A few days of training at HPP

Due to a really long period of exams followed by a family holiday in the US, I've barely been able to get out kayaking for the last couple of months. Whilst in America, I decided to use the relaxed nature of the holiday to my advantage and get in good shape to allow me to train all day effectively when I got back to the UK. As I didn't have any equipment of access to a gym, I spent a lot of time running to increase my stamina and allow me to train for longer.

All of this seemed to pay off when I finally got the opportunity to go to HPP. Last weekend was GB Team Training with Dennis Newton and Chris Brain. Unfortunately I could only make the Sunday training, but this wasn't too bad as I was able to camp at the course until Tuesday, giving me three days of paddling anyway.

Sunday was a good opportunity for me to brush off some of the cobwebs and get myself up to speed. For once, it was actually hot at HPP, so I was able to wear my Sandiline GB Shorty Cagdeck, which is really light and comfortable! Throughout the day, most of my moves were working well but I was still struggling with the consistency of my lunar orbits and tricky whus. At this point I was just happy to be on the water again, but I knew from my performance that day that I had a lot of work to do before European Championships in order to finish in the top 3, as is my goal.

Monday was a full day of training for myself and Emma Witherford without any coaching. I had sessions focused on lunar orbits and tricky whus, as well as left mcnasties, which were definitely a bit rusty. After analyzing some of the footage and realizing that my body wasn’t looking forwards and up enough, I made significant improvement to my mcnasties, but I was still a bit stuck on my lunars and trickys.

On Tuesday, Dennis Newton had arranged to come to HPP for the day to coach athletes on his ASP program. Both Emma and I are on this, so we got most of the day with Den giving us advice and coaching. In the first session, I worked on my lunars and trickys with Den and made lots of progress and managing to hit these moves fairly frequently. I really felt the difference of having a great coach on hand here; I made more progress here than I had done the whole of the previous day! Throughout the day, I also worked on getting my Mcnasties bigger, and eventually clean. In the evening, Nicki Beeby also came to the course after work, so the four of us had a session working on waves moves half way down the course on the wave above troll hole.

Next week, I’m heading back up to HPP for a Kayakojacko burners training week, followed by team training then a few days free training. After this I’m off to Slovenia then Slovakia for European Championships.