Day 12 - After the Lord Mayor's show.

August 7th

This is only my 2nd stupidest hat.

There's almost an air of melancholy today now that we've all recovered from Bolt showing the word he's still the boss over 100m. Sure we still get to see if he can make us shake our heads in disbelief once again in the 200m but there's no point in pretending the high water mark wasn't passed on Sunday night.

The 100m final has so much hype and importance attached to it that the first week is all build up to it and it seems that   in the days following we realise that the signature moment of our games has passed and everything else seems just to be book-keeping.

Not here though, we still have plenty of stuff to count, today's triathlon added some great numbers and we still have the men's marathon to look forward to. It looks fairly clear that at some point this week we'll clear 10 million metres which I still have difficulty believing even though the evidence is right there on the screen in front of me.

Godspeed you magnificent bastard

Perhaps the air of deflation is added to by the passing of my old laptop which today finally went into the darkness for the last time. I'd like to take this moment to salute the infuriating piece of crap and all the years of service it gave me. I'll miss you, this new machine might actually be stable and co-operative but it just doesn't feel the same; sort of like using someone else's towel. RIP.

Numbers

Swimming: 82,500m
Running: 770,550m
Jumping: 1,260.87m
Throwing: 7,219.51m
Daily Total: 861,530.38m

Giving cumulative numbers of...

Swimming: 575,500m
Running: 8,268,415m
Jumping: 5,122.46m
Throwing: 33,905.88m
Total total: 8,882,943.34m

R

You can follow e on twitter at @Le_Paien_Roux

Day 11 - The summer we fell in love...

August 6th

...with ourselves.

Go here, click play, minimize it and come back.

I'll come to the numbers in a minute. I'm at the point where they don't really matter anymore. Right now the whole country seems to be in love with the whole country and I can't pretend to be anything but one of them.

We might well be in a huge financial mess, our banks may be messed up and our youngest generation completely fucked but right now it doesn't matter. Our second sexiest city (sorry but Newcastle will always come first) is right now the hottest place in the universe and more importantly we all get it. Right now all the eyes in the world are on us and we are showing our good side to the camera. We'll be paying this little shindig off for years to come but right now we have the best looking, best dressed, coolest and most intelligent  city on the planet. We always did to be fair but for this fortnight, just for once we recognise it and the whole world agrees.

I would hope that this can lead us to forgetting our past and getting on with our future. Accepting that we are now a nation of the world and that our past, amazing though it is, really doesn't matter anymore. We don't have to look back for greatness; forward is an option for us now.

I remember love, it's happened once or twice and it was always real when you stop differentiating flaws and strengths. That's where we are right now. We aren't top of the medal table, there have been certain mistakes with the organisation of this whole thing but none of that matters anymore. We love ourselves again, we see our value once more and it raises us up; makes us better than we were and allows us to believe we'll be better in future because we recognise why the world loves us right now. (Hello Lora, hello Lyndsey. For the record, this is my thank you).

Numbers

Swimming: 0m
Running: 487,000m
Jumping: 99.56m
Throwing: 7364.3m
Today's Total: 494,463.95m

Which gives us

Swimming: 493,000m
Running: 7,497,865m
Jumping: 3,861.59m
Throwing: 26686.37m
Total total: 8,021,412.96m

Route-master buses: 714,284 ish

R

You can follow me on Twitter at @Le_Paien_Roux

Day 10 - Blink and you'll miss it

August 5th

What are you all doing here? Don't you know there's a test match going on? Honestly, there's some proper sport going on right now and everyone is ignoring it for some running. Go here to get all the facts.

The noise you hear is me sighing

Apparently there was a high profile race today whereby 8 men ran really fast for 100m. I've counted them; they register, but to be honest the 800m they contributed is sod all in the great scheme of things because today we had the Women's marathon. It pretty much destroyed the numbers we were adding together. More than 4 and a half million metres in one event almost makes this whole thing irrelevant.

Only almost though. So having recorded the biggest numbers so far I'd like to honour the people who've made the smallest contribution to our total. Here every metre counts so please join me, charge your glasses and give some love to Chantae, Sofia and Louise. All these women managed to jump 1.56m in the Women's Heptathlete High Jump. 1.56m is likely the smallest number I'll ever have to enter into the spreadsheet that counts all of this but I did have to enter it.

Still, think about it. 1.56m. Upwards. Could you jump it? I couldn't and so I'd like us all to take a moment to cheer those women right now because every metre counts and they've all contributed to the number at the top right of this page.

