Celebrating our (inter)national champions!

Yesterday it was the NWWB live event, finally! I was looking forward to this event a lot. I had heard about gala's being held for members and champions way back when the sport was still much more alive in the Netherlands. It waas the plan to bring back a day where everyone could meet and be celebrated in a less formal setting than member meetings or a gala. I had no idea what to expect, but I was very excited to be seeing everyone, meeting new people and see what the federation made of it. It was held at a great location with room for many stands, including many boats outside and some gear stands. The first hours I spent catching up with the team, since we hadn't seen each other in quite a while already, after spending the summer seeing each other very often. After checking out all the gear and boats, everyone was called together to celebrate the champions in all disciplines that fall under the federation. First up the ski racers, cable and boat wakeboarders, barefoot skiers, cable skiers and finally, the boat skiers! It was fun to have all champions on national and international level called out one more time and receiving some flowers, a gift card and a certificate! I think this is also great to motivate other skiers and increase the level of competition for next year. This is in the first place why it is so great to have an event like this again. This is what we need to grow our sport, get more skiers and competition and most importantly support. Water-skiing is starting to grow again and this will help to expand further. On the other hand it is also good to see who wants to be involved in the sport, because we do need new judges, drivers, homologates, etc. without them there are no competitions and without competitions there is no way to grow further and get more attention for what we do.


After the celebrations, I switched to lobbying around with the companies that were there, since they are by default related to the sport in some way or another. I had my sponsor plan with me, which I finished last week. I found it very difficult to get started and basically present myself to these people. It was well out of my comfort zone, but at the end of the day, I don't have much choice if I want to reach my goals and get ahead in water-skiing, I need it to be financed. So I started approaching people and handing out my information. If anything, I got tips to help improve my sponsor plan, so that's already worth something. Whether or not it will pay off, I'm not sure, but I definitely hope it will be a beginning and afterwards I can expand that network. I have my sponsor plan available as an online version as well, so if you or anyone you know is interested in reading it, send me an e-mail at lieke.a.r@hotmail.com and we can see what we can arrange!
For now, the countdown to Florida has started! Only 21 more days!!

Ticket to Florida!

Today I'm extremely excited, because I finally have my plane tickets to go to Florida. I will be leaving on December 5th and will arrive at around 18.30 local time in Florida, even though this is still a month away, I'm overjoyed. Just like last year in the winter, I will going to Florida without my family and thus be spending some holidays and my 18th birthday without them. Luckily I will be adopted for a month by the wonderful Hof family! I will be spending the holidays with them and they are kind enough to let me live and ski in their paradise, I cannot wait. The day I will be arriving is a national holiday in the Netherlands. It's originally a party for younger kids, similar to Christmas, with presents and great seasonal food. We will be doing presents paired with a poem on that day. It's great to get straight into celebrating after a long day of travelling. It will also force me to stay awake and adapt to local time straight away. Where last year I was staying 2 weeks, since that's the length of our Christmas holiday, this year I will be going for 4 weeks and I'm super stoked. Little bonus is that I have a direct flight, so a lot less stress than last time, also adding that now, I've done it before. I will go back the 30th of December and arrive in the Netherlands on the 31st, so I can go straight into celebrating the end of the year, this time at home, since last year I spent new years in Florida too.

I also got some less exciting new this week when I went to the hospital for a check up on my ear. I had thought that there was a chance that the hole in my eardrum was closed and I could start skiing again. That would have been great news, even though it is literally freezing. However, not only was the hole not closed, it was also not a millimeter smaller than after the crash. It had shown no sign of healing, though it also wasn't infected, which is a silver lining. Our hope is that it was due to the fact that I had a cold in the time between my check ups and thus we'll give it another 3 weeks to start healing. If it is not closed or at least almost closed by then, we have to see what other measures we have to take. I worry that it won't be closed in the time left before I go to Florida. I would definitely still ski, but I would have to wear extra protection and I will run the risk of an infection due to the lake water. However, after Florida it will have a lot of time to heal, since I won't be able to ski a lot until the new season starts.

I'm very excited for next week when the NWWB is hosting its event, which I spoke about in the last blog. I will be finishing my sponsoring information before then and hopefully meet some interested parties there!

Apologies

Hey everyone, first of all, sorry to keep you waiting by posting a day late. Honestly there's not a good reason for it, other than I sort of forgot which day it was yesterday :D. The fact that I am a day late with posting sort of indicates how it is going with my goals haha. Last week I announced some of my goals and the fact that I want to use my gap year efficiently and reach those goals and approach them with a serious work ethic, like I did school work. One of the things that has changed since I stopped skiing is that I got a job as a cashier in the supermarket. This takes up quite some of my time and thus it is the main factor deciding my daily schedules. Having something to do about 5 hours in a day helps to get some rhythm into my days. The only thing is that there is not really a difference between week days and the weekend, so I always wake up at the same time and do similar things. (which results in forgetting what day it is).

