Inspired by a Paralympian...Never Give Up!

Since the novices at the beginning of the month i've been riding a bit higher than normal, it gave me a great boost and a confidence lift that I needed, I know it wasn't the biggest contest in the world but i'm still chuffed to have got a W on the board. 

The last few weeks at wrestling have been great, I've been going back over some of the moves that I was a little rusty on, gator roles, gut wrenches, head locks and leg laces all of which i've enjoyed. My body has held up alright, leg laces are horrible things and wrestling the guys who have been down Craig, Callum, Danny and Dave all of whom love an arm drag has left me covered in bruises but other than that i'm doing fine.

I finally managed to drag my ass back to the Emirates for a spot of wrestling. I haven't been able to fork out the extra cash for a 120 mile round trip but I happened to be in Cumbernauld on Tuesday presenting a breakout session  for the Scottish Sports Development Conference afterwards I was sitting listening to the key note speakers in the afternoon and was inspired. So much so that i'm almost re-energised to increase my efforts and get to the end goal of the Commonwealth Games. It's got me excited again.

David Smith MBE

I don't think that happens all that often... getting inspired or enthused into doing something but I was listening to David Smits' paralympic journey and how they secured a gold at the Paralympics and was pretty much blown away by what had happened to him. In a nut shell, he was in the GB bobsleigh team for the winter Olympics before heading down to the paralympic open day, basically if you have a disability you can do some testing and they match you to a sport. David was born with clubfoot and therefore qualified for paralympics and tested really well for rowing. It's a little more complicated than that but basically he had been feeling not quite right for the 19 years he had been doing sport and was finally diagnosed with a spinal tumour. After surgery he had to reboot his nervous system and teach himself how to walk again amongst other things and wow that was some story. 2 years later he is winning gold. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, he is a very humble guy but his story is pretty incredible. 

Perseverance is the key

After David Smith there was a talk by David Grevemberg (chief executive Glasgow 2014) about the "legacy" of the games and building a sporting community, inspiring young people. Unfortunately, the speech didn't quite hit the spot for me. I've heard David speak before about the Power of Sport and he was very good, this time it almost felt scripted and lacked a bit of passion but it didn't matter I was already inspired by Dave Smith. Finally to top off the day we had Doctor Andrew Murray to close the conference, he is a great speak and another one I would recommend. He is an ultra marathon runner and is threatening to try out all the commonwealth sports before Glasgow 2014 comes about. I was chatting to him briefly afterwards and we might even see him on a Monday down at the Edinburgh Wrestling Club. The key message I took away from his speech is pictured to the right. Hopefully he will come down to Wrestling...

So I had a revelation that my training kit was in the car and decided to head through to the Emirates after the conference to make a much needed appearance. I text my mate Dave Simm to see if he was about and luckily for me he was and was keen to get down. It was a pretty full on session lots of technique work and Dave is a lefty, which I find horrific to fight against. I can tell that i'm getting better and I think Vio (Scottish Assistant Coach) was relatively pleased. Even better i'm going to head down every Tuesday and that will be my session in Glasgow to keep me in with the coaches. Vio gave me some really good feedback again and whilst I don't want to pre-empt anything, I know know there is still a lot of work to be done its looking possible that I will be making my debut for Scotland in July at the Commonwealth Wrestling Championships in Edinburgh. That's a really exciting prospect and of course gives me the third platform to qualify for Glasgow 2014. 

So onto Glasgow 2014 itself, people keep on asking me what the likelihood of this actually coming off and me making it to the games. I take an objective view to it. At the moment i'm enjoying the training, I need to work on a few things and find a bit more time to train but overall I think we are still in with a tangible shot at making it. In case you have forgotten how it works. I have my first qualification event in June at the British Championships. If I finish in the top 3 Commonwealth Athletes I have met the qualification criteria. The second is the Commonwealth Wrestling Championships in July, I have to be selected to compete in that event but there isn't any reason to suspect I wouldn't be selected at the moment, if nothing else to give me more experience competing against the best in the Commonwealth. If I finish in the top 8 or top 2/3 or the field then I meet the criteria and the British Closed in early 2014 if I medal I will make the criteria. Lets assume I make one of those criteria or lets assume I don't I still have to be nominated by Vlad and Vio to represent Scotland and the final decision is then taken by Commonwealth Games Scotland. The maximum number of competitors is 7 males for wrestling but they could double up a category if they wanted, which they might well do if there is a better chance of a medal. I don't know who we have at what weight category so its hard to say but I'll keep on trucking till I know. Most likely will be British Closed next year but we will need to wait and see you never know, I might get a good draw and qualify before then. It's exciting!