Elsewhere, both of our football teams went out and I'll have more on that tomorrow, Andy (come on Tim) Murray won the hearts of the nation along with his Gold while John McEnroe just won our hearts and Ben Ainslie became pretty much the most successful sailor ever. (He night want to update his website though).

Numbers

Swimming: 0m. Not a damn thing, I'm sad to be honest, I thought we had a thing going.
Running: 4,623,665m
Jumping: 838.31m
Throwing: 3,596.61m
Total: 4,628,099.92m

which gives us overall numbers of

Swimming: 493,000m
Running: 7,010,865m
Jumping: 3,761.94
Throwing: 19,322.07m
Total: 7,526,949.01m

In terms of vertical jumping we're at 805.08m. Burj Khalifa we are coming for you.

R

You can follow me on Twitter at @Le_Paien_Roux

Day 9 - How far? Really? No way.

August 4th

So according to the radio today is Super Saturday, the busiest single day in the entire games. I can't vouch for that as to be honest the numbers were pretty easy to add up today. What I am certain is that I've never heard the phrase "super saturday" in this context before. I suspect the BBC might be getting a little carried away with itself. I've more to say on the topic of it's coverage (which has been to be fair uniformly excellent) but that can wait for another day.

Before we go any further everyone should go and watch this trailer. I have nothing more to add to that other than pretty childish squeals of excitement that would make you worry that I'm about to either pass out or puke.

The numbers continue to be astounding, no two ways about it; you'll see them in full below but to give an idea if we take yesterdays Heptathlete High Jump and add that to today's Pole Vault then they end up about 40cm short of clearing the Petronas Towers.

These towers. Not the Harry Potter charms.

I would have more to say but sadly I've been wrestling my computer into working again so we'll have to live with just the...

Numbers

Swimming: 101,300m
Running: 1,945,500m
Jumping: 1,117.51m
Throwing: 6,646.66m
Total Today: 2,054,564.14m

Which all add up to

Swimming: 493,000m
Running: 2,387,200m
Jumping: 2,923.63m
Throwing: 15,725.46m
Total: 2,898,849.09m

Which is a lot frankly. That there is 258,134 Routemaster buses (if measured bumper to bumper).

See you tomorrow

R

You can follow me on Twitter at @Le_Paien_Roux

Day 8 - Be careful what you wish for.

August 3rd

So having spent the best part of a week complaining about only having swimming to measure I finally got a full program of events today.

I'm not going to lie. It was a bit more than I anticipated. Running is easy to count, you just need to know how far the race is and how many people finish it. Nice and simple. Jumping and throwing however are a different kettle of fish, and it's no longer a kettle; and they're no longer fish.

Never mind, we still have some proper numbers to work with from this point on so there's a good chance you'll be spared any more dull anecdotes.

Except for this one:

Turns out that noticing a girl has coordinated her make up to her clothes is a good thing. Noticing again that specifically her eye-shadow matches her top is also acceptable. Noticing that her eye-shadow matches her bra strap though (which it TOTALLY did btw), bit of a mis-step.

[/anecdote]

Anyway, today was the first day where we had everything happening and again I've had to re-think my comparative measures.

I'd thought that famous buildings would do for the high jump and pole-vault but the Women Heptathletes today managed a massive 284.79m in the high jump. That is enough to clear the Trump Building.

Go on, you try jumping it.

That's just the heptathletes, we haven't had the actual high-jumpers let alone the pole-vaulters yet so buildings might be off the table for this. Mountains maybe? Possibly we can just add a couple of the smaller ones together, lets just see how we go from here. Any ideas then let me know.

Numbers

Swimming: 72,700m
Running: 441,700m
Jumping: 1806.12m
Throwing: 9078.80m
Total: 525,284.92m

Which gives us an overall of:

Swimming: 391,700m
Running: 441,700m
Jumping: 1806.12m
Throwing: 9078.80m
Total total: 844,284.92m

That's enough to do an awful lot of stuff on land and in the water. I accept my guilt for not working this stuff out sooner but really, that is an amazing distance, it's like 525 miles. I'd been saving the idea of swimming from Cuba to Florida but that is apparently only 90 miles and so no longer any use to us. I guess the best I can offer right now is the old faithful Route-master London Bus.

The overall total so far is equivalent to 751,811.301 Route-master buses.

