You might have heard the phrase, now you have seen it. Saturday, I went up to the Invercharron Traditional Highland Games, near Bonar Bridge in the Scottish Highlands. A fabulous day in every way, really beautiful setting, warm sunny weather and an amazing display of all sorts of sports and human stamina.
It is a really interesting day, and really you just can't keep up with it all, at times there are multiple different events going on all at the same time.
Children's sprints, sack races, egg and spoon races, ( each child needed an adult to run as well). Hill racing, cycling around a grassy and hilly running track. Highland dancing contests, bagpipe playing, tug of war, the list goes on.
However the real heroes have got to be these guys Tossing the Cabers.
A caber is normally made from a Larch tree,19 feet 6 inches ( 5.94 metres) long and weighing 175 pounds ( 79 kgs).
The object is to throw it hard enough that it lands on the top of the caber and tosses over so that the bottom the tosser was holding is furthest away. Its not how far it goes that counts, it should land at "12 o'clock" from the thrower. You can have three goes at this.
Sound hard ? Fancy a go ?
Well thats not half of it. Tossing the Caber is not a single event. It's the eighth event in an afternoon of extreme events. Not that they take drugs ( they can be randomly drug tested) but think the Heptathlon on Steroids.
All these events take place not over two days, but in about three hours. Some events they have three attempts at, others continue till there is one outright winner. so heres what they do....
Throwing 16lb (7.2 kg) Hammer
Throwing 22lb (10kg) Hammer
Putting 16lb (7.2kg) Shot
Putting 22lb (10kg) Shot
Throwing 28lb (12.7kg) weigh distance
Throwing 56lb ( 25.4kg)weigh distance
Throwing 56lb( 25.4kg) weigh over a bar.
( The record for throwing that 56lb up into the air and over a bar is over 17feet (5.18 metres).
So do all that and then you just have the simple job of Tossing the Caber.
Follow the link to see what else was going on........
http://365project.org/markp/Alternatively/17-09-2016
