This is why I always wear a helmet when I ride!

Brian Clark found out the hard way that it's better to wear a helmet when you're snowboarding, than not.

His blog post explains why he's very lucky to be alive!

Tech (& fitness) related excitement!

I'm more than slightly excited because the Wii Fit and Wii Balance Board that I pre-ordered back in February is in the post and on it's way to me.  I've got my fingers firmly crossed that it arrives on Friday when I'll be working at home and able to take delivery of it....and of course so that it arrives before the weekend so I can play on it loads!

Back on a health-kick

Working away plays havoc with your health, especially if you're lazy like me! I'm currently working away 3 days a week which means 2 overnight hotel stays but I'm determined to start using both the hotel gym and the gym I'm paying for at home.  Why? Well I want to improve my snowboarding, and it's my belief that as it's a sport (not a hobby or something I just do on holiday) that I should train for it and ensure my body's in a fit enough state to handle what I put it through.  

So on Sunday I started back at the gym, it was just a gentle ease back into things with a 30 minute session on the cross-trainer (this was made easier by watching Family Guy on my new iPod Classic) but I burnt around 400 calories!  Even better, I weighed myself while I was there and I'm currently 11 stone - this means that my diet and the snowboarding I've done since 13th January this year has enabled me to lose half a stone!  So who knows, maybe with exercise I'll tone up and lose a bit more and be even fitter than I'm feeling now.

I continued the exercise theme on Monday and was at the gym for 6am and at 6:15 I was in a V-core class.  This involves all sorts of evil stomach and back focussed exercises, then you throw in a BOSU or a PowerPlate machine and it becomes doubly evil, so much so that yesterday it hurt to twist, sneeze and lug my suitcase across London on the tube as I made my way down to Southampton.  I have to admit that I wasn't that keen on the PowerPlate part of the class, the vibrations made me feel a bit itchy, but I'm going to persevere and give a full class a try on Friday.  I think I may be OK doing exercises where I'm standing on it rather than leaning on the plate with my elbows....we shall see.

So Tuesday was exercise free, I decided that as I was up at 5:30am and had to drag myself, a suitcase and laptop bag down to Southampton (including the walk up the hill from the station with all my bags) that I'd done enough for one day.

Tonight though was yoga night, there's currently a class that runs in our office after work on a Wednesday night, I'm not officially on this course as it started while I was away at the Brits but as my colleague's on leave I'm taking her slot. It was quite a gentle class as it has to cater for all levels of experience but it was a nice way to ease myself back in to yoga and it's left me feeling nicely relaxed, which is always good.

So that leaves me with a few ponderences, do I get up and go to the hotel gym tomorrow morning?  Theoretically I could get up and be in the gym for 6am, do 30 mins on the cross trainer, and head back to my room for breakfast and a shower before packing, checking out and going to the office.....or I could stay in bed!  Well we shall see how the mood takes me.

I'm also unsure of whether to give a V-Cycle class a go (the Virgin Active equivalent of spinning!), I have a feeling I may be too lazy for this kind of class, although it does say it's for all levels of fitness.  So come on readers, feel free to bully me into it if you think spinning is the way forward!

It's all a bit busy & hectic

Well it's all been a bit mad for the last month, I'm still working 3 days a week in Southampton and trying to fit in as much riding as I can.  So here's a quick summary for you, with a fuller blog posts to follow this weekend. 

• I had 2 weeks annual leave which I spent in Laax, 1 week was spent practicing and the 2nd competing in the British Snowboard Champtionships
  
• I won 3 gold medals and 1 silver in the Masters Category.  The golds were for Boardercross, Big Air & Slopestyle, the silver was in the Halfpipe
  
• I've improved my TTR World Tour Ranking and at the time of posting I'm 153rd in the World!
  
• I went to Castleford for SNO!Storm and had a great time, and rode Halifax for about 15 minutes but it was too windy to hit the kicker
  
• I've been playing quite a lot with Twitter and making (and meeting) some new friends
  
• I'm looking forward to getting back on to Seesmic and seeing how it's changed in the last month
  
• My weekend is going to be spent drooling over a MacBook Pro in the Apple Store and eating sushi

So there you have it, a whistlestop tour of my last few weeks!

You know you've been working away too long....

.....when you get excited that the menu in your regular hotel has changed!
I have to say that even though I've been staying in this hotel since mid-August last year for at least 2 nights a week I've been very impressed with their menu. It last changed in about October/November time and is extremely varied, not only does it have a large number of dishes on it, it also offers a third of the menu in 3 different sizes. Which is great if you fancy mixing and matching lots of nibbly sized plates, or if you're watching your weight (which after 18 months of hotel eating you need to do!).

The problem I know have is getting to know this menu, gone are my old favourites of Halloumi cheese and asparagus and winter berries with a Cointreau Sabayonne but in is a greater variety of salads and scallops with cauliflower puree rather than sitting on black pudding (which always put me off ordering them). At least they still have my preferred glass of wine!

So dinner tonight will take a bit longer than usual because I actually have to read the menu first, still they do say a change is as good as a rest, and after today's meeting I think it'll be a while before I get any rest! Well excluding the fact that I'm off to Laax for two weeks from next Friday that is ;o)

Update:
So here's what I had tonight.

Seared Scallops with cauliflower puree and a citrus and chive emulsion
This is not going to be a favourite, the scallops were tough and the cauliflower emulsion (!) wasn't that tasty!

Followed by Crispy Duck Salad


This wasn't too bad, although the duck was more dried that crispy. The poached duck egg was tasty though. This probably falls into the would eat again bracket but I'll wait until I've tried some of the other salads before it becomes a regular choice.

Finally I had the Rhubarb Brulee with pina colada ice cream and a natural yogurt shot!

This was actually very tasty indeed, the ice cream was nice and you could taste the coconut and pineapple and the rhubarb brulee was really nice with decent chunks of rhubarb and wonderful crispy sugar on the top. The only down-side was the yogurt shot, my spoon was too big to fit in the shot glass and it was too thick to pour (or shake) out. Still who needs yogurt when you have ice cream?