sport unto itself?

crossfit.

Golf

Baseball – horrendous.

American football – even worserer.

Add ice hockey for the holy trinity of god awful sports. So glad I was not born american.

Paddle boarding…..hmm. Jury is out. Prefer to do it sitting down. Bloody good exercise though that uses loads of muscle groups done right.

I don’t understand running …

Why are they running?

What for?

Those bike races that aren’t bike races but the people in them pretend they are racing… What’s all that about then?

Surfing has been around since the Polynesians cared to dabble a toe in the water, paddlebaording is just an extension of surfing.

I’m not a fan of the cruising side of the sport, nor the exploration side, nor the fishing come to that. What I absolutely adore about it is the surfing.
Anyone who has tried surfing will tell you there is an extraordinarily long time spend sitting around in the cold sea whilst covered head to toe in 5mm rubber, bobbing then prone paddling like a looney to catch a small wave, forget Kelly Slater, most surfing is done on beach breaks in horrid suck.

SUP Surfing takes away all the pain, all the drudgery of the wait, the cold, the bob, the rubber. We go out, catch the smallest of waves, catch 100 times more than proners, stay fit, stay healthy, rip a shred, have huge fun.

Instead of knocking the sport from your sofa, try it. Or rather, just keep riding your bike.

You’re right. SUP’s are hard to beat in small, shit waves. 😉

See, you make it make sense, bikebuoy.

Anything involving horses.

Apart from that, I would quite happily watch anything from Bowls to Grasstrack.

As for playing, I’m not one of nature’s cricketers.
Too much pressure.

Anything Americans like

In a blatant attempt to raise the positivity level a notch, Frisbee golf is great fun.

I do have to add, surfing prone is a very technical and exhilarating sport to do, done well it’s quite a beautiful thing to do. It’s a social bob, invariably proners gather in a shoal and each tends to take a turn to catch a wave. Hardened surfers are technique experts, you can tell them a mile off. Watch, admire and learn the skills, the effortless struggle to surf a wave of a million faces. Truly an art.

Sadly for us SUP surfers we are suffering the brunt of being newbies in a world of seasoned proners. We’re annoying, we get in the way, we have sticks and we fall off a lot. Standing on boards is incredibly tricky even in the lightest of sea states, add in a rip or a wave and we’re all over the place. We’ve/I’ve been doing this a good few years, even as good as I am I still get shouted at by proners, I expect to be shouted at for a good few years yet. Our aspiration isn’t to catch the biggest, the knarliest, the pealers, the act of simply ripping head high is good enough, to carve an arc, a spliced cutback, the peaky roundhouse cutback, the longboard’esque rides, the slashy turns.. then go do that for another 50-100 times before we come in for coffee. Thankfully a lot of us put some effort into teaching newbies to “rules” the technique and the flair, we’re all seasoned, we have all been there at some point, we’ve tried surfing and most hated the cold, we’re older, wiser, learn techniques quicker and have the ability to self manage. We’ve moved on.

I’ll never try to get you to try it, that’s for you to decide, but given the grins I’ve seen from new folks learning means to me they enjoy it, t’is all I care for, people enjoying themselves.

Don’t worry. goatboaters are still the lowest of the low. 🙂

Paddleboarding seems one of those things done by the same people who enjoy slacklining and playing guitars anywhere somebody might notice.

American Football is a sport ruined by too much pissing about – no offensive/defensive teams, no stopped clock or timeouts or whatever and it’d be great.

no offensive/defensive teams, no stopped clock or timeouts or whatever and it’d be great Rugby League.

True.