Business as usual...

So... this article is really quite overdue for which I'd like to apologise. I've been meaning to write an article for about the last month but somehow various circumstances which are now lost in the vagaries of space and time have conspired against me and continually prevented me from actually doing it. I guess that's a long winded way of saying I've been procrastinating whilst being one part busy and two parts tired or vice versa. Another reason for the delay has been the lack of anything particularly noteworthy occurring. Bearing in mind that the last extraordinary occurrence we reported was us swimming I think overall no news can certainly be taken as good news :). Sadly the circumstances vaguely alluded to above have also prevented me from editing and uploading the video of said swim so I'm afraid if you're interested in seeing it you'll have to be patient for that too.

Honestly, before I was a full time athlete I thought it must be a close approximation to the life of Riley but time is absolutely flying by at the moment with what seems like barely time to gather your thoughts before bed each night. I think being at the sharp end of the Olympic cycle has spurred us on to work as hard as we can which doesn't leave much spare time in the days.

OK then, so all that said and done what have we been up to?

Since our last post we have been mostly training hard in Lee Valley with our coach Nick Smith. We've been doing a variety of mostly technical training on the WW course, trying our best to master it, which, as it turns out, is quite a big ask on such a difficult course. We've been using Dartfish video analysis software after every session to get the most benefit we can from our water time and have definitely been making progress. The weather has been a bit cold here and there over the last month but it actually hasn't been affecting our training that much. The biggest impact has been on the cycle commute along the canal towpath. When the snow arrived it became pretty good fun on my mountain bike but much less fun for Etienne on his folding commuter bike. Paddling wise we've been kept toasty and warm by our bomber Peak UK gear, we'd wholeheartedly recommend all the warm stuff they make. To sit in the front of a C2 on the coldest days I've been wearing 2xNeoskin Headcase, Winter Topdeck, 3xThermals, Open Palm Mitts + Pogies, Neoskin Shorts and 2xNeoskin Socks. Wearing this amount of kit means I'm pretty much impervious to the weather but also means it takes nearly half an hour to get changed and is quite a challenge to dry it all between sessions.

The first week in February we went on a 3 day training camp to Cardiff International White Water which is the venue for World Cup Race #1 this summer. Cardiff is a cool little facility but to be honest we didn't have very much fun paddling there. Not that we let it get us down too much, it was still nice to have a change of scene. It was a bit strange, the whitewater there looked like it should be reasonably easy from the bank but proved to be uniquely challenging and awkward in execution. We'll need to do some more practice if we are racing the World Cup there, the local Welsh paddlers seemed much more at home on the water than we were.

We've posted some training photos from LV in the gallery and have got some more to post, thanks very much to Mike Taylor and Michael Barnett (MB23 photography) for providing them. I think they capture the weather and how wet this course is pretty well. I've also attached a few photos of the snowy weather, very pretty but a bit inconvenient for training.

With around 8 weeks to go until the Olympic Selection race series it's certainly an exciting time to be a canoe slalom athlete. If you think you'd be interested in watching the selection races tickets are available via the link below.

OK I think that's us pretty much up to date on news, I'll get onto editing that video next.

Cheers Tim

(Posted on the 21st Feb 2012)