Hi there,

It’s been 215 days and counting since I last saw Glasgow and since the end of May I haven’t even seen Europe, so it’s interesting that I start counting how long I’ve been away just as I am due to get home.

It reminds me that either I must have been kept busy over the last seven and a half months or I have become a lot more conditioned to the whole experience. Through 2007 I took nine months away from Scotland and it took its toll. I lost the plot with it entirely and swore mid September 07 I wouldn’t get on a plane again.
 
I swore a lot in general, actually! Constant airports, constant hotels, constant unpacking, constant re-packing. Now 15 months on from that and far more ridiculous flying has ensued. It seems all good now for some reason and this has happened by accident, certainly not by intention. I’ve certainly become completely de-sensitised to the whole concept of location.

There was once a point when a 3 hour flight into Europe was both an adventure and exhausting, now I take my sleeping pills, my business class upgrade and wake up 14 hours later at my next long haul location. I’ll play 2 days later and not feel too affected by it all.

Of course it’s a good thing, it means I’m doing it all a lot better now, but at the end of a another year, another festive period is on top of me, another year knocks on the door. I want to know where that year is taking me.

December and the festive period in general over the last 5 years has always been an annual escalation of the hectic and unpredictable.  Looking back, bad decisions arrived in sleigh loads.

Through poor decision making whilst running venues in the licensed trade, to the sadness of three years ago when my Mother took her own life on Christmas Day. One way or another this time of year always brings about the inevitable and unavoidable personal moment of looking back, pondering the same repetitive questions...

Would I take the opportunity to go back and do things differently? Of course I would..... but where would I really be, and would I be the journeyman I have become without the suitcase full of regrets?

I’ve taken this festive period to isolate and reflect, I’ve stayed in New Zealand to train every day, most days twice.  I was on court on Christmas Day and I’m sure for this behaviour I’m deserved of the sideways glances I’m getting. I’m spending quite a bit of time on my own; my spare time outside that is down on the beach reading and relaxing, 26 degrees centigrade and sand in December can’t ever be a bad thing.

Two days ago I took the day off and spent it out on a boat with a friend, Man Vs Fish - Round One, fishing in the South Pacific.

For me this is the flip-side to the annual chocolate coin, an extreme change to the usual practiced routine. No places to be, no commitments, no responsibilities, no pressure, just a time to look back, get a bit of hard work done, and start looking forward.

As for 2008, well I haven’t been off my toes all year.  Since May I have been kept busy with the juggle of email, flights, competitions, visas, finances and travelling. I set a simple goal in May to rectify my ranking slip, a result of non-ranking event play for nine months after the 2007 World Championships, leaving me dwindling down around the 360 mark.

I had a simple game plan: target 10 events before the end of the calendar year, break back into the top 100 and give myself a strong foundation to work off regarding tournament selection heading into 2009.

My end goal is always the same, give me an open chequebook and a wildcard to any event and I’ll only play the Super Series, only the best events and only the best players in the world.  Everything else is just preparation. Principle and practice never conspire to make things that simple and the right has to be earned to place in these draws.

So come mid July I’m trying to scramble some events and all sorts of crap seemed to be going on with the world calendar.  Five events I had intended to play had been cancelled, three of which I had already paid for flights to. There was a definite period in there where more time was being spent changing flights and buying tickets than actually flying.

Then another event was postponed three months into November, so here I was out in New Zealand to pick off events in Asia and Australasia and none of them were going ahead. Not ideal.

I was due back in Spain with club commitments by the end of September. I’d intended to play eight events but I only played four. I was sitting down most days through August trying to construct a calendar that would fit in more international events but also sustain prior commitments in Spain.

At one point a calendar was tabled with 15 competitive weekends in 17 weeks, flying every seven days. Even by my standards of stupidity, there wasn’t a chance that I was going to let that happen. I’ve learnt the necessity of practical location over personal preference and the changes to the tournament calendar had constructed a serious change to my plans and prior commitments.  Everything was being effected, not least my sanity.

In the end it was just something I had to go with, I had to let my club down, the primary goal took precedence, and I decided to stay in New Zealand till the end of the year and pick off a few more events in Asia. 

By the end of the year I didn’t quite make my quota of 10 events. I just about managed nine but I’m now ranked mid 60s, so all things considered the outcome hasn’t been disastrous!

As for 2009, well I had planned to play the Malaysia and Korea Super Series at the start of January, but for a multitude of reasons this plan has changed and its paining me a little now to know I would have been in the main draw in Korea.

Now I’m going to be competing domestically in the East of Spain instead. I travel back to Europe at the start of January to play a series of club matches through the play-off season for my club, Paracuellos-Saglas in Madrid, it’s the least I owe them.

They have supported me financially and beyond over the last couple of seasons and me hunting down another main draw of a Super Series at this point of the season is just one step too far.

On top of that my injured left leg, strapped and iced daily since mid August, makes the whole decision making process a lot easier, I haven’t had an ample opportunity to rest it decently from competition and it’s competition that seems to be killing it.

So I shall look ahead now to another 14 days in New Zealand, being on-court on New Year’s Day for some nasty, nasty endurance training, the weekend will come and so will round two of Man vs Fish, this time I’ll take the sun tan lotion with me!

Then it’s home to Glasgow for two days and straight to Spain, where for six weeks around my club matches I will train at the Spanish High Performance centre in Granollers, just north of Barcelona.

Richard Vaughan is in charge of the high performance setup they have there and indeed has also been the coach in charge of my badminton crimes for the last two seasons.

I may decide to play a few events through the period leading up to May but the primary goal for now is to focus on my physical fitness and quality of training, so I can go about causing real damage come May 09.

Cheers,
Al

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