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| 99-year-old record breaker George Corones |
According to "Swimmer, 99, 'breaks world record' in Australia", George Corones says that he "smashed a world record for his age group" due to his "pacing and technique" (2018). The Australian swimmer cut the record for the 50m freestyle from over one and a half minutes to less than one minute. Although a swimmer in his youth, Mr Corones had stopped at the start of World War Two, only taking it up at age 80. Having won his race, in which he was the only competitor, he is now aiming to also smash the 100m record for the 100 - 104 age group.
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My response
A lot of the news we read daily is not cheerful, and this cheered up my morning coffee time. It might sound odd, but I also like the fact that the photographs of Mr. Corones are not particularly attractive. He looks like a 99-year-old man.
First, it did make a good start to my morning routine of a large, strong coffee to read this encouraging story about a man enjoying his old age, even though it reminded me of my own lack of exercise. I keep meaning to exercise more regularly, but somehow never get around to doing it. Or I do get around to exercising, but lack the persistence that Mr. Corones has clearly shown for the past twenty years, since he again started swimming after retirement. I used to exercise regularly, even getting up at 5:00 am to put in a good hour or so at Lumpini Park at the start of the day. Now, I start my day with a hearty dose of my favourite drug and no exercise until I walk to AUA, which only takes me ten minutes – not exactly a challenging workout.
I was actually in two minds about the photographs of his sagging body. It is clearly that of an old man, with plenty of sagging and not much sexy muscle, but I like that he seems to accept that it's OK to look his age. It also reminded me of my mum, who is now 87. Although she is not about to break any world swimming records, she remains active and alert. Her main exercise is nagging her children and eating, which she still does with a hearty appetite and some red wine. On my annual visits to see her and my brothers and sisters in Australia, food features heavily, and red wine.
And now I've confessed to a fondness to two addictive drugs. Perhaps I should stop before you think that drugs run my life.
I wonder whether Mr. Corones is also a regular recreational drug user?
First, it did make a good start to my morning routine of a large, strong coffee to read this encouraging story about a man enjoying his old age, even though it reminded me of my own lack of exercise. I keep meaning to exercise more regularly, but somehow never get around to doing it. Or I do get around to exercising, but lack the persistence that Mr. Corones has clearly shown for the past twenty years, since he again started swimming after retirement. I used to exercise regularly, even getting up at 5:00 am to put in a good hour or so at Lumpini Park at the start of the day. Now, I start my day with a hearty dose of my favourite drug and no exercise until I walk to AUA, which only takes me ten minutes – not exactly a challenging workout.
I was actually in two minds about the photographs of his sagging body. It is clearly that of an old man, with plenty of sagging and not much sexy muscle, but I like that he seems to accept that it's OK to look his age. It also reminded me of my mum, who is now 87. Although she is not about to break any world swimming records, she remains active and alert. Her main exercise is nagging her children and eating, which she still does with a hearty appetite and some red wine. On my annual visits to see her and my brothers and sisters in Australia, food features heavily, and red wine.
And now I've confessed to a fondness to two addictive drugs. Perhaps I should stop before you think that drugs run my life.
I wonder whether Mr. Corones is also a regular recreational drug user?
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My question
Do you agree with Mr. Corones on the importance of "technique and pacing"? How does this apply to your life?
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Reference
- Swimmer, 99, 'breaks world record' in Australia. (2018, March 2). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43251125
My summary here is 102 words, which is safely within the 135 word limit. It took me a bit of effort to fit in the ideas that I thought important.
ReplyDeleteThe much freer response is 338 words, which is again the right sort of number.
Finally, my question is only one question, although it does consist of two question type sentences for my readers, you, to respond to in comments.
And of course, since I used other people ideas and words, I've written the expected reference citation that is required by good academic practice.
In case you are wondering, no, I did not count the words by hand.
DeleteGoogle Docs has a very useful Word count tool under its tools menu, so I pasted my completed writing into a Google Doc and ran the word count tool on it.
For the response, this is not a big problem: it's easy to see that you've written two or more paragraphs of reasonable length. But the word count is important for your summary. I will be fairly strict about the limit of 135 words, so do not go over it. I know it's challenging: it's supposed to be!
If in doubt, copy and paste your work into a Google Doc and run the Word count tool on it.
An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly stated that Mr. Corones set a record for the butterfly. He set a new record for the freestyle event.
ReplyDeleteThank you Yok for bringing this to my attention so that I could correct it.
I honestly don't know whether I made a mistake or whether the BBC made a mistake which they later corrected after I'd already written my summary. I thought at the time that freestyle was more likely than butterfly, but I might have misread the article. Whatever the reason, it is important to correct our mistakes.
Unfortunately, the BBC does not add a note to tell readers when they revise published articles. Publications with higher academic standards such as The New York Times and The Economist always add a note to tell readers whenever a later correction is made to a published article. The Bangkok Post, in contrast, has a bad habit of often making corrections and never adding a note to tell readers of the revisions.
This is actually a revised version of my correction notice. It now reflects the style of The New York Times, which you can see, for example, at the end of their article "Rick Gates, Trump Campaign Aide, Pleads Guilty in Mueller Inquiry and Will Cooperate", published on February 23.