I’m not going to lie, these past 2 months have been very slow for me. I haven’t managed to get out to the mountains to ski since December due to financial issues, so I’ve been applying for jobs to help fund everything, but hopefully I’ll get away in a few weeks!
January started with being around loved ones celebrating the new year. New years day my family and I went out for food at a place near where we live. The place we ate wasn’t too bad but me being lactose intolerant made it so I only had 2 options to choose from which was annoying but it’s not the end of the world. Overall New Years was cool, we had family and my girlfriend over and we played cards and ate (that's a pretty standard new year in my family).
Just over a week into 2023 it was mine and my girlfriend's anniversary so we spent that together on a little trip in Manchester. It was really nice and Jasmine treated me to dinner at Nandos (I know, I’m a lucky guy!). We also went and played electronic mini golf! Because it was electronic, you could score bonus points too. It was super fun and we didn’t get too competitive. Aside from that, we just did some sightseeing before going home.
The next cool thing I got to do was go to Edinburgh with Jasmine for one of my friends 30th birthday. It was a surprise party for him which was so cool to see him, catch up and spend his birthday with him. The train journey to get there was a little hectic with trains being late, but me and Jasmine got there fine in the end. When I got there Alex from Fauna arrived at the same time so it was cool to see him as well and we spoke a lot about skiing and his skis (which I love to ski, I have the Fauna Alparka, If you didn’t already know). We also saw Row Emery who is a legend in the UK ski scene, I hadn’t seen him in ages so it was nice catching up with everyone.
February has been very quiet, I've been trying to figure everything out for me to get away. It's been hard finding affordable accommodation and trying to figure out where people are to ski with but like I said at the beginning, I should be getting away in a couple of weeks.
Aside from that, I've been applying for a ton of jobs (most of which I still haven’t heard anything back from!) I've been going to the gym and playing basketball to stay fit so I’m good for when I get back on snow. At the gym, I mainly do legs, like squats, RDLs, leg press, split squats etc. I also do plyometrics to keep my jumping good, both double leg and single leg to help with muscle control and to help prevent injury. Don’t worry though because even though I mainly do legs, I do a little arms, a fair amount of core work and cardio at the end of every session just to try to maintain. My favourite upper body exercise to do is weighted push ups or chin ups. The core and abs workout at the end of every session is sometimes a struggle, especially after doing everything else but I love it. When I go play basketball it's normally pretty much the same but I’ve been getting better and more consistent with shooting and layups. When I’ve been play 1-on-1 with my friend Joe, my defense has got better and I’ve been getting better at getting away from him when I’m on offense but his defense is too good sometimes. It’s always a good workout.
I’ve still been doing driving lessons so I can eventually drive myself to go skiing and not be dependent on my family to take me to UK based training and I feel as if I’m getting better every lesson. Now it’s all just practicing everything, maneuvers and just general driving. I’m pretty proud of how I’ve been doing.