I'll work out some better comparability terms for tomorrow. I hope to see you then

R

You can follow me on Twitter at @Le_Paein_Roux

Day 7 - Technical Difficulties, please stand by

This used to scare the life out of me.

August 2nd

Or at least it should have been.

Having character tends to be seen as a good thing. You would take it as a compliment if it was said about you. In this case not so much.

My laptop 'has character' and 'knows it's own mind.' Yesterday it's mind was fixed upon not working at all from about 3pm onward hence this is coming out late.

Following a sensible rational discourse (threats and swearing on my part, mute indifference on the part of the computer) we've come to an arrangement where it works and I don't throw it out of the window. So apologies for the delay and lack of detail.

Numbers

Day 7 gave us 53,800m in the pool.

This brings our total so far to a barely credible 319,000m.

This is roughly enough to swim the entire length of the Deleware River Water Trail, winner of the prestigious Pennsylvania River of the Year 2011. Looks beautiful.

Right, I'll be back tomorrow later today and we'll have something other than swimming results to count. See you then.

R

You can follow me on Twitter at @Le_Paien_Roux

Day 6 - Spandau Ballet rake it in.

The boys toast Helen Glover and Hannah Stanning.

August 1st

And just like that everything was right with the world again. 


All it took was one (two really) bits of (92.5% silver really) gold on some ribbon and these games were once again worth every penny.

That's not to take away from what Glover and Stanning achieved, they are the best in the world at rowing their particular distance in their particular configuration. Hats off to them. More than that though it's a great story; one of them is a serving artillery officer, the other was nowhere near a row boat until 4 years ago.

Theirs is exactly the type of tale that the Olympics should be about, the type that should be celebrated no matter which anthem they have played for them on the podium.

I hope that will all come out in the end but all that the radio had to offer after their triumph was a huge exhale of relief. A massive "Finally we've got a gold."

Well not to be churlish but no, we don't; Helen and Hannah have a gold. It's theirs, we don't get a share nor should we. They could be from any one of the other represented nations and it would still be a great story.

This idea of narratives being more important if they're our narratives is what leads to the press gleefully questioning Ye Shiwen's performance yet claiming Ruta Meilutyte as one of our own because she goes to school in Plymouth. It's not a competition people...I mean well yes it obviously is but it's meant to be between individuals and not nations. We aren't meant to claim surrogates throughout this.

As I said yesterday, treating this as a festival only when us and ours are winning demeans the whole thing. We might as well replace the medal tables with GDP tables or rankings of literacy rates if we are going to make this about statecraft.

Be patriotic, cheer on our women and men, celebrate their victories and think 'what if' of their shortfalls but don't turn it into mindless patriotism. We all now know what that looks like:

"Nanny! Someone fetch Nanny!"

Faking it

(Stay with me on this one)

A long time ago I was a bit of a piano prodigy. Hard to believe I know but I was right up there among the best 13-14 year olds in the country. My school had an exchange with members of the Voronezh youth orchestra. On the second or third day I was mooching around the music room when I heard their pianist (a girl whose name I forget but whom I had a HUGE crush on) messing around by playing badly on purpose a piece I knew she had absolute control over.

The thing was, to a trained ear such as mine she sounded just like someone trying something for the first time, making beginner's mistakes but seemingly trying her best. She explained that she did this as an exercise to test her mastery of the music; to be certain that she was a good as possible she had to be able to be bad at it also.

Obviously, hoping to impress the lady I gave this a try with Piano Sonata No. 17 which at the time I'd just gotten on top of. Now I did manage to play it badly, but only by making clear and obvious mistakes that anyone could have spotted were intentional. At that point I realised that I would never be at quite the level where I could intend to be bad at the piano while appearing to try my best. That was a level of skill above and beyond me.

All of which is a long way of saying that you really need to be among the very best ever to try and get away with being bad on purpose without people noticing. (Oddly I was quite good at Badminton as well).

Numbers

As an aside, I've decided to stop splitting male and female results as I don't see what this adds to this experiment. It also makes things a bit simpler for me.

Also tomorrow is the last day which only has swimming; come Friday we'll have other things to count. I for one can't wait.

Today's total: 60,000m

So clearly, as I mentioned on Day 4, swimming and I must be comfortable with each other now; no longer trying to impress. It might be time to let her meet my friends (Hello Sophie, hello Joseph, looks like we can finally have a double-date).

If we add this to what we've gotten so far then we get 265,200m

Which is about enough to swim the entire length of Dogger Bank.

R

You can follow me on Twitter at @Le_Paien_Roux