Other than that I have made a list of things I want to achieve in my gap year and ranked them on

Great photo to sponsor ;)

priority and 'due date'. Right now the most important things are taking care of my health, which means sticking to a diet, which calls for me to cook twice a day, another time consuming thing that is part of each day and thus creates some rhythm for me. Also going to the gym 5 times a week, of which twice to a personal trainer. One of my sessions with my personal trainer is tomorrow morning at 9, and it is a 40 minute bike, so I have to wake up old school early... Another high priority item right now is creating a sponsor plan. I am already quite far, because I also started working on this during the season this summer. However for some reason I didn't go through far enough with this and thus I have to still finish it and make some adjustments to get it ready for the season of 2017. I also want to be able to take this plan to the NWWB day, which is the Dutch federation for water-skiing and wakeboarding. (If you live in the Netherlands I would recommend this event, on the 13th of Novermber, just 17.50 euros, which will include a t-shirt and BBQ! Tickets can be found on nwwb.nl) On this day many people will come together to check out some boats and other relevant materials and most importantly congratulate this years champions. I think it is the perfect moment to get my sponsor plan out to the right people, so it must be done in the coming weeks. Finally, a high priority item is getting set for the USA. I want to be able to follow my university studies there and join a water-skiing team. For this I have to improve in skiing, which is of course in itself gap year priority number 1. However it is also time to take care of the administrative side of things. This I want to finish this calendar year, and since I'm planning on taking a vacation in December, I will have to do this the coming month too.

Thus for now, I have plenty things to fill my days and hopefully they will result in a fit new season with some new materials I will be able to afford after working 2 jobs, and hopefully sponsors and, best case scenario, combining university studies and water-skiing. Since I am not skiing anymore, I have ran out of pictures to attach to my blog, so here are some 'throwback photos'.

Goals

In two months from now, I will be turning 18, officially entering adulthood. This made me realise that I have to organize many things by myself, handle more responsibilities and think about the future some more, and fast. This mainly started when I got a letter from the government telling me, well, almost exactly that. So I quickly applied for financial aid and other simple, online, grown-up things to make me feel like I've done something. However, in all seriousness, it is time to really think about what I have to get done in my gap year, aside from improving my skiing, and starting on achieving those things.

Of course as soon as I thought I would start doing all those things, I got ill. It's just the flu, but it doesn't help with my torn eardrum. I was specifically told not to blow the ear out of my ear, since that is essentially the same as picking a scab. I was doing pretty well on that, until I noticed that when I blow my nose, I also blow air out of my ear. I hope this does not slow down the healing process too much... At the moment, I am feeling a bit better and ready again to start sorting out my goals and how to achieve them. I also have my first appointment with a personal trainer tomorrow, which will help to be fitter next season, so that I can improve faster.

Ultimately my goal is to be able to go to the gym twice a day, 5 times in a week. This way I can go before lunch and before dinner for example, which will activate my body twice, rather than going for longer in one go. Of these 5 times, twice will be together with the personal trainer. In between and on the days where I don't go to the gym, I hope to work on some projects I have been meaning to start. Though what I've realised is that I might need to set myself  a deadline for each project, because otherwise I find it difficult to start, and especially finish all of them. As I also have to work from now on, all this together will get me into a 'normal' rhythm again, like when I went to school. This will help in having a productive gap year, and also in going back to school afterwards. Since I stopped skiing, I have very little rhythm or content to my day, aside from working and working out. I would like to change that, and hope that by having it black on white here, I will be extra motivated in doing that.

I feel like there's no going back now, and I will be committing to what I have said above. Since I was ill for most of the week, I didn't do much else. I did work on some core stability exercises from Breanne Dodd, which gave me a good muscle ache (a sign that I should practise those more often) so I would definitely recommend them, check it out here.

detox

Exactly a week ago, I crashed in my last competition of the season, rupturing my eardrum. In the first check by the ear specialist on Monday, it was looking good and not infected. In order to keep it this way, I should avoid getting water and especially shampoo in it. Therefore I have not skied the past week, also I have been covering my ear with a drinking glass whilst shampooing my hair, which is quite interesting…

Some sightseeing in stead (Kijkduin, Zuid-Holland)

