The Man with No Time

I've just got back from a long weekend spent with some of my best friends. It's been almost a year since I left St Andrews, but I still miss the people that I met, and the friends that I made while I was there. I've been able to catch up with some of them sporadically via conferences (for the astronomers) and competitions (for the lifesavers), but time's always a bit short and it's not really the best way of spending time with your friends. (Credit: David Brown) As a rule the St Andrews Seacows are pretty bad at organising themselves to do anything, but we finally managed to arrange a weekend away for as many people as we could get. Options were limited for places with enough space to sleep all of us, but my friend Ella's parents were away for the weekend, so we all traipsed down to Sandwich, on the Kent coast, for four days. Well, some of us for four days, others for less than that owing to prior commitments. Even with the dates planned nearly three...

After the BULSCA Nationals at the weekend, I had a discussion on Facebook with one of the competitors about captaincy, specifically about how I'd been evaluating the overall marks for the wet SERC. To remind you, the incident was split somewhat, with a casualty that couldn't be moved on both sides of the 50m pool, the casualties in the water concentrated at one end, and the two short sides out of bounds. This presented the captains with a couple of tricky decisions. Do they stay on the side where they entered and direct from there, or do they swim across to where the suspected spinal injury was? If they stay where they came in, do they get the unconscious in the water over to them, or to the side with the spinal? Where do they send the rest of the casualties, as there were several that could easily be rescued from the entry side. It might seem that the answer is obvious - the captain crosses to the far side, and gets as many casualties as possible over there next t...

After playing in a concert on Saturday evening I had to drive straight to Bath ready for the BULSCA Student Nationals. I had to be at the venue by 8:30 am Sunday morning, so rather than risking sleeping in and being late I decided to head down the night before. Two closed motorway junctions and attendant diversions later, I eventually made it to the Travelodge where I was spending the night. I've always enjoyed the BULSCA Championships as an event. More so since they switched to a 50m pool. Last year was my first taste of the competition as a non-competitor, as I organised the whole thing ; this year I was going to be judging.

After what seemed like an interminable length of time with no lifesaving to do, the BULSCA calendar restarted at the weekend with the second official St Andrews league competition. Which meant that it was road trip time - yay!

As of this morning it’s Christmas break for the BULSCA lifesavers. In year’s gone by this would have marked the halfway point in the season, but some calendar shuffling at the last AGM means that we’re not quite there yet (this is a good thing, as it’s spread the events out a little more than has traditionally been the case). It’s been my first season as a judge rather than a competitor, and it’s been a slightly odd experience to be honest. I missed one competition whilst at playing in a concert with my new orchestra, but the rest have really opened my eyes to a completely different side of lifesaving events.

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.

Last night saw yet another piece of my life here in St Andrews come to an end. After my final quartet concert last month, swiftly followed by my last orchestra concert, it was time to bring my membership of the St Andrews Lifesaving Club, aka the Seacows, to a close. Man am I going to miss this club. (Credit: Teddy Woodhouse) Every year we have a handover meal to mark the end of the current committee's reign, and the commencement of the new committee's term in office. Our AGM is before the Easter holidays, giving plenty of overlap time so that the new committee can learn their roles, and the handover takes place just before the exam period starts.

The final stop on my whirlwind, action-packed UK tour was the city of Bath. I love the place; it’s a beautiful city, and really nice just to wander around, as I discovered last Easter. This time however I wasn’t there to sight see, but to run the BULSCA Student Lifesaving Championships. Way back at the start of May last year I rashly stood for the role of Championships Coordinator on the BULSCA governing committee. I had no idea what I’d let myself in for to be honest; obviously I’d experienced the Championships several times as a competitor, and had a little experience of organising smaller competitions, but this was another level. I was apprehensive, and it turned out to be both easier and harder, less work and more work, than I was expecting.

