The last month has been really exciting, lots going on. The ‘Strength Block’ has come to an end and the ‘Speed Block’ is now well underway, I feel like I’ve made my full adjustment to wearing the i-GO lenses to improve my sight, and I’ve made my move to London so I can train on the Olympic course more!
In this current block of training all of my physical sessions are just geared around going FAST and making the boat get up to speed quickly from a standing start. From the data we have of recorded 20m sprint times I’ve matched the record and become one of the very few C1 paddlers to reach a sub 7 second time, so already the speed work we’re doing is paying off!
I’ve continued to wear my overnight lenses to correct my short sightedness and now I think I’ve made the full adaption which is great. Being able to see properly for all of my sessions has been great, especially with trying to learn the subtleties of the Olympic courses waves and other features.
I’ve made a semi move to London so now I’m operating out of a base there and a base in Nottingham. My coaching and support services still remain predominantly in Nottingham which means I do need to be here still most weeks but with a room in London as well now I will be spending the majority of my time down there.
Training in London has been great, I’m really enjoying every second I’m spending on that course and I’m finding that the hard physical work I’ve put in already this winter has really paid off and I’m finding that I can really just focus on the technical element of paddling there and just learning the place inside out.
So the domestic season has come to an end now, I managed to improve my ranking a little in the last few races to finish 2nd senior and 1st U23 overall for the year (out of a series of 9 races, with people best 5 results counting).
I was very happy with this. Over the last 3 years I have gone 4-3-2, so next year (especially with it being an Olympic year) I hope to continue that upward trend and get that number 1 spot!
I started my winter training on November 1st. It's all hard work now until a short rest period over Christmas and New Year before restarting my 2012 campaign in January.
My first week was very hard, the first one always is after a bit of a break at the back end of summer. I like to have a bit of a break before starting winter training; I find I'm always so motivated and excited to get started.
My week now consists of: 8 paddling sessions, 4 gym sessions, 2 land-based conditioning sessions, and 1 gymnastic based gym session. It's very intense but I'm really enjoying it and I'm feeling good.
I'm excited to see what benefits are going to come to the addition of a lot more functional/gymnastic type strength exercises coming into the gym program.
The first races are done. Yesterday (thursday) took place the K1 and C1 man, the best of two runs would dictate the 21th in K1 and 15th in C1 to move forward in the competition.
The times were really tight in both categories with only a 4,33sec gap between the leader Daniele Molmenti (ITA) and the last man to get in, in K1, and 4,09sec between Stanislav Jezek (CZE) and the 15th in C1 man. So no place for big mistakes!!
Campbell Walsh (GBR) was the best NELO, placing 4th, 1,19sec away from the leader.
Carles Juan Marti (ESP) placed 29th less than 1sec from the 21th, Huw Swetnam (GBR) didn't had a good day placing 45th and the young Pedro Henrique "Pepe" (BRA) placed 49th.
Today it's time for the K1 W and the C2. The races just started.
NELO has been in Bósnia for the European Junior and U23 Canoe Slalom Championship that took place in the city of Banja Luka. The course was in a fast natural river in the middle of a beautifull canyon where everyone could enjoy and see the athletes in action.
Starting with the youngest Nerea Fernandez (ESP) ended up in 15th place on K1 W Junior and 11th place on C1 W Junior.
Still with the Spanish team Xabier Jauregui on K1 Junior, after an awsome 2nd run in the heats got a 50sec penalty and placed 20th. On the teams event placed 4th after being on the lead.
David Bain (GBR) on K1 Junior, was flying down the course looking forward to the medals when he got stuck on the last two gates, being 10th. Later on he would be again 10th on the teams event.
Adam Burguess (GBR) on C1 U23, made it to 13th after a small mistake that let him really close to the final. On the teams event he was 2nd after a great performance. He also raced in C2 ending up in 14th place on the single event and 3rd place on the teams event.
Joe Morley (GBR) and Ekhi Diez (ESP) on K1 U23, haven't found the way to ride faster on the course, a race that was really tight, standing in 24th place and 36th place, respectively. While in the teams event Joe took the 6th place and Ekhi the 15th.
Nuria Vilarrubla (ESP), on the photo, took the best result for NELO in all the events, ending up in 2nd place on C1 W U23, after being badly sick on the days before. This was the first medal for NELO in a European and hopefully the first of many others.
Congratulations Nuria. Congratulations to everyone you all did it well, best race for NELO in the slalom scene. This results showed that we are on the good way and looking forward for better results.
Next week NELO will be in Lee Valey for the Olimpic Test Event.
After a very busy few months moving from my home town of Chester, to Nottingham. Moving schools and training hard in the UK, France and Bosnia I have a free minute to write a post.
