Diary of a middle aged kayaker

Ivrea – European Masters Games Slalom

The European Masters Games has been my main competitive focus since the World Masters Games in Auckland in 2017. Ivrea Canoa Club hosted a friendly yet professionally run slalom, welcoming over 70 competitors from across Europe, the US and Australia. I was delighted to come away with two gold medals, individually in the K1 55+ [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Augsburg!

I first became aware of the Augsburg slalom course watching the 1972 Olympics on TV, but this was before I’d ever thought of getting in a kayak. A few years later it made a much bigger impression, when I watched a 16 mm film about the 1975 (?) International slalom. By that time, I was [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

World Masters Games, Auckland 2017; Dropping the weight of expectations.

The WMG have been my training focus for the last couple of years, and I’ve put in plenty of time and effort to prepare. It was a treat to be on the start line with world class paddlers like Peter Micheler, Vincent Fondeviole and Donald Johnstone. Off-water, the camaraderie of the Masters Games made it [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Look through the gate

I was recently tackling short gate sequences on the two big drops at Lee Valley. These ‘feature moves’ are easy to get wrong, but they feel fantastic when you nail them, and require a precise combination of boat speed, angle and position.  Typically this involves coming down one side of the drop and surfing across [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

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 [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Re-learning old lessons

One of the curious things about human nature is that people (and I mean me) can be a bit slow to learn, despite being taught the same lesson time and time again. One of the lessons I keep having concerns the expectation trap. This is the way that expectations, even positive, seem to interfere with [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

We stand on the shoulders of giants

I was working with a young slalom paddler the other day and I mentioned the name Bill Endicott. “Bill who?” he replied. I was momentarily shocked, but then it dawned on me that there must be a whole generation of paddlers who aren’t familiar with Bill’s massive contribution to the sport. Just as Isaac Newton [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

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 [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

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 [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Is it worth doing dry land training for kayaking?

I’ve just spent two and a half weeks on holiday with my family, relaxing in the sun in Sardinia. This was the longest time I’ve spent off the water for well over a year, and a stark contrast to the previous few months when I was able to put in a solid training block that [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Bad Behavior has blocked 77 access attempts in the last 7 days.