Life goes on...

Well things are slowly falling back into place.
Last weekend I gave my first presentation of the UK trip, at Summit to Sea on Anglesey. We worked hard to cut the thing down and dump most of the 1800 photos we had, but it was still hard to squeeze it all in to a manageable length. I really wanted to keep the feeling of the whole undertaking rather than just a few disconnected stories and photos. I did go on for a while (I was on a bit of a roll!) and I did notice as we passed through the 'audience numb-bumb stage', but then there was no chatting going on and nobody walked out, so I guess it went reasonably well after all.

Afterwards a number of people came over to chat and it was really interesting to hear people's tales and thoughts. Ian Papworth was one of these people and I enjoyed chatting with Ian as he told me that he set off on his own UK circumnavigation a few weeks after me and followed in my wake, in a slightly larger boat though. You can read of Ian's adventures on his blog: http://www.sailingwithian.blogspot.co.uk/
For me it is especially interesting to read his comments on settling down again not being too easy.

Training is just starting to fall back into place again and it's going pretty well on the water. I'm enjoying the training and just paddling in general, in a way that I haven't for a while. The times are coming back down and are pleasingly close to PB's in a few places - not bad for an old git. We are working pretty hard on the water and I'm really enjoying my paddles with Pascale and Aled.
I'm still to get my weight back down, but then I shouldn't eat like a pig I suppose. This is making for a few problems on the running front, but that will come - though I might have to miss a few races this year.

Axel in the Swellies

I've decided to take a bit of a sabbatical from work at Rockpool and Mike has been rather understanding about it all. I've got a few things to catch up on; one of which, a revamp of the Performance Sea Kayak site, is taking much of my non-paddling time at the moment.

And of course there is time taken in planning for whatever comes next.

Life is a bitch they tell me, but I can't really understand why...