BOSNIA PRE EUROPEANS
The time has come where the Junior and U23 GB teams have returned to Bosnia. Thankfully the river is staying at a consistent level now, not like in our training camp, where the water rose each day from 25 cumecs to 200, which was challenging to say the least with gates having to be risen every 5 minutes. The course has been altered very little since I was last here, and although it is not the most technical river out there, I am still thoroughly looking forward to racing, which starts with my individual and team qualification races on Thursday.
And yes, it’s a little hot, 40+ deg c :O :O :O
PADDLING MY NEW PYRANHA VARUN AND CARBON FREERIDE BLADES AT HPP
As my training started to dip for racing, and "hot" weather visiting the UK I decided it was about time to get comfortable in my Varun, before I get on larger rivers in central Europe in 3 weeks time. I really enjoyed paddling the boat down river, its a lot faster than other play boats of its type, yet also carves nicely on a wave as well as it being playful in a hole. It really is ace for all round paddling, which is exactly what I intend to do in Austria, Slovinia and Switzerland.
The carbon blades were also great; I am still using the Freeride blade design, which as I said in a previous review are nice strong, powerful blades. The carbon blades are quite a lot lighter, making them more similar to my slalom blades.
BOURG ST MAURICE
A few weeks back I had a camp in Bourg, which is by far my favourite course! It’s just amazing big powerful water that really tests every paddler. After a hard week training it came to the race day. Unfortunately my first run did not go to plan with a 50 given and unfortunately as second runs were cancelled I did not get another chance to qualify however the week was still very valuable.
On that evening myself and Tom Brady decided to go for a light run to ARK 1600, which is abut 15km up and the same down We reached ARK 1600 in good time, so we decided to continue to ARK 2000, only another 15km up. We did reach ARK 2000, after a good 30kms and climbing over 1300 meters. Unfortunately once we approached the top the weather closed in with wet snow and sleet. We both got rather cold rather quickly so a quick decent to lower ground, and a lift down the rest of the mountain with blankets and glucose powder from our coach was greatly appreciated.
My semi-final run went well, producing a good clean time of 98.0 and crossing the line into 3rd place. With 15 more competitors left to run, I expected to drop but was quietly confident it would be good enough to keep me in the top 10 and progress to the final. Surprisingly, no-one else went ahead and I stayed 3rd!
I attacked the final run and was happy with my effort so I was initially surprised to be almost 2 seconds slower, a 99.9. On reflection, I probably lost several small amounts of time in comparison to the first run - I still need to check on the Dartfish head-to-head video analysis.
So, I finished in 4th place. A very good result, but I was frustrated I didn't put together a better run to get onto the podium. Kauzer dominated the event, winning by a large margin with fellow Slovenian Meglic 2nd. German Schubert was on the World Cup podium for the first time in 3rd.
Remember, you can watch all the race action online at ICF TV.
Away from K1, David Florence got us a listen to the national anthem by storming down the course and winning the C1 event.
I'm already in the hotel for this week's training camp at the World Championship venue, Bratislava. I'm skipping World Cup 2 in France as the race is reserved for the GB U23 team. Then I'll be back competing at WC3 in Leipzig, Germany, the following week. Looking forward to that one, as I've never been there yet.
Depois de 5 horas de viajem(italia-Slovenia) cheguei em tacen, uma das pistas de canoagem mais conhecidas no mundo por sua queda enorme na logo na largada.
Bom, meu primeiro contato com a pista foi um pouco confuso, não sabia ao certo qual linha pegar e estava ainda me adaptando ao novo barco e remo! posso dizer que tomei muita "porrada" no "Pancadão" existe 2 linhas na largada, a da direita que você pega um refluxo e pode se perder nele, e a da direita: que primeiro te deixa cego com a água na cara e e depois te leva muito perto de um muro e faz parecer que vai bater! é normal eu ficar um pouco "perdido"na pista pois é minha primeira vez aqui e a maioria dos atletas já vieram aqui ao menos 10 vezes! Estou muito Feliz com meu final de treino, muitos acertos e uma navegação tranqüila!
Estou também muito feliz com meu novo Barco Nelo modelo 2011, uma boa saída de remonta, uma boa navegação e muito fácil nas manobras rápidas são uns das qualidades!
Amanha temos nosso 2 e ultimo treino! Sábado classificaria, Domingo Semi e Final! Muito Obrigado a todos que torcem por mim !!! Fé em Deus e Foco no objetivo !
Daniele Molmenti, the current World Champion, added the European title to his palmares for the 2nd time. He powered his way down the Seu channel, never looking in danger of making a mistake. Be sure to check out his new website and play paddle-guitar along to the tunes!
