And so it begins….

Today was supposed to be the first day back into hard training, with Karl, Reni, Tim and I all due out on the water, but sadly only Tim and I managed to make session 1.

We waited as long as we could, so see if they’d just slept in, but eventually had to head out on the water. As time was now a tad short, we opted for the short time trial course, working on paddling as hard as possible with good technique.

The river was glorious – the morning chill was still in the air and the clouds hadn’t quite burnt off, so it made for perfect paddling conditions, with us finishing the session in bright warm sunshine.

All in all – a great start to the week and feeling particularly good after a real beasting of a session. If I get time this evening I may sneak in a cheeky gym session too… Roll on tomorrow’s session!

Back to normal

Last night we took advantage of the sunshine and took to the water after work. As both Karl and I have been away from the usual 5-6 paddling sessions a week, the plan was to break ourselves back in gently, so no plan as such had been set.

As we got onto the water, the reach was heaving: The centre were out, the club were out and the local rowing club were out so we retreated to the marina which we had all to ourselves.

As we had nice still water and a pre-marked out 200m course, it made sense to do some 200m efforts and we began, working at the maximum effort possible with good technique. 8 efforts later and we were hanging out the boats with exhaustion, both from paddling and the heat, but it felt good to be back doing hard sessions again. So much for the easy start!

Next week we’ll be back to breaking ourselves – more on that to follow

A mild re-entry into paddling

Had an early night last night as I was completely burnt out on painkillers and antibiotics, so woke up at 5am unable to go back to sleep!

 

So – decided to head into work and had a gentle refresher on the paddling machine to remind my body what paddling is. Now a tad more chilled and sat at work ready for the day ahead.

Back to training hard next week hopefully!

Back in the land of the living

Last week was hectic – full week at work, then off to sunny Nottingham for the May sprint regatta.

 

I was due to race 200m and 500m C1, so training during the week was purely on a maintenance phase, working on technique to give me enough oomph to go full out at the weekend. However all the training and preparation were to no avail, as I made a schoolboy error…. As I got my boat out, added the weights, velcro’d in my knee block I suddenly realised there was something missing…. Apparently it’s customary to take a paddle to these events. You think I’d know that really wouldn’t you?

 

I could have made up any number of excuses, but the simple reality is, I’m a muppet!

 

Conditions were perfect too.

 

Back to reality this week with little training so far, as I have a root canal operation ongoing.  I am currently drugged up to the eyeballs, so probably best avoiding the tippy boat for the moment. Hopefully all will be back to normal next week, where with any luck I’ll be less grumpy and a tad more lucid than I currently feel.

 

Back to the routine

The recent rains have made the Thames very interesting, so the last couple of sessions have been indoors on the paddling machines.

This morning we couldn’t decide what session to do, so left it in the hands of fate and had a Gaga workout – put lady gaga on the generic music system of your choice, put it on random selection and start paddling. Paddle for one song, rest for the next. Repeat for 1hr, ideally paddling in time to the music if possible.

 

This can be a nice easy 2-3 mins or a gruelling 7 mins of agony, depending on length of songs and tempo, and you never know what is coming next – it’s nice for a bit of variety when you get bored..

 

 

Life returns to normal

Provided normal = as bloody hectic as ever….

 

With all the hoo-hah of DW, I haven’t had much chance to put finger to keyboard for some time, so apologies all. Working all of the Easter weekend, I hit the ground running the following week in preparation for the Nottingham Sprint regatta and national championships. This event was intense as it was also the selection event for the olympic hopefuls so the racing was exceptional to watch. To add to the drama, the weatehr up there was, as is tradition for the first regatta, utterly foul with rain and an evil freezing cross/tail wind.

Finally back to my desk and normality has almost returned, apart from the fact just to complicate things these past 2 weeks, we’ve sold our house and bought another, so also have all the fun of the numerous items of paperwork, mortgages, forms and various checks to sort out. Just what I need at this time of year!

 

So – not much paddling this week – planning on getting back on the water in the morning, and back in the gym from next week.

For a paddling blog there’s not much talk of paddling this week….

Not a huge amount of news for you this week I’m afraid – Paddling is going well, training is hard and all is good.

Very pleased not to be doing DW this year, as the conditions are somewhat dire – the Thames is depressingly low, barely moving at a staggeringly low 9.86 cubic metres per second at Maidenhead. With all the extraction that takes place further down, there will be zero assistance to paddlers on the course when they hit the river. Odds are – they may in fact slow down as the Kennet may have more flow at present….

Also with Marcin racing this year, who is a seasoned paddlers with a lot of experience in C1, it would kind of overshadow my achievement, as looking at his Waterside D time – he is bloody fast! Oh well – if the C1 title is to be taken by him, maybe I’ll just up the game next year and go straight for the c2 non-stop instead….

 

Anyway – back to the training for this year, Wednesday was 5k day and I managed to further improve my running times on the treadmill, knocking a surprising 52 seconds off my previous PB to give me a final time of 26:53.  Very happy with that in general, but my body still hasn’t forgiven me….