My life on the road has come to the end for another winter season. I competed in just the last four of the Skeleton World Cup races Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. A traveller’s lifestyle, a different hotel each week, different room and change of bed! Daily schedules dictate what we’re supposed to be doing and when. Now my competitions are over and I find myself a little lost!
I’ll be honest, it was a lot harder then I had imagined, coming back to the races after deciding to take the first half of the season off. There are no training guides to tell you what you are meant to feel like when you race again after experiencing such a high, like the one I had following Vancouver. You suddenly become more critical and as is common in most professional sport, you start to analyse every last detail and question things you didn’t previously. In all of my four races I didn’t perform to the level I wanted to, or felt I was capable of, which is really hard to cope with.
It’s good to feel these emotions though, because it reaffirms what I always believed, that while the competitive fire in my belly dimmed momentarily, I always knew I wanted to keep improving and build on what I achieved at the Olympics. For now though, I will take a little time out, find some adventures away from skeleton and refresh my brain, so it is ready to train, train, train again!