I wasn’t planning on stopping the season quite this early, but I’m more or less forced to. I want to be careful with my ear, since it is looking good at the moment and can heal in 3 weeks. If it does get infected, it will take longer to heal and it will interfere with my plans for skiing in Florida this winter. At some point, after a lot of intensive training and a long season with many ups and downs, it is good to have a break from skiing. This is important to regain strength both mentally and physically. However it is still frustrating to start ‘detoxing’ from water-ski when it is still beautiful weather outside for the time of year. Therefore I am trying to focus on some other things that will still help my next season and the winter training, but will still give me somewhat of a break from water-skiing. First of all, I have to earn some money to be able to prepare fully for a skiing season. I already had multiple addresses where I regularly babysit, but throughout the summer I wasn’t around much. When I got back, I was finally able to say yes to some appointments, so on many nights I have been babysitting. Because those appointments are fairly irregular, I decided it would be good to also have a more formal part-time job for a more steady income. On Tuesday I got a form to apply at the local supermarket and tomorrow is my first day at work already. One of my new colleagues said it took them 3 months to hire her, so I felt bad for getting hired so quickly, but due to my gap year and my age I am really useful to the supermarket. I am happy I was able to find two jobs and hopefully will find some sponsoring on top of that to support the next season.

On a physical level I have also begun preparing for a smashing new season. I have had a talk with a personal trainer, who will hopefully help me get into ideal shape to reach my next goals. Furthermore I have a nutritionist helping me with my food intake. It isn’t exactly a diet, and I am actually eating more than I was before, but there has been a change in my lifestyle, which will help me start the next season very healthy. I hope these 2 things will pay off soon, and especially, show in next season.

Competition 2/2

Yesterday I finally made it home, and this time I'm staying a bit longer! It feels good to be back home again, I've learned so much the past summer, not only in skiing, but also as a person. I had to organize many things by myself and plan many of my trips. I had to step out of my comfort zone quite some times and also made a fair amount of mistakes, but I know this allows me to grow as a person and gain experience for challenges to come. After such an eventful summer, it is nice to be in the comfort of my own home, however with all the things I've learnt, I know it won't be the same as before this summer. Already after being home for 1 day, I've made plans to fill the coming weeks and started moving my but and get multiple things done.

So, on to what probably was the last

competition of the year. Another 4 round slalom competition, at which I would have a chance to show off my new technique, that I had been training on in Paris. On Friday, I arrived at the competition site. It was important to get a trainings set in this day, because I hadn't skied all week and of course I wanted to feel the water. I had seen this lake before, but I had never skied here before. Other skiers that had tested the lake were enthusiastic, but said you had to pull long and had a lot of time to think, due to the way the water feels. This is good information, but the only thing that really matters is how it feels to you when you ski... so I skied. I ran my first pass, noticing that the water feels different than any lake I'm used to, but definitely not bad. Since it was a training for competition, we shortened the rope and tested the water at 16 meters. I fell at the first ball, but this was just a mistake on my part, and the second try I ran the pass. Onto the all important 14 meter pass, which I want to run so badly in competition. On many attempts I just couldn't seem to get past 1 or 2 bouys. Finally it was officially time to go back, but I was given one more pass. On this I got around 4 bouys and since I didn't fall, I had one more shot on the way back to the dock. That time, I ran the pass, but only barely, so it was good to do before the competition, but didn't give a lot of confidence.

Saturday it was time to see if I could

do the passes I did the day before, but in order. Sadly, I fell too early. For the second time this season, I managed to fall in the first pass, which honestly should never happen. Unlike last time, I didn't miss the end gate, I just fell when I was trying to get round 5 ball. The people there didn't expect me to fall in the firs pass, honestly neither did I, so they didn't pay attention. Due to this I didn't know exactly where the mistake was, but I think an educated guess was turning too fast, since this is what I am  trying to improve on. I was extremely disappointed in this result and for a while I didn't know how to move on. I was very upset that it happened, and on top of that I didn't know why it happened. Furthermore, this didn't indicate great results to come, so I knew almost certainly that I wouldn't be able to get my score up the way I wanted to. Only improving by 1.5 bouys in a season really bothered me and I honestly did expect more. In order to gain some confidence to just go for it again the next round, I had a talk with the national coach. This helped a lot and she also reminded me about the improvements in the other events, and that slalom will follow soon, but maybe not this competition, and that is not the end of the world.

