blasting away the cobwebs

Well, I went flying again yesterday, in my own aeroplane. Yes, after nearly 3 months of work and waiting she is back in the air and boy does it feel good.

My flying was terrible and the test yielded a couple of very minor issues, but I don't think I've felt such a huge relief and sheer joy in a very, very long time. There's definitely something comforting to the soul about seeing the vast expanse of blue sky rolled out below you!

Now I can look forward to really getting back in the saddle and preparing to start competing again (the first competition of the season is at the end of March and I need some serious practice). I've managed to build up a pretty reasonable base level of fitness and strength again over the past few months, and I will continue working hard on improving it further, but at least I'm in a very good position to gain as much as I possibly can from my flying and training.

Essentially I think that physical fitness, whilst on the face of it, not obviously all that essential for a competition flyer, makes a huge difference to performance. There are some huge forces involved when flying competition aeros - my body experiences forces that can vary very rapidly between +6g and -4g and this is hugely tiring. That coupled with the extreme levels of concentration and focus required for the entire flight duration really does make for a sport that takes a huge amount out of you. Last year I was climbing out of the aeroplane after a 10minute sortie feeling like I'd just run a marathon - no exaggeration. There may not be all that many calories burned, but the mental exertion is greater than anything else I've ever experienced.

Thus, the fitter I am, the better I can cope with the demands I place on myself during a flight, and the more quickly I recover afterwards - which in turn means I can manage to undertake more meaningful training in a day (of course at the moment the real show-stopper here is actually finance, but fingers crossed that's going to change soon). My gym obsession may well come into its own!

From this point on you'll most likely find me somewhere between praying for good weather, beasting myself in the gym, at the climbing wall or out on the trails, or back up in the sky with the biggest grin on my face :-)

new goals for me

Sat in the gym last night, panting and hallucinating mildly after pushing myself perhaps a tiny bit too hard for too long on the mountain bike 'simulator' (yes, really and it's actually really good to use - an exercise bike attached to a computer game!), a few thoughts swam across behind my eyes and I found myself wishing for a notepad. I didn't have one handy, so no doubt my hazy next day recollections of what I wanted to write down will be missing a few key bits but hey, that's life.

Basically as I sat there feeling absolutely exhausted and not a little bit sick, I remembered vaguely what it was like to once be really fit. That got me to thinking about this year and what I really want to do and achieve for myself. This morning I've been reading a few of my friend Lynne's recent blog posts about how her state of fitness and goals are coming along (have a look-see, she writes nicely! http://runningdelights.blogspot.co.uk/). Seeing her looking stupendously slim and fit, and reading about her fantastic training regimes has helped me clarify a couple of my own aspirations, not just for the year but for however long they take. I'm sure as my postings go on, more bits will get added to the 'lists' too.

I figure that writing all of these down will somehow help to organise things in my mind, so forgive me if this all sounds a little odd or a bit dull.



Life in general

2013:

• Gain a proper income again
• Stop worrying about money
• Learn to paraglide and take up paramotoring
• Get fitter and regain 6-pack (lose the flab!)
• Get back into mountain biking regularly
• Buy a cyclocross bike and use it to go places
• Use the car less
• Get back into running regularly
• Use the gym 3+ times per week, every week
• Do at least 20 pull-ups each day
• Go to the climbing wall at least once per week
• Get back into lead climbing
• Boulder consistent V4 again

Longer:

• Run a marathon
• Continue getting fitter
• Get another motorbike

Flying

2013:

• Do my first displays and airshows
• Compete in the British Nationals at Intermediate and claim my bursary
• Learn to tumble
• Do more flat spinning and inverted flat spinning
• Learn to tailslide
• Learn to do negative flick rolls
• Go to more places just for the hell of it
• Do some night flying
• Do some instrument flying (IMC?)

Longer:

• Build up display business
• Gain a CRI rating (become a Class Rating Instructor to be able to do tailwheel and aerobatic training for existing pilots)

More to come!

living the dream

Living the dream, or should I say 'living a dream' is surprisingly hard work.