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 night the St Andrews Lifesaving Club held its annual Pie-Off event. Sounds intriguing doesn’t it? It’s not a complicated event; everyone attending makes at least one pie of some kind (we have a fairly loose definition of ‘pie’) and brings it to the social’s location. We then all eat as much pie as we can, and vote on who made the best one. Mmmmm, pie. (Credit: David Brown)

Time for another lifesaving competition report. Except this time it's a little different - there's not road trip to talk about, because for once we didn't have to travel anywhere! The rest of the BULSCA clubs came to us, for the first ever St Andrews league competition. Now, this wasn't our first competition ever. Three years ago my friend Chris ran a competition and invited Scottish RLSS clubs. It was a small event, but fairly successful. Then last year I resurrected the idea of hosting a competition, and organised a slightly larger one. I didn't try for a league competition, as I wanted to check whether we could deal with the logistics, but invited the BULSCA clubs up anyway and was pleased when we actually got a really good turnout. Teams in isolation for the competition. Visible are teams from London,  Nottingham,  and Bristol. We had a decent turnout considering the distance teams travelled. (Credit: David Brown) But this year the club's Compet...

I spent today taking part in a slightly different form of lifesaving sport. Rather than the SERC-based experience of BULSCA events, this was a speed lifesaving, which is a very different beast. The competitions are basically rather odd swimming galas, with individual and relay events in a range of disciplines. Rather than different strokes though, the events use different skills. The Scottish Short Course Speeds are run to the RLSS’s short course rules, and all of the events are therefore half-distance compared to their standard, long-course versions. This is good for me, as I’m definitely more of a sprinter than an endurance swimmer, but sadly there are no rope throw events. In the 2012 event I did well enough to earn two bronze medals and a silver medal.  This year, unfortunately, didn’t go quite so well.

This weekend was the first BULSCA competition of the new year: the Warwick Refreshers Competition. I always enjoy travelling back to my undergraduate haunt, and to be honest would have gone down even if we hadn’t had a team.  This wasn’t entirely a foregone conclusion given that the competition was taking place on the weekend directly preceding the start of the semester at St Andrews, but we did pull a team together (we even had an extra helper with us), so away we went. Or at least three of us did; the other two were travelling straight to Coventry from home. Having isolation in this lecture theatre brought back memories for me. (Credit: Adam James Martin)

Today I want to talk about something that I’ve been thinking about a fair bit recently.  It’s something that I started to notice a couple of years ago on an occasional basis, but last year and this year I’ve really started to notice it more and more frequently. The issue is recurring themes within lifesaving SERCs. (Credit: loughboroughsport.com)

It’s time for another lifesaving competition report.  Yesterday saw the London Universities’ competition, held at the University of London Union (ULU). This is always a slightly odd event, and doesn’t start until the afternoon owing to the BULSCA Rules Meeting that takes place in the morning, at the same venue. It’s usually a great competition though, and in the last couple of years has seen success for St Andrews, with a Bronze medal two years ago followed by a Silver last year. We weren’t aiming for medals this year, but I was confident that we could get a strong result. The Seacows team for London Competition. (Credit: David Brown)

This weekend I found myself back in Wales. The occasion this time it was the wedding of two old friends, Jenny and Jon, from my Warwick lifesaving days.  My previous visit, mere weeks ago, was for the associated stag do , and I was really looking forward to the wedding. The table decorations were very pretty. (Credit: David Brown)

The second competition weekend of the BULSCA calendar has been and gone. This time around it was the turn of Bristol to host University lifesavers from around the UK, as they held their second league competition. Their inaugural effort for the 2011/12 season had been a great success (with some reservations regarding the social muttered from some of the older members), and we were all interested to see whether they’d be able to repeat it. Hamish, the club mascot, psychs himself up for the competition. (Credit: David Brown)

This weekend was the first BULSCA lifesaving competition of the year. Taking place in Southampton, as has been traditional in the last few years, the Freshers' competition is designed to ease new University lifesavers into the experience of BULSCA competitions. The St Andrews sent only a single team of Seacows, none of whom were truly Freshers! I've been doing this for some time now, and Teddy has been competing for three years. The two girls on the team, Robyn and Hanna, joined the club last year, have been to a couple of competitions as bodies, and have each competed once before. We did have a Fresher with us though; Amandine came along to see what it was all about, and to act as a body.

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)