I am now in my final year at university doing Sport and Exercise Science – between uni, training and work, life is very busy, but I wouldn’t change a thing.
My most recent competition was the British Para-Swimming Championships down in Manchester, which fell right in the middle of exams. However I am very lucky as I have really supportive lecturers at Napier who managed to change one of my exams to before the competition meaning I could focus more on racing while only having to revise for one exam.
This competition is one of my favourites on the racing calendar because the Scottish team travel, stay and race together. I have some great friends within the Scottish team so it’s always nice to catch up and having a team environment makes racing so much more fun!
I had four races and was pleasantly surprised to get personal bests in them all, including dropping over 18 seconds in my 400m front crawl which resulted in a Scottish record! I also came home with a gold, silver, bronze, so all in all a great weekend! It was great to see quite a few new young athletes in the Scottish Team all who swam brilliantly and have a promising future. I am now the granny of the team, but I’m ok with that!
After an amazing weekend away racing I got a quick bump back to reality by having my final uni exam the following day. I am now looking forward to finally having some time to go home for Christmas as I think my family will have forgotten what I look like.
After Christmas I will start my dissertation, which I am actually really looking forward to, and I will juggle this with training and racing. I am also looking forward to having a bit more time to spend working with SDS Young Persons Sports Panel – we are developing well as a team and I think 2018 will prove very successful by being a voice for young people with a disability within Scotland.