I was driving home from the gym tonight, shoulders aching like hell after once again doing too much, partially drifting away into my own little world hidden behind the pools of light in front of the car when a thought struck me - this is what living a dream is really like.

The past few weeks have been hard. Very hard. Each day I get up and have to force myself to do something. Who knows, in a few weeks I may well be back working and the stress and shame of being completely broke will be gone, but for now it hurts. I couldn't even afford to pay my aircraft insurance renewal last week, I had to beg help. This is definitely a low point.

The dream isn't glamorous. It's just plain hard work. The flying part of being a display pilot is only a tiny fraction of what it actually takes, especially when you're breaking into the airshow world. The glamour just doesn't exist - I spend my time playing with websites, gathering contact details, writing and sending hundreds of emails, drawing up flyers and logos and graphics, battling to just keep some semblance of sanity. All this time I've not even had the sanity check of flying my little beast - the process of modifying an aeroplane is a very long winded one, involving much heartache, huge amounts of expense and some very frustrating periods of waiting, and waiting and waiting some more - all whilst the powers that be try to make a decision over whether or not you should actually be allowed your modification.

To those of you that fly but have never owned an aeroplane, you may think you have an idea what it must be like but trust me, the frustrations of waiting on paperwork and engineers is barely bearable at times. I should just take the opportunity to say thanks to my friends for at least allowing me to get airborne, the sky really is a beautiful place to be, whatever craft you happen to be in.

I guess every dream has its own nightmare that has to go along with it - something about being no light without darkness. I know, I'm prattling, but in all honesty if anyone decides to try to live their dream and doesn't reckon with having to cope with a whole heap of hardship, effort and tears along the way then they're going to have a rude awakening. Just as light needs darkness, endeavours need to be difficult in order to really be worth while - why bother throwing everything you have into something if it's not going to be a challenge? Maybe it's just me, but victories are much sweeter when they're hard won.

How many other people actually do this, I mean really do this. How many choose to make a dream reality, despite huge odds stacked against them? To all of you doers and dreamers out there, I'm with you.

outlet

It's been over a year since I visited this old blog of mine, let alone updated it. Basically my life has changed, dramatically.

I'm no longer living in the mountains, now my life is primarily confined to the flat-lands of Cambridgeshire. A big part of me misses Wales, the hills, my friends, my old climbing/biking/running/outdoors lifestyle, but there's an even bigger part of me that knows my current course in life is where I need to be. At least for now.

So what's happened? I wrote before about my getting into aerobatic flying, and, well, that's essentially what happened and where my life is now. I own my own aeroplane, I'm the current British Female Aerobatic champion and I'm also a newly qualified airshow and display pilot. I know, wow huh?

Flying it is then!

That said, I still have the mountain bike, I hit the climbing wall in Milton Keynes as often as I can and I head to the gym several times a week too (I may have spent several months doing nothing, got a bit fat and panicked - hence I'm back to being a fitness obsessive again and actually I do rather like it). Once I've gotten a work regime sorted out and some money again I'll be heading out to the hills for some therapy whenever I can too - I know my roots.

I guess I should mention where it is that I've been in online terms, because whilst I've not been posting here, I have been posting flying stuff on my aerobatic blog - The Aerobatic Project and I've built another website for myself in order to promote and try to sell my display flying - BiplaneDisplays.com. Please head over to either and/or both and take a look - let me know what you think!

So why am I back here, and why now? Basically I wanted to come back here to revisit something of my old way of life, and to rekindle my old style of writing. I basically want an outlet again, somewhere I can write about the every day, mundane and 'normal life' type things I think about. The Aerobatic Project is really all about being a new face in the competition flying world and what that's like, so there's no place there for me waffling on about the odd thoughts that strike me in the gym. Hence, I'm back!

Apologies right now if some of the things I write about are boring, or just downright weird. Hopefully I'll come out with a few things that may actually be of interest too.

To all of you that are still here, wow. Thank you for bearing with me!

the north face tent mule III down slippers

I tend to run cold, and my feet are a major point of sufferance at this time of year, which is why I was disproportionately ecstatic to be sent a pair of North Face down slippers to test this winter.

