DAY IN THE LIFE - AMY WILLIAMS

by Amy Williams - Skeleton Athlete

Skeleton is a winter sport which involves one person sliding head-first on a sled down a 1.5 – 2.0 km ice track with 14 to 19 corners for 50 to 70 seconds at speeds of up to 85mph. That is what I do during the winter months while competing on the World Cup circuit on tracks in Europe and North America.

When the alarm goes at 7am, I often wake up feeling quite nervous before a training session, but I always like to have a good breakfast and then allow time to let it settle before I start to run around. My favourite breakfast is some muesli with Crunchie nut cornflakes on top, some honey on toast with a cup of tea.

Once we have driven in the team van from our hotel to the track, I will walk down the ice track with my coach, talking about how I will go into each corner, where and how hard I will steer. I must visualise each steer in my head as I walk down. On most tracks this will take a good hour. Back at the top of the track I will start to do my warm up. This can be very hard to do when it’s thick snow outside and there is no cover to run under, but you soon learn how to adapt to the conditions. A lot of the times I will do some core exercises in the start hut on the floor and do a small circuit such as step ups, lunges, press-ups and whatever comes to mind.

In an official World cup competition week we only get three days of training before the race. We have only two runs each day, which doesn’t sound a lot, but when you experience forces up to 4 or 5 G on some corners, this can be plenty! I may be at the track for 3 to 4 hours, and after my own slides, sometimes I watch the other athletes, observing what happens in the corners, working out they are doing and trying to learn from them.

Back at the hotel, I do my recovery session, which generally requires me to sit in an ice bath for 5 minutes: it’s not nice, and I don’t recommend it!

It’s then lunchtime, which will vary on contents depending on which country I may be in! But we send out menus to our hotels and because we tend to stay in the same ones year after year they accommodate our needs well, so normally some soup and pasta will be on the menu.

After lunch I inspect my sled (Arthur), checking him over for any bumps and then polishing the runners. This is a strenuous job: during training, 30 minutes may be enough to remove most of the scratches that come from tiny bits of grit that get blown onto the tracks, but before a race it can take hours to get rid of them all completely. After this I do my physical training session of the day which may take an hour or two – this maybe a sprint session, stability and core or a weights session in the local gym.

During the winter season your body gets a lot more tired than it would do in the summer, so my training is adapted to suit this. So shorter sessions with key elements. For me the most important thing is to keep my legs strength, I have back problems and so leg press is a key exercise that I have to do. During the summer I would do three weights sessions a week but in the winter only two.

After dinner, I have a session with my ice coach, when we view the video of the morning’s sliding to analyse what I did on the corners and discuss what I have to change for the next day’s training. This is the most important part of the day, when I learn how to be quicker on the ice. Most times the physiotherapist massages me before it’s time to pack my track bag for the next day’s training and go to bed. I’ll watch a film and then fall asleep, ready for the next day to start all over again. In the summer I love to relax with friends in my spare time, going to the cinema and cooking meals at each others houses.

Photography © Getty Images