Here comes the Sun

G'day from Penrith, Australia! We're very excited to be back in the 'riff' after a 2 year absence. Penrith is without doubt the premier winter training venue for canoe slalom a fact attested to by the large presence of international paddlers who are here at the moment. It's popularity does have a small downside though, the training slots are very busy at the moment. This morning there were 3 back-to-back training slots which, with 30 athletes per slot, means there were 90 athletes training and on top of that there were some who would have liked to paddle but hadn't booked in time. Busy times indeed but despite this it's still a high quality training environment and we're very happy to be here.

Before we were given the all clear to travel down here I had to have a final x-ray at the hospital to check that my collarbone was still healing as expected. Happily as you can see on the x-ray image below the bone is mostly filled in now and the stainless steel plate and screws are all still straight. Lots of people have asked if I went beep going through security for the plane and the answer is no so if you would like to smuggle some metal it would appear that screwing it onto you collarbone is an effective but inconvenient option.

Before leaving Nottingham we did two weeks of pretty chilly training building up the intensity and difficulty of the paddling we were doing from totally flat water to paddling the whitewater course but sticking to easy sections and basic courses. In amongst the training we did a few interesting things as well. One cold morning we did a photo-shoot for Science in Sport who are sponsoring the GB team with sports nutrition products (yum yum :)), luckily most of the photos were in the gym, you can see the results below. We were also nominated in the Team of the Year category at the Nottinghamshire County Council Sports Review of 2009. It was a fun event and despite not winning ourselves we were very happy to see the WK1 Team win the team category for being World and European Champions, hard to compete with that. We also attended a sports awards night in Broxbourne which was fun. We attended as guests of honour representing the GB team, it was a good night and our speech at the end wasn't as disastrous as it might have been.

Just before we left we popped into the Peak UK factory in Nottingham. Despite being very busy organising the 2010 kit collection they found time to make us some new tops. We've got some special prototype Wifebeater Topdecks for training in the heat out here. We've worn them nearly every session so far and they're working really well, Thanks very much Pete!

Next up we've got 6 weeks of training here which is going to involve a gradual build up of the intensity, difficulty and volume of paddling we'll be doing. Should be a lot of fun especially as ex-GB team racer Stu Mac works at the stadium here now and is going to be making changes to the course for the next week. We'll be voting for a return to the green pyramid main wave!

That's all for now, Cheers Tim

(Posted on the 24th Feb 2010)