Its been
several months since I last posted on my blog… That’s how it is when Im living
a mundane life while not off on some international moto-adventure J
Anyway,
at last report I had got back into skeletoning and had just “made it” to the
top of the Whistler sliding track. So, to report on the rest of the sliding
season, Id have to say things went pretty well, and at the very least, the
regular sliding each week kept me pretty busy…
Ive now
put in probably about 70 runs from the top or so, Ive gone out to the Calgary
track and spent a week training and sliding there (a very different track to
Whistler) and there have been two or three competitions to slide in as well.
Along the way Ive managed to crack my ribs, split the skin on my jaw and bruise
the hell out of my elbows (bad form!) and shoulders/arms a few time… all part
of the learning process in this sport.
Its a bit hard to see whats going on, but the whole lower half of my upper arm is bruised a very dark purple!
The
sliding season has now finished and Im certainly still enjoying it enough to
really want to do it again next year but I was a bit disappointed over-all with
my own progress… I seem to perform particularly badly on race days too! Anyway,
My best stats for this season are probably something like this: Top speed about
131Kmh, best down time about 58.75seconds, and best start time about 5.5
seconds. And to compare that to other athletes in the “local” North America Cup
circuit, they would have speeds of about 135Kmh, down times of about 56seconds
and start times of about 4.9 seconds.
It might seem like Im not that far off the pace there but believe me
there is a very large difference between them and me… Oh well, plenty of room
for improvement next season J
But its
now getting into the summer season here and the track at Whistler is shut down
and so if I want to practice at all then it needs to be on dry land rather than
ice…
To that
end Ive built a practice sled so I can work on my push start which is an area I
can definitely improve at… every 1/10th of a second faster in the
start time translates to 2/10 or 3/10 at the finish time, and Im very slow at
the start. So I need to practice running
in that awkward bent over push position. And so I bought a pair of old roller
blades, a 2’x4’x3/4” sheet of ply wood and a couple of pieces of aluminium
channel…and given a couple of evenings of tinkering etc I now have a push sled
that I can practice with on any flat bit of pavement… though not a downhill
section cos the sled has no steering mechanism and it builds up speed pretty
quickly J
The practice sled.
And on
other fronts, Ive been working on my motorbikes of course… Ive decided to ride
the little yellow one this summer so it and the dirt bike are currently
registered.
But since
I accumulated so much debt last summer with my not working, traveling, paying
the mortgage, and giving away the motorbike, I simply cant afford to get the 20’
container I was planning to set up as a workshop this year. So instead I spent
a few days over Easter extending the roof on the car-port I built a couple of
years ago… and so now I have a sheltered place that I can both park and work on
motorbikes in.
Work wise, Ive been doing a six month contract with my usual employer and its been going fine... Its easy to fit back into the systems and tasks that Im used to. But Im getting to the end of that contract now and Im not sure if there will be another contract immediately or not... Personally Im hoping there will be because I need to do some more debt paying for a while yet, but if not then I guess Ill try to think of something cheap to do for a month or three in the summer here - at least the weather here will be nice :)
The extended, postless, self-supporting car-port extension... The car is not mine, it belongs to the guy down-stairs.
