Those of you who knew me a few years ago won’t quite believe this, but it has been ages (literally months) since I’ve been windsurfing. So long in fact that I don’t want to look it up to see how long ago it was! This may not seem unusual to some people, but considering the fact that more than two days of not windsurfing used to be unheard of for me it is indeed out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n
To be honest, it’s been so long that I had stopped calling myself a windsurfer. There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost was the fact that I had become a triathlete and swim, bike and run training, not to mention weights, the gym, circuits, stretching etc had become my priority. Windsurfing and the associated injuries, sprains and bumps\u00a0don’t go too well with triathlon training, so it had taken a back seat. Time had been limited too and, dare I say it, maybe I was getting older –\u00a0the cold winter water and high adrenalin aspects of windsurfing\u00a0didn’t always appeal as much as they used to.<\/p>\n
Lately though I’ve been reluctant to call myself a triathlete either. I haven’t been swimming at all this year dues to a shoulder injury and I have no races planned. No longer a windsurfer, not really a triathlete – what am I? I don’t know, but on Monday\u00a0the sun was shining (some of the time) and there was a decent NW wind blowing so I dusted off my windsurf kit, headed over to the beach and made sure I could still do it.<\/p>\n
The beach was deserted when I got there. I rigged my 5m sail . This has sen better days and has been a little chewed by mice but was still serviceable. I attached it to my 85 ltr wave board and headed out into the water. It’s like riding a bike. I jumped on, straight into the harness and straps and blasted out through the waves. I was a little tentative with jumping but got some air, then once out the back, leaned into a lovely carve gybe, came out planing and sailed back towards the beach. No problem!<\/p>\n