If you saw the latest issue of Latte Quarterly, you'll know that FM Adventure partook in an exciting new fitness challenge that merged his FM21 save with a daily run where the distance varied based on results on the pitch. Inspired by his work, I decided to take up the mantle and have been running (literally) the same challenge throughout September.
If you're one of my 8 followers on Twitter, you'll have seen me posting daily updates on how things went, but I thought I'd add a blog update too in an effort to grow my audience to double figures.
The Format
Simply put, I played a match on FM21 every day and would then run a distance determined by the result on the pitch: 1 km for a win, 2 km for a draw and 3 km for a loss.
According to FM the rhyme, September has 30 days and so I looked at leagues with 16 teams who play each other in a simple home and away format each season, giving me 30 games to get through, one per day. Ultimately I settled on playing in the South African Premier League, somewhere I've often been curious about but never enough to start a save there.
Choosing a team was fairly straightforward since I wanted someone mid-table so I'd get a mixture of results and so I went with Maritzburg United, aptly nicknamed The Team of Choice, and predicted to finish 8th in the division. I left attribute masking disabled and I turned off the first transfer window so I wouldn't need to worry about keeping players or signing replacements.
Football Results
The Maritzburg Utd squad is fairly small, with a lot of depth in attack, and limited options at the back. The starting XI is fairly solid though, albeit with an ageing cast, but a few young prodigies help to redress the balance. We opted for a basic 4-2-3-1 formation with the intent of keeping possession and gently probing the opposition defence looking for an opening. Below was the starting set up, with a few tweaks made over the course of the season to a more Cautious mentality, a Higher Defensive Line and swapping one of the IWs for a W, the SS for an AM and CM for a BBM.
After a successful preseason and an early exit from one of the cup competitions, the season proper got under way with an away defeat to Sundowns, before back to back wins saw us looking like we might be competitive. In true FM fashion, we came back down to Earth with a bump as we lost to Amazulu and then Kaizer Chiefs (such a riot) before recovering with 7 points in our next 3 games, including a draw against South African giants, Orlando Pirates. Another two losses followed to see us sitting comfortably in 9th place after 10 games with a bang average 13 points to our name.
The winter transfer window provided an opportunity to bring in a few additions and with limited funds available, we looked to the free transfer market for decent backups. There's also a limit on foreign players which we'd already maxed out so we opted for new South African recruits at the back and in central midfield. We also upgraded our keeper since I'm sure we'd have had more success with a more prominent figure between the sticks.
As the window slammed shut, our rocky form continued, with every win seemingly followed by defeat. That is until we reached the mid-way point where we managed three consecutive wins on the bounce as the team finally started to gel. In our next two games we only managed a draw to Bloemfontein Celtic, before a resounding defeat to Amazulu away.
Next, a decent win against Chippa Utd in which we almost gave up our 3-goal lead at half time as Chippa started to fight back. We held on in the end though and saw out a 4-2 victory as we entered the final third of the season. This paved the way for an enormously satisfying 6-0 win against TS Galaxy, in which our forward man Meza managed 3 goals in the opening 21 minutes.
Sadly for us, we were unable to sustain this good run of form and would suffer defeats to Orlando Pirates and SuperSport Utd, with a 1-0 win against TTM sandwiched in between. A 93rd minute winner saved us against Stellenbosch FC next time out with that being the only goal of the match, before real disaster struck as we suffered three consecutive defeats to some of the leagues best teams in Kaizer Chiefs, Golden Arrows and Cape Town City.
Our last two games were both winnable ones, but we laboured to a 1-1 draw against Swallows FC which was disappointing after we battered them throughout. We picked up in our last outing though, a satisfying 3-2 victory away at Baroka (must have been those effervescent tablets we dished out at half time) and a pleasing end to the season for us and the fans.
All in all, I'd say the season went exactly as predicted. We sat in and around midtable for the entirety, venturing up as high as 7th at one point, and down as low as 10th at another. The board were neither impressed nor disappointed with my performance and so a very mediocre season draws to a close for a very mediocre Maritzburg Utd.
In terms of the competitiveness of the South African Premier League, I'd say there are 4-5 teams that have a realistic prospect of winning the title, and then the other 11 or 12 sides are fighting it out for the scraps. This would make it a very entertaining league to play in for anyone looking to build a dominant side that can routinely challenge for silverware. There are some rules in place on how many foreign players can be signed for the squad as well, and so developing domestic talent is key to success.
Running Results
Despite my online alias, it's been a very long time since I was anywhere near "athlete" status and although I have been running on a semi-regular basis in recent years, I've not been out since March 2021. The first run for this challenge was over 3 km which was as good a place as any to start and it felt good to put a marker down early and have something to improve on.
Usually the aching muscles after a run (even a relatively short 3 km) are enough to have me rest for a few days, but I quickly found that within a day or two I'd flushed out all the lactic acid and I just felt good, both physically and mentally. With the 1 km runs I really tried to go for it. At the back of my mind, I had FM Adventure's time of 4 mins 14 sec as the time to beat and that definitely helped spur me on, even if I knew it to be too quick for my speed.
