Start as you mean to go on

Start as you mean to go on.

Well that’s that then, all the Christmas and New Year stuff completely done with once again. Now we can get on with the good things that we are aiming at in 2018.  It is good so to have goals and I have plenty of my own that I am looking forward too. Looking forward is a devil of a lot more sensible than looking back; we surely are all agreed on that. Onwards and upwards.

Steve and I have been on holiday for a very greedy 18 days with literally mountains of snow, the most we have ever seen. We have been away on a winter holiday almost every year that we have been together, apart from the couple of years when Steve’s mum was suffering failing health. I gave up skiing a few years ago after my last skiing injury took 10 weeks out of my triathlon training and when I decided which sport was most important to me, the one that lasted a week or so or the one that has filled my life for so many years.

This year Steve has not skied either, and so instead we had a concentrated swimming holiday in the unbelievably awesome Ovaverva Centre. We stayed in the Hotel Reine Victoria right across the road from the pool in St. Moritz, Switzerland. We swam every morning at 10am and did not get back to our hotel until about 1pm. No, we didn’t swim all that time, but each session was at least twice as long as any we do at home and we swam every day, instead of four times a week which is our usual.

 These two are my husband Stephen on the Cresta Run thirty years ago

The Ovaverva also has a large outside pool with massage jets of every kind so you could sooth aching muscles or loosen any stiff areas, whilst gazing at the breathtaking Engadin Valley Mountains on the clear days or experiencing the most unusual effect of being snowed on as you relax in the hot steaming water. Actually on one day we were swimming in a blizzard with tiny drops of ice pinging into any part that was out of the water. Regular dips of the head under the water were essential to stop your head freezing off.

Tomorrow we are spending some of the day watching our GB Bob and Skeleton men and women on a practise day before the World Cup event that follows. Steve and I are both great fans of the sliding sports and have both ventured on one of the guest runs they arrange every now and again in a four man bob. Steve can make a much greater claim, in that he has on a number of occasions in the past ridden the Cresta Run. Last year we took a weekend trip to St Moritz for a World Cup downhill ski event, so you see we are a pair of winter sports fans extraordinaire. Soon to come, is the European Figure Skating Championships and of course the Winter Olympic Games.

Two much younger Belties on an early ski holiday years ago

This morning was the opening of entries for a regular yearly favourite event of ours, the 2018 Swimathon at the end of April. We both entered first thing today for the 5000 mtr event. You can do shorter distances or choose your own distance. I always recommend the inclusion of this challenge in a triathletes training because you don’t often have the chance of a long uninterrupted swim like that, with a lap counter and of course a medal if you need any more, and it is a great confidence booster.

Next event that we will enter very soon before it is full is another local event to us in Littlehampton that being the Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club’s Frosty or Frost-bite, a really fun friendly event. It is a swim run 400mtr/5km or 800mtr/10km. A great social event.

World Champion biathlete Martin Fourcade

Steve and I have two Ironman 70.3 races, also already entered, to look forward to in June as our main aims for the year. The first is Elsinore in Denmark which we so enjoyed last year and is European Championships again. Then 13 days later a new one at that distance in Lahti, Finland. As yet we have only entered one other event and that will be a new experience for me though not for Steve. We and a few of the usual suspects from our circle have entered the Dart 10Km. This is a point to point river swim in the River Dart needless to say. The swim is in September.

I think this 2018 plan shows a basic determination not to spend too much time thinking we are bored. Boredom is not something I suffer with ever.

On what is clearly another quite separate plain, we will be forging on with getting the monthly meeting of The Harbour Lights Poets up and running with the help of Arun District Council have given us a Small Arts Grant and that will pay the hire fee for three months, paying for our time in the meeting room above the Harbour Lights Café, at the Look and Sea centre by the River Arun in Littlehampton. Poets, Writers, Playwrights, readers, listeners and watchers all equally welcome. Buy your tea of coffee and come on up, you do not have to be a member.

Next meeting is coming up fast.

January 21^st at 2pm