I was watching from the river bank after not making it through to the final. An excited start to my semi-final run saw me go too tight into the first upstream gate, stalling in order to stretch my head around the pole, touching it in the process. The judges decided I did not get my head around the pole, awarding a 50s penalty. I disagree, but if the penalty had instead been a 2s touch, the racing was too tight and I wouldn't have made it into the final anyway. So I placed 19th of the 20 starters.
With a fairly straight forward course design everyone was racing very close to the poles - this produced exciting racing, but also plenty of controversial penalty decisions! Most notably, Fabien Lefevre was fast enough to win the final but for a judged half head 50s penalty. Young Jiri Prskavec again showed his outstanding form, finishing on the podium in 3rd, with local Spaniard Samuel Hernanz in 2nd.
Interestingly, if anyone ever doubted how competitive a European Champs actually is, the top 11 kayaks from the ICF World Ranking list were all present and racing (and you have to look to 24th position in the rankings to find the first non-European).
Some readers may be wondering what a Quarter final is? That is because there hasn't ever been one at a race before. Somebody at the ECA decided it would be good to introduce an extra 1-run round, on the same day as the Qualification race.
The way it worked was a normal, best of 2-runs, Qualification round, with the top 40 K1 men to progress. Then another 1-run on the same course where those 40 would fight for the 20 places in the semi final on Sunday.
Not surprisingly, most of the top ranked paddlers were easily inside the top 40 qualifying places after first runs. So most, myself included, opted to skip the 2nd run in order to conserve energy for the harder prospect that was the Quarter Final round. In total, 14 of the best K1 paddlers did not get on the water for the 2nd run, creating large gaps, leaving the commentator with nothing to commentate on and the spectators nothing to watch!!! Maybe if there had been some consultation with the athletes about the program changes, we would have advised that this would most likely be the outcome and the embarrassment could have been avoided.
As for my racing, I was happy with my 1st qualification run, placing 4th with 92.9/. The most pleasing aspect was that I felt there was definitely time to be found in the run, and I could be challenging the lead time of 91.6 by Vavra. With most of the top ranked paddlers not doing the 2nd run, the top 5 remained the same.
My Quarter Final run a disappointment. The bottom half didn't have the flow or style I wanted and I gradually lost time everywhere, posting a slower 95.0. Still, I made it through in 14th place, so will try to get back in the groove in the semi-final on Sunday. Young Jiri Prskavec, who is still a junior (under 18), showed why he deserves his place on the Czech senior team, impressively winning the quarter final round.
We also had a 1-run Qualification run for team racing today! We (myself, Richard and Huw) had a solid clean run, putting us 3rd in an incredibly tight race. The highest place team to get a 2 second penalty was 7th! And even then, they were only 2.28 seconds down on 1st place!!
The 2011 European Champs will be contested this week in La Seu D'Urgell, Spain. It's a popular venue on the circuit, one where I have raced a lot. In recent years it was host to the 2009 World Champs, plus a World Cup event last season.
The GB team arrived pretty early, traveling on Wednesday last week. I felt very comfortable on the water straight away - my new Nelo boat performing well. It was fun to be squeezing under poles and nailing moves - a totally different style of paddling to training on the London course. Now that the nation training slots have started, it's mostly a matter of waiting for racing to start, which is not till Friday for me. A key attribute for an athlete in race week is effectively dealing with spare time and boredom!!!
Written in the van at Nottingham campsite Saturday night after the Junior race
Selection is a tough time for everyone, parents, coaches and athletes. The pressure and expectation put on the athletes from parents and coaches can be quite daunting, however this level of expectation is nothing compared to what the athlete can expect from him/herself. I can only speak from my personal experiences here, however I certainly put a huge amount of pressure and expectation on myself, which I find helps me gain more focus and composure for a race.
2011 was a scary start for me, in the first 2 prem races I had made mistakes, but my times were good. Being my last year of junior I was ever more anxious to make these races count and to perform to the level I needed to.
Bala Selection – International Site – Junior Selection 1
I was reasonably calm in the lead up to Bala selection. It is one of my favourite courses here in the UK due to its fast, narrow channels of flow which with correct stroke placing you can use to your advantage and speed down the tight little course, The disadvantage however is it does seem to get shallower each year, but fortunately a fantastic course was set this year, with nearly all the gates over deep ish water.
On the day of the race I woke up rather nervous, something I have become used to over the last two years at important races, working with one of the GB canoeing psychologists, Dean, I have learnt how to overcome these race day feelings, whatever they may be, and use them to my advantage, or block them out completely. Before my run I had walked and analysed the course 6 times, working with Mark, Dean and my Dad as well as other friends to make my race plan suit me and my racing style.
