101 Thrilling Hobbies of Curious Adventurer Liucija Liu | Kilo Health
Liucija Alksninyte plans her life around the seasons. In winter, she would go snowboarding or skiing, and summertime is dedicated to kiteboarding, riding her motorcycle, and wakeboarding. Not necessarily in that order — she tends to consult the weather while planning her next adventure.
Among Liucija’s many achievements, you can find cheerleading for a national basketball team, joining a biker club, running a half-marathon, winning first place in an amateur wakeboarding competition, or dancing for a military orchestra across Europe.
However, her one true passion is water. “My friends ask me if I’ve grown my fins already because I spend my entire summer in the water,” she says as she begins to tell her story.
Like father like daughter
“It all started out with my dad. He was taking me everywhere with him — from skiing trips in the forest to biker rallies,” remembers Liucija. Her father is a president of a biker club and would bring her to biker events on the back of his motorcycle.
He got her a moped when she was 12 years old, and she spent her summers driving her cousins in the rear seat throughout the countryside. She bought her first motorcycle and joined a biker club for 10 years, and she still rides it now.
Motorcycles are just one of her hobbies. “I love to focus on more than one interest at once,” she says. And she is interested in so many things.
An active lifestyle has always been a part of her life, starting from early childhood. During the winter, she and her dad would go cross-country skiing, and when she was a teenager, they went skiing in the mountains. It was her first time on the skis, yet she managed to learn without the assistance of an instructor.
This started a tradition of visiting the Italian Alps every year. After five years of practice, Liucija decided to try out snowboarding.
“I had literally zero ideas of where to begin. So I spent a couple of hours on the bunny slope, struggling to figure it out. Even though I shed some tears at first, at the end of the day, I got it,” she remembers.
Summertime fun
While winter sports sparked her interest in extreme hobbies, her true passion today is breezy summer sports.
Once again, it all began when her dad brought her to the lake for a lesson in water skiing, and that ended up in her learning to drive a speedboat. “We would take turns driving and skiing for days,” she says.
Around 4 years ago, Liucija got hooked on wakeboarding. This was the time when the sport was gaining popularity in Lithuania — and she jumped right in. “I already knew how to use water skis and a snowboard. I just had to use the skills I already had,” says Liucija.
She loved wakeboarding so much that she decided to join amateur wakeboarding competitions and even got a couple of prizes under her belt.
But she is there for the community, not the awards. “I don’t want to become a professional in any of these sports. But while it might be tempting to mix work and pleasure, I think that becoming a professional would take away the enjoyment out of my hobbies,” she adds.
Preparing for competitions would take months of daily training, which can be exhausting both physically and mentally. “My competitiveness kicks in. I want to win. At the same time, the entire body aches from the training and the stress. You pop in some pain relievers and go — but it’s not particularly healthy,” Liucija explains.
That’s why right now, she combines her extreme hobbies with some calmer activities without the pressure of competition.
A challenge for every day
With all these extreme sports in her routine, she still has time for other activities.
“You need to do a lot of preparation and stay physically active all year round. I enjoy doing CrossFit, jogging, and dancing,” she says. As a teen, she did some ballroom dancing and even taught dancing in a studio for a while.
It might not be surprising that even with her less extreme activities, she strives to deliver. Just a few months back, she ran a half-marathon, and for her next birthday, her goal is even more ambitious — she wants to complete a 30-kilometer run.
“I feel like I lose my muscles if they do not ache, so I must constantly move. When I am on the water, I reboot my brain, but I need to stay active no matter the season,” she explains. “Even though I am not a professional in any of my hobbies, I strive to be a bit more than a beginner in each of them.”
Unlocking a new direction
Today, most of her free time is spent around her passion — while traveling, she is always trying out new wake parks, bringing her wakeboard while flying out for a vacation, and even traveling to Turkey and Thailand for training camps.
During the pandemic, she also tried out wakesurfing and kitesurfing. If the wind is right, she would drive 700 kilometers to the seaside and back to Vilnius just to get some time on the water.
“Kitesurfing is a hobby you cannot control, it’s all about the weather. Sometimes there will be no good wind for months in Lithuania,” she says.
That’s why she plans to spend her winter this year in Cape Town in South Africa, which is somewhat the capital of extreme water sports. Kitesurfers gather there because of constant, strong, and stable winds, and this year, Liucija won’t need to close the summer season early.
“Ultimately, you are not upset about the hours spent on the road or waiting for the right weather. You just remember the thrill of fighting with the wind, the adrenaline you feel, and the good mood you bring back with you,” she laughs.
Join Liucija in her quest to build the best affiliate network in the market
Liucija joined our affiliate team a couple of years ago during the pandemic. Before that, she worked in tourism, and with us, she used her grit and management skills to launch a new career in an entirely new field.
Her love for an active lifestyle perfectly matches what Kilo Health creates.
Is this a match for you, too?
