Blog 41 – It’s 6:34am on a sunny Saturday and I’m sitting on a desolate train, on my way to London to attend a training event for the IAAF World Championships that are being held this summer in London. It reminds me of the training and build up to the London 2012 Olympics. There will be lots of people and excitement and a group of people, most of whom don’t know each other, all getting together for a common goal, to help at and enjoy this massive world event. I will be joined by the other chiropractors that have be selected for the honour of working at such a prestigious event. Selection for the Championships was tough and only 7 or 8 chiropractors made it to cover both the World Para Athletics Championships and the IAAF World Champs. I’ve been selected to do the IAAF Championships in August after the Paras. I’m pleased that the Paras are on first this time, before the IAAFs. The UK supports its Para athletes as well as anywhere in the world and putting on the event first before the able-bodied event is a testament to the UK’s commitment to disability sport. As many of you who have read my previous blogs know, I have done a lot of work in disability sports and worked with the GB Paralympic teams for both London and Rio. I wish all my friends and patients in the Paras luck this summer. I also work for athletes that will be competing in the IAAFs so I am looking forward to being involved and working behind the scenes as a chiropractor in this one-off UK event. I am sure in a couple of months’ time I will be writing all about it!
It’s now 7am exactly and we have just stopped at the beautiful city of roundabouts, Swindon, and the train is getting a little bit busier including a very interesting looking couple carrying their folded bicycles down the train still wearing their helmets, hi-vis and looking far too hot and bothered for this time of the morning.
Earlier in the month, before I found myself on this journey to London, I managed a few quiet nights away in Dubai to help celebrate my friend and Bristol Rovers player, Lee Brown, marry his childhood sweetheart, Sophie. It was a lovely time, if not a little hot, hitting 42 degrees Celsius at times. The locals say that it’s on its way to 55!
Only a week after I arrived home from Dubai, I went on a 4-day course held in Bristol to increase my skillset. The course was excitingly called “Active Release Techniques (ART) of the Lower Limb” and is the final of 3 courses (Upper Limb and Spine) that has taken me round the world and 4 years to complete making me full bodied certified. ART is the gold standard of soft tissue techniques and adds so much to any practitioners skillset. You cannot work on the PGA pro tour without being ART qualified. The standards to pass are formidable as you need to re-qualify every year and I had the joy of taking an exam on the final day. This exam made slightly tougher by, instead of studying for the exam all Saturday night like everybody else was, I went to my wife’s best friend’s wedding at the Bristol Lido, which was lovely but I couldn’t help thinking about how to treat achilles, knees and ankle sprains! Anyway, I still passed with flying colours and am now proud to be the only ART practitioner in the southwest of England including the whole of Wales. I plan on helping my new chiropractic Associates become qualified in ART as well helping us maintain our status as world class sports injury clinic.
After stopping in Reading at 7:24am the train is finally beginning to fill up as we approach London Paddington. I can almost feel the great City waking up ready to welcome more guests of all varieties and I wonder what the day has in store for me as I head towards the Olympic Stadium for our training day. I am sure I will meet some fun people with interesting stories of their own. I’ve said it before but I can’t help saying it again…I love my job.
