Over the last few months I’ve been training pretty regularly, paddling three or four times a week on top of daily circuit and cardio training. My core training has been twice weekly coached sessions at Lee Valley. I’ve found it really useful to have the feedback and focus that comes from working with a coach. [...]
Archives for motivation
The slalom season begins
Most of my recent paddling has been in a slalom boat, training at Lee Valley. GB Canoeing has started twice weekly training sessions as part of its Olympic Legacy programme, and although this is targeted at young paddlers I’ve been able to join in. As Paul Ratcliffe said, it’s about creating a healthy slalom ecosystem [...]
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Wet weekend in Dartmoor and the art of decisions
My paddling highlight so far for 2013 has been a wet and cold January weekend in Dartmoor. Paddling with a good crew, we managed three excellent rivers with good water levels. First up was the Upper Plym, a beautiful steep Grade 4 / 5 run that the guidebook calls the ‘jewel in the crown’ of [...]
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Destination Ivrea – World Masters Games
2013 is shaping up to be a big year for me. For a start I turn 50 this month and that feels like a significant milestone. It’s also a year in which the quadrennial World Master Games takes place, and there’s a slalom event at Ivrea in early August. http://www.torino2013wmg.org I decided a couple of [...]
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Parenting Athletes
My last post about paddling parents provoked a great response. In particular from Tim Ward, who emailed me about his experience as the parent of a competitive paddler – Alan Ward, who was junior World Champion in freestyle. I thought it was worth putting Tim’s note up here because it contains some real nuggets based [...]
Categorized in kayaking, motivation
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Learning to be a paddling parent
One of the themes of the London 2012 Games was ‘inspire a generation’. In my case it certainly worked. Seeing the Olympic slalom competition first hand was a real buzz and for the first time my girls are asking ‘when can we go kayaking again?’ I’m really pleased about this, because for the last [...]
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Is full-time paddling your dream job?
I never like to miss a chance to go paddling, even when I’m on a family holiday, so I went sea-kayaking for a morning along Italy’s beautiful Amalfi coast. It was a relaxed trip, guided by Mariella Di Nocera who runs Positano Kayaks. We headed south-east from Positano, past the harbor and along the steep [...]
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Game-over?
The selection trials for the British, US, and Czech Olympic teams all took place this weekend. I’ve been down to Lea Valley to watch the second and third day of racing for GB selection– although it was essentially game-over after the second race. Three wins in a row for Dave Florence (C1), Rich Hounslow (K1) [...]
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