How good does that look!

To finish off i'm going to plug a couple of local companies / organisations in Edinburgh the first is the zoo, great training venue, get yourself a 28 month old and a buggy and go see the big cats. That is a great workout. I was in Leith in Edinburgh over the weekend, my cousin Sheila turned an unspeakable age on Saturday and had a get together party in Wild Creatures, really cool little bar on Leith Walk. The real company I want to mention is the one across the road. I managed to get across the road to Los Cardos for a burrito after the party. These things are amazing. If you are ever on Leith Walk and need a good feed...No... wait... if you are ever in Edinburgh and need a good feed you need to get to Los Cardos It is the bomb!! www.loscardos.co.uk If I could I would eat there all the time.

Thanks to all the guys who have made it down to training over the last couple of weeks and to those who are going to come down, look forward to seeing you there and thanks for the support. 

Thanks for taking time out to read the blog

Cheers

@shocksjr

British Novice Championships - 120kg Final

Nothing quite like a bit of gentle slander to get someone straight on the ball. Thanks very much to Martin King for taking the video down in Stockton for the British Novices, it was much appreciated. Even more so for battling with the technology yo get it on line. 

The long awaited video of my first Win. 

For those that don't know me i'm the big fella in the red!

Food Poisoning and the British Novice Championships

It's been almost a month since my last blog update and there has been a fair bit happening in the last month not to mention the death of Maggie Thatcher, man has that caused some controversy! Personally, I didn't agree with a lot of the stuff that she did or some of the things she said, I was only a lad when she was Prime Minister but to see people out on the streets celebrating someone's death, in my opinion is disgusting and shameful. I read an article in the guardian it made some valid points but I thought the UK had a little more decorum than that. Then you have the Boston Marathon Bombings...I haven't got much to say about it except that it is disgusting and really makes you see how sick some people in the wold are. To kill an 8 year old boy who was just there to support his dad is heart breaking, not to mention all the people who were there supporting loved one's or friends who were raising money to help others. It is horrible and lets hope those responsible are caught soon.

Back to happier topics...If you recall at the end of my last blog I was about to take annual leave and head off for a bit of annual leave for my 1st Wedding Anniversary . All was going well, we took a trip up to Aberdeen on the Wednesday to drop off the little guy to get some peace and quiet. That was fine but we decided to get lunch from an undisclosed restaurant in the Bon Accord Centre in Aberdeen - big mistake! I had a steak sandwich, Emma had some pasta and nabbed a little bit of my sandwich - its an important point.

It was a good day until about 11:00pm when I was the only one up, lounging on the sofa and I started feeling a bit crap. I took a trip to the toilet to throw up and that was me in there pretty much until 4:00am. For those of you who don't like sick, you probably won't enjoy the next paragraph, but as I experienced it, I will describe it for you in all its glory! I couldn't stop being sick. It was a horrible experience. It wasn't even sick as you would imagine, it was thick, minging, disgustingness, looked like my stomach was cleansing itself. I couldn't believe how much there was and the worse thing was... you know how when your sick after a night out, its pretty quick and watery? well this was nothing like that. It was slow and had next to no water in it. I was like a dog regurgitating its dinner and it was rough. BOAK!

Anyway, to make matters worse I tried to go to bed at about 1:00am but couldn't and had to dart to the toilet again waking Emma up who then began to feel about as good as I was. She had to run to the toilet as well and her bout of sickness began. It was a great start to the weekend. It gets even better though. Cameron, who didn't have any of the food we had, started crying, this was about 3:00am. We went through and guess what... he must have felt left out because he had spewed as well, all over himself and it was in his hair. That meant we had to run a bath for him. So you have Cameron in the bath crying, my hugging the toilet barfing and Emma running down stairs to the other toilet. It was comical.  