I should also say that it did help to keep the distances realistic which is something FM Adventure advised me on too. By keeping them shorter it was easier to stay motivated, and crucially it made it possible to squeeze it round family life and work. That said, I did end up missing a few days which couldn't be helped, and so both times that happened I ended up playing catch up in the days that followed.
After around 10 days, I was able to really push myself to try and improve on my best times over each distance, but i also found it important to sometimes be able to just go for a gentle jog on the days where I was tired. I didn't want it to become a chore so I mixed it up when I could, and fitted it around 6-aside football twice a week as well. Despite sustaining minor injuries to my knee and shoulder, this is probably the fittest I've been in close to 20 years which is both satisfying and quite depressing in equal measure!
Below are my best times for each distance, along with my starting and ending weight which didn't change much, but considering I made no attempt to alter my diet, it does at least prove that some regular exercise can have a small impact (for me anyway).
1 km - 4:48 / 4:48 avg. (Run 2 saw me get round in 5:50, more than a minute slower!)
2 km - 10:19 / 5:10 avg. (Just four runs at this distance, with Run 8 my slowest at 11:24!)
3 km - 15:07 / 5:02 avg. (Run 1 took me just under 20 mins at an average of 6:34 per km!)
Weight - 11st 9lbs (74 kg) starting / 11st 5lbs (72 kg) finishing
The thing that's hard to measure is the positive impact this challenge has had on my mental health, which for me has been the most rewarding aspect to it all. For the most part, the global pandemic has had little affect on my life. I was lucky enough to keep my job, I still had my family at home (I'll let you decide if that's a good thing or not), and I got to enjoy some unexpected perks, such as saving money on fuel costs and not having to entertain distant relatives over Christmas.
Despite without doubt being one of the more fortunate people to live through the last 18 months, I have still had days where I've struggled with anxiety, or felt lost without my usual routine and I think it's important for all of us not to judge each other's personal circumstances, but to simply recognise that none of us are immune to having dark days. As a result of the pandemic, I found myself paying much closer attention to an aspect of my health I hadn't been familiar with in the past: my mental fitness.
Not to be confused with my mental health, which I interpret as the current state of things in my head, my mental fitness is something that's more free moving, that can ebb and flow in the same way your weight might fluctuate at Christmas, or your muscle tone might drop off when you skip the gym a few times. I think of my mental fitness as something I can train and strengthen over time, but equally something that can become "injured" and in need of recovery as well, like any other muscle in my body.
For me, each daily run guaranteed me 5-15 minutes out of the house and away from any stresses and strains at work or at home. Sometimes I'd go early morning at sun rise, other times I'd go out at lunch or at dusk, all depending on what suited the rest of the day's activities. It was nice to unplug for a bit. On the days where I felt competitive, it was great to have that sense of achievement when I got round quickly, but it was equally nice to take it slow and not feel rushed when I was feeling lethargic or sluggish.
I'd say the biggest barrier to this new found freedom was getting started in the first place, hence why I'd not run since March of this year. The FM element gave me the push I needed to get going, and once I popped I just couldn't stop. Out of the 30 days, I only had 1 day where I didn't fancy it, but thankfully my wife gave me a shove out the door so I didn't end up giving it up all together!
My Verdict
Not to overstate it, but this has been absolutely brilliant for me and I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone either looking to get physically or mentally fit, or who wants to add another layer to their FM save. Playing the game in short bursts like this meant it wasn't disruptive to other stuff going on at home, and as I mentioned above, because the runs were manageable distances, it meant I found motivation easy to come by too.
I'd also say that keeping a log on Twitter helped as well, and it made a big difference to know I had support from others in the FM community, in particular FM Adventure, FM Grasshopper and FM Rensie, all of whom were part of FM Adventure's original challenge.
I will be taking a short break from running to allow time for a few niggles to recover, but I have every intention of making this a regular thing from now on and will be back with a new save on the FM22 Beta in a few weeks time.
In the meantime, please let me know if you are thinking of doing something similar as I'd love to lend you my support and follow your progress.
Before I finish, I talked a little about my own experience with mental health and mental fitness in this blog and I thought it may be useful to share a couple of links to other resources, in case you or someone you know might find them useful. The Mental Health Foundation has an excellent whitepaper on "How to Look After Your Mental Health Using Exercise" while The Coaching Manual also have a great piece entitled "5 Ways Football Can Improve Your Mental Health". Both are worth checking out.
Thanks for reading down this far, I really appreciate your support. I have a couple of FM22-related blog updates coming out in the next few weeks in which I will share what I'm planning to do for next year. Meanwhile, if you'd like to read more of last year's antics, you can find me at coffeehousefm.com/fmathlete, or as fm_athlete on Twitter and FM Slack.
For now though, it's a fond farewell. I've been FM Athlete, you've been "playing kiss chase in the playground". See you next time.