The Man with No Time

This weekend I took a trip up to Glasgow for my first competition of the new season, the Scottish National Lifesaving Championships. I say a new season, but I suppose that's my university-lifesaving bias showing through; really it's part of the 2013 season according to the RLSS. In any case, it was the first competition I'd participated in since the St Andrews event back in February! Spoiler alert - it didn't go too well.

The first part of my road trip around the UK took me to Sheffield for the RLSS National Speed Championships. This was actually my second trip to the Speeds; in my second year at St Andrews myself and a friend travelled down to compete. That trip wasn't a particularly great experience for me, as I had my backpack stolen, with phone, laptop, watch, etc. The competing had been fun though. However, that wasn't the purpose of my second appearance, This time I was there to shadow the competition organiser, with the aim of picking up some hints and tips for the BULSCA Champs the following weekend. (Credit: The RLSS)

Just a quick update today. I got back from my rather hectic 11 days  from St Andrews to find a rather nice surprise waiting for me.  I’d had only one piece of meaningful post, but it was quite an important one – my official Card of Authority from the RLSS! My RLSS card of authority. I can now officially train and assess the Survive and Save award scheme. (Credit: David Brown) This is the official recognition of my “Lifesaving Instructor” status, which I’ve been working towards since September. I’ve been teaching Survive and Save at the club here for a while now, which was fine because the club knew I was competent, but this card means that I’m officially recognised. Now I can teach the Survive and Save course at any lifesaving club in the UK, without supervision. I’m slightly surprised actually. Given the usual speed of the RLSS bureaucracy, I was expecting it to take much longer to come through; we only sent off the final paperwork a week or so before...

Last weekend I took a big step on my lifesaving journey. After 9 years of being involved in RLSS awards as a candidate, I took the Survive and Save assessors course to become an official trainer/assessor. It's a fairly big step, but one that I'm pleased to have taken. With lifesaving having been such a big part of my life, I feel that it's time I put something back into it. I've already done that at the local level, but now it's time to expand that. The Survive and Save program was introduced last September by the RLSS (Credit: rlssonline.com)

It's time for part 2 of my series on the hobbies and activities that suck up all of my time! Today I'm going to talk about possibly the second biggest (sometimes even  the  biggest) time-sink: lifesaving. Warning - this post will be a long one!