The second round I got past the first pass, due to the fact that I had some time to think, I tried to think about some tips I had been getting the weeks before. I also did this in the 16 meter pass and I cleared that one too. The boat team was great and they told me: it's not finished! I was ready to tackle the 14 meter pass, but unfortunately, too ready. I overturned at 1 ball, so I fell and got a score of 0.5 a bouy. This was sad, because I had a good gate and that was the problem many times before during the whole summer. However 0.5 at 14 was still much better and more motivating than not getting my 18 meter pass. This was closer to the goal and I still had 2 rounds to try and reach my goal; or at least that is what I thought. In the end, I couldn't ski the last round, because in the crash that I made in the third round, I tore my eardrum. To top things off, this crash was not at 13 meters, but at 16, so it was not even worth it. I've torn my eardrum multiple times before, so when it happened, I immediately knew what to check and I knew right then and there that it was over. Initially there is the pain, but maybe worse, the fact that you can't ski until it's closed. Since there is already quite some scar tissue in my eardrum and the fact that the hole is of remarkable size, it will take some time to close. In 3 weeks I have a check up, but until then I have to find a way to deal with the disappointment of not reaching my slalom goal and not

being able to ski in the meantime. Overall, the weekend was very unsuccessful and disappointing, good thing there were some fun people, which made it enjoyable nonetheless...

Competition 1/2

This weekend I had a competition after a

week of training only in slalom. The competition was at a beautiful location and the water skied really well. The only problem: there was no wifi or cell phone service, so the blog is a bit late. This will be the same next weekend when I have one more slalom competition, with 4 rounds of slalom. It’s a different location but again no wifi to post the blog, this will come Monday or Tuesday. 

I’ve already written a bit about my training with Anthony in France last week. Including the fact that all the sets are filmed and analysed. After that, I still had 6 sets of training there. Since I was changing quite a bit in style and trying to get rid of some  bad habits, skiing was quite hard and the results in bouys was actually getting worse. Eventually after skiing, practising with my handle before skiing, visualising the set and watching the videos after, things started to fall into place. I was running very nice 18 meter passes, because here I have a lot of time to think. Also the 16 meter passes were getting cleaner and technically much better. This looks nicer, but it also saves quite a bit of pain, for one because I do more on technique rather than strength, and also because the chance of a serious crash decreases significantly. I was getting more an more confident in the new technique and I was running almost all my 14 meter passes; A very good sign for the upcoming competition. On Thursday I left Paris to head south to the competition site. I did one set on the lake there on which I ran 18, 16 and 14 in a row. After, I ran another 14 meter pass, just to be sure, and again I ot round all 6 bouys. This gave me confidence for the competition and I was thinking I might be able to prove Anthony wrong, because he said the new technique still needed a bit of time to sink in and it might be hard to run 14 at this competition.

After a rest day on Friday, since I had been

skiing twice a day for a week straight, the competition started at 10 on Saturday. In the first round, I was good in my 18 meter pass. I thought to myself, quickly get the 16 meter pass out of the way so I can start on 14. In my 16 meter pass I tried to think about everything I learned and to do it as similar to training as possible, despite some competition nerves. Throughout the pass I felt like I was getting really late, so I rushed to the last bouy. When I saw that it was still a bit further, I threw my legs around it, due to which I was out of balance. After the 6 bouy, I still had my handle but I was almost completely in the water. I thought maybe if I just held on, I would still make it through the gate, but the boat was too strong and I fell in a front flip. Afterwards, when I saw the video, it turned out that I wasn’t even that late at the bouys, so I don’t know what happened here, but no chance at 14 meters... 

The second round went a bit better. I had a nice 18 and 16 meter pass, which gave me confidence starting at 14. I would just have to do the same, and focus on having a good start. I got round 1 and 2, but at 3 I started to rush again, leaving a result of 3.5 bouys at 14 meters. This is not my best result at a competition, but it does beat my second best results. The European and African ranking list is based upon your two best results, so this would improve my score a little bit. Despite this, still all I wanted to do was run 14, but I would have to wait another day to try that.

On Sunday, I skied the last 2 sets. Both of them I ran the 18 and 16 meter pass, which I should be happy with. After changing some technical things and trying to ski with a somewhat different style, it is good to get into 14 meters 3 out of 4 times. However, I say should be, because I am not particularly happy with this. My goal was to run 14, and I really wanted to do that. In the final 2 sets, I did 1 and 2 at 14, so sadly I didn’t reach my goal for the weekend. On the birght side though, I met more really nice people which I hope to see more often at competitions and I have 4 more chances next weekend. Hopefully the technique will set into my memory and get comfortable so that next weekend I can ski a nice PB to end the season. Until then I will spend some time with family, since I’ve barely seen them throughout this busy summer!