Craigatin Guest House  - beautiful

 The next day was a total write off. I spent most the day drinking sugary tea and sleeping but managed to get a bit of food in the evening. We felt ok on Saturday for our anniversary weekend and went to a lovely little B&B in Pitlochry. It was really nice but we both still felt crap, went out for a meal and whilst we ate it, I don't think we enjoyed it as much as we would normally of have and there was no way we could tackle the bottle of champers we had brought with us. It was a nice weekend, we took a drive out round Loch Tummel and to Aberfeldy before heading back to the lodge to feel sorry for ourselves. My only complaint was that the bed was a bit hard for me, in fact Fred Flintstone probably would have struggled to get to sleep on it, might as well have been a slab of rock, so much so the second night I slept on the duvet and actually slept alright. A pretty wasted weekend but it was nice to get a way for a while and spend a bit of time just the two of us. Still got the bubbly as well.

That little episode meant that I dropped about 2.5kg couldn't train for over a week and felt pretty rubbish, The good thing was that I was feeling better the following weekend to head out to our friends birthday party. Whilst I know having a drink isn't great when your training, but I needed to let my hair down and ended up having a a fairly potent concoction of booze, some crazy combo that Nicole came up with topped off with a whisky that wiped me out. It was a mardi gras party, I'm claiming best costume award over Callum, he looked like a skinny version of the Hamburglar. My flexibility has obviously improved, played the cereal box game, where you pick it up with your teeth, probably haven't done as well since I was 5.

Danny trying to cut weight

Again fortunately for me Easter came round and it was a trip towards Blackpool to see Emma's grandparents and Aunt and Uncle. This meant that my weight would be back on track, I ate like a horse, I knew I had the British Novices the following week which meant that I needed to get my weight back up to 116 - 117 at the very least. I did pretty well.
So onto the Novices... Danny and I were representing [EN]GAGE Wrestling club (now Edinburgh Wrestling Club) We travelled down with Martin, who was there for moral support and he likes the atmosphere at these events. We had to wrap Danny up because we thought he might not make weight at 74kg. He wore maybe 6 layers, had bin bags and by the time we got down to Billington he had shed 900g but the funny/annoying thing for Danny was that the Novices is matched weight not done in the categories. that meant he didn't need to lose any weight. Never mind...



Sporting my first Gold Medal and championship

 We arrived the night before and had a good feed at the guest house after weighing in. I weighed in at 155.8kg. which was fine. Unfortunately there weren't very many heavyweights at the tournament and I only got one fight for gold. The guy I was against was a local lad and had been wrestling on and off for just over a year. He was pretty well build probably weighing in between 110kg - 115kg. The goal I had set myself prior to the tournament was just getting a win, I wanted to stick to my strategy and have my hand lifted by the umpire at the end of the bouts. As it turned out either way I would be getting a medal.

The fight itself was pretty good, I found some aggression that I had been lacking and managed to stick to my strategy and got some decent points. The video is coming later: It was a tough contest but I felt in control for the vast majority of it and came away with the win. It was a Little disheartening to have only to one fight but for me the most important thing was to come away with a win and despite there only being one other competitor at my weight - one of the coaches I was chatting to said "it doesn't matter, its on your wrestling CV" I'm still the British Novice Champion at my weight. Not bad for 9 months training! It was a massive confidence booster and I'm feeling alot better about going back against the more experienced guys.

Next stop the Bolton Open Championships... 18th May.

 I got back to training and was feeling confident, I've had a couple of mates come down and got some good wrestling in, Cal anderson got himself along on Friday and he is a tricky customer, i'm covered in bruises and still have a bit of a sore shoulder from a drop he got on me... we had three bouts and there wasn't any surprises this time, he was looking for the transferables to rugby and think we gave him some stuff to take back to the mighty Edinburgh Eagles! 

Thanks for taking time to read, I'll get that video up as soon as Martin King overcomes his technological impotence and gets it online. 

Cheers

@shocksjr