Tuesday, June 29

Today after work I went wakeboarding with a few people from the Sports Tech Institute. Drove about 40 minutes North to Nottingham where the National Water Center for all water sports is located. It is all man made, and I greatly underestimated it's size before seeing it! It is actually quite large, and looks like a proper lake! Nottingham is also where the world headquarters for Speedo is located. Anyway, it was fairly cheap (20 pounds for 2+ hours, everything included) and I have never done anything other than water tubing before, so naturally, I just hadddd to say yes!

Although it was quite a nice day out, we all opted for the wetsuits because the water was still fairly cold. Oh, and because it was a man-made lake (well, this isn't the reason why but anyway), instead of learning from the back of a boat, there was a cable system that pulled you along the water. The downfall with this system is that the turns were very hard to navigate, given that they were at approx 90 degrees! Like, you had to steer really far outwards, and then the line would slack considerably, and then as you went round he turn it would yank you along like no other. Awfully hard and physically demanding. Doesn't help that as a runner I have very limited arm strength ;)

Anyway, because it was my first time doing any sort of watersport, I had to learn on a knee board. The rule was once you go around the circuit twice, then you can advance to a beginners wakebaord, and then to an actual wakebaord. I would like to think that I am fairly athletic, but in this case I never made it past the knee board. I got around 1 complete lap and that was that ha. I hear it's easier behind a boat because those nasty turns don't exist, but my arms hurt for an entire weak after! ahhh...or maybe my arms hurt because i refused to let go of the line even when my board had fallen out from under me and the line was basically skipping me like a pebble through the water....thinks to think about...

Now that it's said and done..would I do it again? FOR SURE!! :)