Diary of a middle aged kayaker

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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2014 Slalom season over – winter training and some proper rivers

The 2014 slalom season is over. I had two goals, first of all to gain promotion to Premier Division (done) and second to race well and achieve my best result at the British Open. So how did I get on? If I look at the results of the British Open I should be content; after [...]

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Chasing a percentage?

I’ve now raced in 4 Premier division slaloms since gaining promotion in the summer, with my final race, the British Open, coming up in a couple of weeks. I’m still getting to grips with the challenges of Premier and my results have been between 36th  – 42nd .   Better than last place, but not setting [...]

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Slalom update – process or outcome?

I wrote about the challenge of goal setting in my last blog post. Having a clear outcome goal increases motivation, but can also be tricky because outcome goals are uncontrollable and take our focus into the future, and being future focused during a competition tends to increase anxiety. This is a very personal challenge for [...]

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When goals get in the way

I’ve long been fascinated by the way goals can help or hinder performance, right from my early days of competition.  Having a clear objective ‘should’ be a good thing, but it seems to me that this isn’t always the case.  It takes a bit of care to choose the right goals. Over my winter slalom [...]

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Ivrea World Masters Games

I’ve written a descriptive report of the Masters Games for Sportscene (http://www.sportscene.tv/whitewater/canoe-slalom/news/canoe-slalom-at-the-torino-world-masters-games) so now I’m taking a much more personal perspective, in keeping with the ethos of Diary of a Middle Aged Kayaker. “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” ― Salvador Dali I came across this quote at a Dali art [...]

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Final preparations

I’m now in my final few days of training to complete my preparations for the slalom at the World Masters Games.  The WMG takes place in Ivrea on 7 August, and it’s been the focus of my training for the last 15 months. When I first wrote about the WMG back in December, I said [...]

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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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