Winter seems to be dragging on here in Britain, but I’ve been able to paddle and train regularly and now the first Premier slalom race is a little over a month away. I’ve focused on three key areas over the winter, and as always there’s still plenty for me to learn about this sport despite [...]
Effort vs Age
I’ve become increasingly aware of two countervailing forces in my paddling life. On one side is the training effort that leads to improvement, on the other is the decline brought about by increasing age. This season it feels like a pretty even match between the two! I raced in 10 slaloms over my first full [...]
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“You don’t stop paddling because you get old, you get old because you stop paddling”
The 2013 slalom season 2013 has been an amazing slalom season. I’ve achieved much of what I set out to do and really enjoyed myself along the way. My first slalom career lasted from 1978 to 1990, so I feel immensely appreciative that I’m able to have a second crack at this brilliant sport. Watching [...]
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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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Slalom training then and now
I went for a slalom session at Harefield west of London today, meeting up with Craig Ayres.It was the first time I’d paddled with Craig for about six weeks, and it was good to be on the water with him again.We did a couple of courses between 30 and 40 seconds long, with about 8 [...]
3 decades on
I paddled my first slalom session at the new Lea Valley Whitewater Centre last weekend. It was only my second time on the course, and a slalom K1 was a bit more challenging than paddling my creek boat during the assessment session the weekend before.After I’d been paddling for about an hour, Dave Florence got [...]
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