BANG! Rupturing my Achilles.

There is nothing like the thrill of speed, I'm talking about the fast kind not the drug! I love the feeling of running fast, perhaps my love affair with this is what made me such a successful sprinter. Being lost in the moment. Moving my legs and arms as quickly as they will take me. Relaxing my body into the rhythm and pace. Feeling the coolness of the wind speeding past my cheeks. My hair fly’s behind me and my face is cold. All I can think about is what I can do to go faster. My arms glide back and forth and my legs follow stretching out. My feet gracefully take the weight of my floating body, impacting on the firm surface.

Do you want to become a life coach?

"You're going to see a Life Coach?" My good friend and colleague remarked with hesitation in her voice. "Be careful Abby, its always such a risk when you find these people online, you never know who or what you will get."

Roller Derby...another chapter complete.

This is just another chapter in my life coming to an end. And I'm not one for wasting life - that's part of the reason I have to leave this game! As we all know, as one door closes another will open. This next door I'm opening blind...I'm excited for what's to come but simply have no idea of what life will gift me next. All I can do is take the next step forward, with an open mind and an open heart. Show me the way!

Skating back to 2013

Just under six years ago I played in my first Roller Derby bout. From there I never looked back. There was so much for me to love about this sport. A combination of power, agility, strength, speed, focus, strategy, teamwork and concentration. A game where you are constantly switching from offense to defense whilst rolling on eight wheels, alongside nine other players on the track. A 64 page rule book and seven officials calling the shots. Throw all that into the mix and it gives you enough things to think about!

Abby Lewtas, Challenge, Roller Derby, Thoughts, ReflectionAbby Lewtas1 May 2017roller derby, fernie, Journey, reflection, sport, thinking, inspireComment

Achieve success through focus.

I find it amazing how much you can focus and concentrate so intensely on one thing only. Everything else can be blocked out no matter how much of a distraction it may normally be. I had blocked out the excitement of Queensland, the sun shining at 28 degrees; and that a crowd had lined the fence and filled two grandstands to watch us. To put all those distractions aside and concentrate was something that at 17 years old, I had trained myself to do. To otherwise be absorbed up into this exciting atmosphere was a distraction that many of my opponents succumb to.

Trust your intuition...a year in my head and not in my skates.

With sport comes the physical training; the greater influence is the mental training. Commitment, resilience, goal setting, visualisation, day in day out. If your going to the top you need to commit to all of that. But with it also comes flow, ease, enjoyment and most of all something that has dropped into my consciousness in the last few years, intuition. The instinctual feeling and knowingness that so often so many of us choose to ignore. In my mind, this is by far of greatest importance than anything else.