Hi Guys,
A lot has changed in the last couple of months, so I thought
I would update you on the changes. I am now officially working back in my hometown,
working in process improvement with a strong team behind me and a supportive
manager. Post Office have been more than supportive with this change and I look
forward to continue working with them.
The sit skiing is coming along nicely now, I still have a
very large learning curve to go through. I am starting to see the benefits
already. We were in Norway in July, training on Fonna glacier. I love Norway,
it is one of my favourite countries, the views are stunning and it is such a
chilled way of life. This was my first
official sit skiing camp, which was rather a strange feeling in itself. After a
couple of days being there, I realised how much more energy I had and how I was
able to ski further, for longer and at a more consistent level. I was coming
off the snow and wanting to actually do things, rather than drink copious
amounts of coffee. Dougie and Lynne Mill
were the coaches out there and half way through the week we actually discussed
goals for me trying not to burn myself out, just because I can. On previous
camps when I’ve been skiing I was exhausted but now that my skiing takes so
much less energy, I was coming off the snow, wanting to go on runs, bike rides
and generally wanted to punish my body because I wasn’t feeling exhaustion,
like I used too. This is something I
need to get over and start being a bit more tactical about how much I can push
myself and being exhausted every day isn’t something I should strive for…that’s
not to say I shouldn’t push myself.
Norway was one of the first camps where I’ve started to
realise how crashing in a sit ski is part of the learning curve….some of you
may have already seen the pictures but I had a bit of an incident crashing in
my rig. It was the last run of the day and I was just heading down to grab
lunch. I got into a bit of trouble and was thrown down the mountain, getting
into a bit of roll, mid roll the ski decided to pop off and subsequently
smacked me in the head, drawing blood and leaving a large stain on the lovely
white snow. Dougie and Lynne were incredibly quick to react, they applied
pressure to my cut, notified the lift operators, who drove up in a ski doo and
took me to medical room, where I was wrapped up in a rather hilarious bandage.
Within a short time, I was at the hospital getting stitched up and the doctor
even commended my hilarious bandage. I have to admit due to the adrenaline
dump, I didn’t actually feel any pain and was actually quite enjoying myself,
stopping Doctors and Coaches at various times so I could take the obvious
selfies… I have full recovered now and have a lovely scar to show for it.
Last week the Chief Engineer (Dad) and I got back from a
week training in Landgraaf. This was predominately a slalom camp but he wanted
to come along to get me try as many different positions in the sit ski as
possible. We wanted to see what gives the most comfort and the most
performance. I would regularly go for lunch, come back and find he had moved
the shock or the seat to a different position, quite often hoping I wouldn’t notice…..I
did. Although, we had some obvious
failures we were able to come up with a plan for the next few months and how we
can get more out of the rig. The camp itself was a lot of fun, although being
in a giant fridge for a week can be rather discouraging at times, not having
the fantastic views to keep you motivated. We had a purpose to why we were
there and we hit it.
This weekend I will be competing in the Super Hero Series
Triathlon in Windsor, earlier this year I signed up for it as a bit of a
physical challenge for myself. In doing this, I also signed up a number of members
of the team and one of my close mates in the process….they love me haha. In
true team spirit we have grouped together to raise money for the Development
Team for our upcoming season. If you
would like to read a bit more about that, click here.
Right I will leave it here for now, I will update you guys
after the triathlon, wish me luck.
Much love
Alex
x
