Embracing What You Don’t Know!
Hi, my name is Sarah Thornely (aka SUPjunkie) and I am a passionate stand up paddleboarder who has never knowingly let age or experience get in the way of what can be achieved. Having known and followed John for many years, I am grateful for the opportunity of writing a Guest Blog.
My SUP journey began in 2012 with a few tentative but enthusiastic paddle lessons which were then curtailed with the onset of Winter (who would paddle in Winter I naively thought!) and an emergency life-threatening operation. The latter made me realise I had to get on with my life and I wondered what activity really gave me pleasure? Had I really fallen in love with stand up paddleboarding? The test would be to get those feet back on a board when I recovered and that is exactly what I did. It felt good, it felt comfortable, and I felt at home so the first thing I did was join the club that had given me my first lesson and buy a secondhand inflatable board. It was Spring and I paddled as much as possible and later that year entered my first race – I didn’t know I was quite so competitive but standing on the podium at the end of the National Club Championships with an age-related medal around my neck, the realisation was there!
Having raced on my trusty Red Paddle Co i-SUP for that first race, I realised a more suitable board was necessary so with the help of Brian at Blue Chip, I bought a second-hand 14’ carbon race board which I still have. Over the next 5 years, I entered everything I could – Supbikerun events, UKn1sco one design races, the UKSUP National Series races and any stand-alone event I could find. I did well and podiumed aplenty and this culminated in me becoming the UKSUP National Series overall 14’ Ladies Champion in 2017. I had raced every other weekend for 6 months during that particular season and certainly surprised myself with that win at the grand age of 58! It never once crossed my mind at the time that I was “that” age, I was just doing what I loved and was at my fittest. A few years down the line and I appreciate that win much more these days.
My body thought differently though – IT realised it was “that” age and my back asked me to stop for a while to give it a well-earned rest! After a few months off over the Winter I came to the decision that I would probably not race again but worried that I would really miss the whole of the SUP community so when Mark Price asked me to be on the Events Committee of the newly formed GBSUP National Series, it was a no brainer. I was going to be very happy being that “friendly” face, to welcome all those paddlers new and old and give any advice I could especially to those who may never have raced before.
That didn’t last long as Mark invited me to tag along on the live feed and get stuck into interviewing the paddlers. Again, this was something I had never done before, but I knew almost everyone at that time on the race circuit and loved a good natter, so I was soon out and about with the “paddlemic” (thank you Mark) and covering the races live on Facebook. From 2018 until now that has pretty much been my life, still being involved with the racing but from a completely different side. The lack of formal training in “media” never crossed my mind, I had a passion and that was SUP racing, and I also knew a LOT – nuggets of information all stored up in my mind which I could happily talk about for hours.
During 2018, I asked the Manager of the SUP Team going to the ISA World Championships in China if SUPjunkie could go and cover the event and so it came to pass that we were invited to join the team (I could never have done this alone so thank you Antony!) - there have been some fun trips since then including Poland and France and travelling all over the UK to cover events.
Throughout this time, I have also had the pleasure of regularly writing for Stand Up Paddle Mag UK and The Paddler – again, I am not trained as a writer but they have embraced my passion and for that I am truly grateful – I have been lucky enough to be able to write about some of my absolute heroes and find new ones.
I guess it’s only over the last year or so that I truly understand and appreciate what I do and have been able to verbalise that out loud (self-appreciation and not self-promotion I guess!) – it's a fact and not a dream and I have loved every single minute of it. This has been brought to light by one or two people in my life who have truly made me feel valued and totally get what I have done for the SUP community and tell me often! They know who they are, and I thank them sincerely for their support.
What I do is absolutely for the love of the sport and there have only been one or two times throughout when I have wondered what the hell I am doing – on the most part though, it is joyous especially at events where I see the “stoke” on other paddlers’ faces.
So, age and experience mean nothing if you have a passion, we all know “nothing” until we learn it and I am grateful to still be learning. I’m also very happy to chat or be contacted if you would like to know anything about SUP or SUP racing and if I don’t know the answer, I probably know someone who does.
I am very honoured to be nominated for the Supconnect Woman of the Year 2024 and if you would like to vote for me, I would be incredibly grateful! Voting closes at the end of July - https://www.supconnect.com/sup-woman-of-the-year-2024
You can also follow me here:
FB - https://www.facebook.com/Supjunkie.co.uk/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/supjunkie.uk/
Website - https://www.supjunkie.co.uk/
YouTube – SUPjunkie paddleboarding
Twitter - https://x.com/SUPjunkie_uk
