Thought I should start getting on top of things with my blog. It's been left for way too long. I've had quite a turbulent 6 months or so, in which I had a brief return to racing which was great but things didn't really work out for a number of reasons and as it was so close to the end of the season I put things on hold for the 2012 season. After an enjoyable spell of coaching the Scottish team and resting my knee for a while. I got stuck into my fitness programme for the summer at the end of April. It was a tough first month or so but I could feel I was making great improvements all round in my fitness. The improvements showed in my June tests also where I did a PB for Overhead squat and my Back Squat was good too, on the bike I was showing good efficiency at the low end and had a great base to develop as the sessions would become harder over the summer. However......... much to my disappointment my knee started to play up. I made an appointment with the physio, seen the doctor and both referred me to the orthopaedic surgeon. All were convinced I had damaged meniscus and I was taken in for surgery the next day. The surgery showed in fact I had not torn any meniscus (bonus) but I did have a lot of debris floating around and also a build up of scar tissue around where the ACL graft is attached to my Tibia. So in the end he tidied it all up and the surgery wasn't too invasive. My recovery period was 6 weeks, just enough time for me to squeeze in my sisters wedding and catch the end of the season in New Zealand. Since arriving in NZ I have gradually built up the intensity of my skiing but also put a fair amount of time into building up strength and fitness as I lost a lot after the surgery, the weather wasn't really playing along with me though and I had to ski in all sorts of weather which was not helping me to build confidence. After 2 & 1/2 weeks here I was beginning to think the whole camp was gonna be a nightmare but the last 3 days have more than made up for it with 3 days of perfect weather and snow conditions for training and I am quite amazed how I improved in the last few days. All the technical work in the terrible weather seems to be paying off, my knee is feeling good again but I have a lot of hard work to get back into top shape. It's a tight timeframe to get ready by the end of November for my first race but I am well on track.

Cheers for now.