Run 1 went completely to plan, getting a clean line on all the key moves, subtle time losses here and there but overall it was a great run. It put me in First place in the Junior class, and also first over all.
The second run I pulled out all the stops and unfortunately this time it didn’t work out, however my efforts on my first run still secured me a first place in junior and second overall just behind Campbell.
The week between Bala and Nottingham I just stayed focussed and made it my priority to stay sharp, calm and not to over train!
Most of the week we had fantastic weather with temperatures in the low 20s, I had a good session in Nottingham on Wednesday and then came back over to Nottingham on Friday afternoon. On Friday we again had great weather, I spent the evening looking at the course designed by Mark and Ian, and it was a fantastic racing course. I learnt the course well and went back to the van for dinner. I went for a relaxing walk before bed then did some mental prep and slept.
I woke up, as usual at just before 5, I had breakfast early and went down to watch the demos. It was fantastic to have some really high quality demo runners which allowed me to make a good plan. I went back up to the van after demos and relaxed and had some more food.
After numerous course walks and minor plan changes on the course I was ready to race, My first run was clean, but one move choice lost me a chunk of time so I had to correct this on the second run to make up for lost time and improve my placing.
Again after another few course walks and rehearsals with both Mark and Dean I was on the water and watching the clock tick down to my start time.
I executed the plan exactly as I had hoped, only with minor time losses here and there but nothing significant. I ended up in first place in the Junior race and 3rd U23.
I had now made it on to the team in first place.
At this point in the blog I would like to say congrats to Ciaran who has also made it on to the GB junior team this year after his performances in the first 2 races, there is still one place to fill which will be decided in the final race in Scotland this coming weekend.
Written in the van on the way to Scotland
Nottingham U23 Selection – Race 2&3
The U23 selection this year in the K1M was certainly going to be some extremely intense racing with many top athletes competing for the 3 available places.
As usual the races are done on 1 run on the final U23 Selection events.
On my first run I unfortunately made mistakes from the start (Gate 1) and the run, although had good sections were not what I wished for. I had to paddle back for an upstream on a hole, which I was very disappointed about as it was one of my favourite upstream gates.
Second run I was intent at following my plan, but most importantly nailing gate 9, the upstream i had previously messed up on. The run went to plan. Apart from 2 very silly touches with put my time well down, I nailed gate 9 and got a good cheer from the crowed, something that meant a lot after my mistake on the first run.
The Under 23 selection series over all did not go perfect for me, but thankfully it did not need to due to my position on the junior team already secured.
Again congratulations are in order to Joe Morley, a fellow Nelo team member, Joe Coombs and Joe Clarke who gained a place on the U23 team to race at the European Championships in Bosnia this year.
Junior Selection 3 – Grand Tully – Scotland
Leading up to the race in Scotland I was keen to focus on training hard, and testing out my new boat, already mindful that preparations must start for the Europeans this year.
I went in to the race more tired than my previous selections but was still hoping for a good performance.
My first run was reasonably clean but nothing special, I knew I had to step it up in the second run, but unfortunately this did not go to plan either.
All in all it was a rather disappointing weekend with my paddling being sub-par throughout all my runs.
The final results were, Ciaran first, I in second place and Jonathon Abbott in third, gaining him the final place on the junior team.
I shall be spending this week training and preparing for senior selection at the Lee Valley Olympic white water course where there is a 3 day racing series being held.
Nuria Vilarrubla (ESP), on the photo, took the best result for NELO in all the events, ending up in 2nd place on C1 W U23, after being badly sick on the days before. This was the first medal for NELO in a European and hopefully the first of many others.
After a very busy few months moving from my home town of Chester, to Nottingham. Moving schools and training hard in the UK, France and Bosnia I have a free minute to write a post.
We reached ARK 1600 in good time, so we decided to continue to ARK 2000, only another 15km up. We did reach ARK 2000, after a good 30kms and climbing over 1300 meters. Unfortunately once we approached the top the weather closed in with wet snow and sleet. We both got rather cold rather quickly so a quick decent to lower ground, and a lift down the rest of the mountain with blankets and glucose powder from our coach was greatly appreciated.
My semi-final run went well, producing a good clean time of 98.0 and crossing the line into 3rd place. With 15 more competitors left to run, I expected to drop but was quietly confident it would be good enough to keep me in the top 10 and progress to the final. Surprisingly, no-one else went ahead and I stayed 3rd!
The 2011 European Champs will be contested this week in La Seu D'Urgell, Spain. It's a popular venue on the circuit, one where I have raced a lot. In recent years it was host to the 2009 World Champs, plus a World Cup event last season.