On January 12, the Year 10 GCSE PE class at BHS had the privilege of having two female sailors, Annie Lush and Sally Barkow come to talk to us about what they do and how they incorporate the things we are learning about in class to a real athlete’s life.

They are in Bermuda to compete in the M32 races this year. Both Annie and Sally completed in the last Volvo Ocean Race, and were part of the first women’s team, SCA, to ever compete in the race. They discussed their journey towards this race, what they are training for and how they got into sailing.

We had the opportunity to ask questions on their influences on the sport, fitness tests and how they apply them into their training, the principles of training so their training programme is effective, SMART targets in order to achieve and maintain motivation and their training methods.

Annie and Sally gave me a better insight on what we are learning, but they also gave me real-life examples of this and how it can be applied to their athletic lives. They also showed me that women have the capability to do anything and everything. They completed an incredibly physical and mentally difficult race that was once only done by men; and they came in third, which is incredible for the fact none of the crew were “experienced” Volvo sailors.

I might not have the ambition to sail around the world, but I do have the ambition to do things in my sporting life and regular life that show that everyone can do the impossible.