I’ve had a set of cheap down booties for a while that I bought in Aviemore one particularly cold winter climbing season when I was staying up in one of the SMC mountain club huts – the kitchen was so cold at times we found that opening the fridge actually started to warm the place! Hence I’m well aware that down footware is utterly fabulous.

The biggest disadvantage that my old booties had, was that due to the cheap quality of the down and the fabric construction, walking around used to leave a light trail of feathers everywhere, and occasionally you’d end up poked in the foot by the sharp end of a small feather or two. Quite irritating I must say.

The North Face Women’s NSE Tent Mule II Down Slippers (what a mouthful!) are incredibly well constructed though, and in a good couple of months of wearing them pretty much everyday in the incredibly poorly heated ‘shed’ we call home in deepest, darkest, rural mid-Wales, I’ve not had one tiny bit of down escapage, not seen any holes start to appear (that’s even despite multiple small kitten attacks!) and still love wearing them when I want nice comfy feet!

 Claire was inspecting the Tent Mules – think she was relieved to be let off the hook for my ‘kittens for slippers’ campaign…

Ok, here’s what Webtogs say about these little foot-shaped bundles of joy:

The North Face Women's NSE Tent Mule III is a women's specific down slipper designed to keep your feet warm, comfortable and dry after a hard or easy day, these Tent Mule's are like sliding your feet into two clouds - that's the only valid comparison that I can think of to do them justice.
However on the other hand the North Face Women's NSE Tent Mule III slippers are pretty hard core with a toughened upper to prevent any damage if you do have to go scrambling around your log shed or skidding across the ice to grab the post. The tent mule's are water resistant and highly durable with a grippy sole to stop you slipping on any polished surfaces and tent floors.

• Durable, water resistant, element shedding 100% recycled PET upper
• 450 fill power down and feather insulation
• Die-cut EVA sock line
• Highly durable nylon mesh base with rubber fine mould traction lugs
• Weight: 96g (I would assume this is per slipper)

Blue! Shiny, shiny lovely blueness! They do come in a range of other lovely colours, and men’s varieties too.

I’d just like to say, having spent a deal of time with my head, feet, and indeed my entire body up in the clouds at all manner of angles and speeds (remember of course I’m an aerobatic pilot as well as a mountaineer), that putting these slippers on is in fact nothing like ‘sliding your feet into two clouds’ – it is in fact a far warmer, drier and altogether more pleasurable experience!

Size-wise, I wear a UK size 4 in most shoes, and the XS slippers are perfect for me – so I’d suggest that the size guide is about right on the Webtogs site (3 – 4.5 go XS. 5 – 6.5 go S, 7 – 8 go M).

I can confirm that the bottoms of these do have some surprisingly grippy little lug things that have not as yet seen me face or butt first onto the slippery kitchen floor or icy patio, nor have the bottoms ripped or sustained any damage more than now being a touch mucky, despite me being less than careful running around outside up and down the muddy lane outside on occasion. I’m sure the postman thinks I’m a lunatic by now – this mad woman running up and down the lane wearing a big baggy jumper and bright blue down slippers! Still, appearances can be deceptive eh?

So what do I really think of these? Well of course, I love them. They’re light enough and squish down small enough to constitute a justifiable camp or hut luxury in the colder weather, are well-built and hard wearing enough to take extended and constant abuse, come in a funky selection of colours, look cool and above all keep your feet comfy warm! I would advise wearing socks inside them whenever you can though – otherwise you will end up with a bit of skanky, sweaty feet syndrome, so avoid the pong by lining your feet with some snuggly socks.

They could be considered a touch on the expensive side for general purpose slipper use (currently £26.90 from webtogs), but when you consider that these are in fact really nicely made pieces of tough, down-filled outdoors worthy kit, I wouldn’t begrudge the price one little bit. Honest.

 

Links:

My blue slippers: http://www.webtogs.co.uk/The_North_Face_Womens_NSE_Tent_Mule_III_Down_Slippers_103011-24896.html

Lots more down foot-shaped goodness: http://www.webtogs.co.uk/Down_Slippers/