This weekend was the day of the assessment for my TCL, I was pretty nervous about it before hand and had had a killer week leading up to it (the week before Easter, running an e-commerce company selling camping equipment... we were a bit busy). So I'd barely had any time to actually think about the assessment - I think I was most concerned about the 5-10 minute presentation we were supposed to give on a particular subject. Mine was "Action Centred Leadership", which isn't the most complicated of subjects, but is tricky to talk about in enough detail for 5-10 minutes when you haven't really prepared.
So Thursday lunchtime I had to pull myself away from work, feeling like I was leaving everyone still in the shit a little, and get in the van to drive 2 hours to Devon to pick up Mark followed by another 5.5 hours to Betws-Y-Coed in North Wales. I realised half way there that I'd left all my carefully prepared route guides and log books on my desk at work, way too late to do anything about it! We finally got in about 22.30 with both of us pretty much ready to fall asleep - all plans of last minute reading went out the window and we went straight to sleep. Or at least I did, I went to sleep so quickly I'm can't be sure what Mark did.
Friday Morning started early with a bit of last minute reading and bike tweaking (despite which my bike spent most of the day ghost shifting) before driving 2 minutes down the road to the assessment site. The rest of the day went really rather well, except the pouring rain that is. We had 2 novice riders along for us to lead who were really good, put up with our slightly cack handed leadership at times and thankfully seemed to get something out of the day. My presentation ended up being not too bad at all, and everyone passed without any concern. If it weren't for the massive relief I felt it would almost have been a bit of an anti-climax!
That evening had celebration written all over it, and we headed out to the pubs of Betws full of intentions to drink until we passed out. Which is exactly what we did. Except it turns out that it only took 2 pints for us to pass out... which was a bit of a running theme for the weekend.
Some time soon I'll write a little more info about what I had to do for my course, but briefly now I'll mention who I've done it with as I've been really lucky and ended up doing both my SMBLA and First Aid Courses with some top people who have made the whole process really good fun as well as informative.
So, my SMBLA/TCL was done with Al Seaton of Wheelie Cool Mountain Biking: http://www.wheeliecool.co.uk/
And my first aid course was done with Guy at Adventure First Aid: http://www.adventurefirstaid.co.uk/
I thoroughly recommend both of them.
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