Paddling through Central Budapest

On Monday morning Cam and I had to go and fetch our K2 from the top end of the city. The only way for us to get it down to the club that we train at was to paddle it there. As a result we ended up paddling down the Danube through the centre of one of the worlds most famous cities. It was an amazing experience paddling past the Parliment building and under the Chain Bridge as well as past numerous other spectacular sights!

As far as my training goes, I am feeling amazing in the boat at the moment. I can honetly say that I am going the best that I have ever gone. Lets just hope I can even pick up a little more before the World Champs in 3 and a half weeks time!

Back in Budapest with some hard work ahead

 

Getting back to Csepel canoe club in Budapest we did not waste any time getting back into the full swing of things. It was great to have Cam Schoeman my K2 partner for World Chaps here waiting for me when I landed.

This weeks training has been going really well and Cam is at a very high level so is awesome to have as a new training partner. The Hungarian guy Martsy who was with us for the training camps in both Port Edward and Szolnok has also been joining us for every session.

The heat here in Hungary is brilliant for training and every muscle in the body just seems to perform so much better at these higher temperatures.

Every morning we have been fortunate to have watched the paddling events from the Olympics at the Csepel canoe club. There is such a vibe there as everyone packs in front of the TV. Paddling here is almost like rugby back home so there is a huge following, as well as the fact that a few of the paddlers at the games are from the Csepel club. We watched their C2 crew win a bronze today with all the odds stacked against them. Sadly the crew has only been together for a month after Hungarian Olympic hero Gyorgy Kolonics passed away at the club during a training session before the games… His replacement had extremely big shoes to fill but did fantastically. As you can imagine, emotions were running high during their race, a combination of joy, sadness and relief all at once.

Away from the paddling, Hungary had their biggest national holiday of the year this week. Cam and I managed to sneak down between sessions to catch a glimpse of the world famous Red Bull Air Race. After supper we headed outside again to witness the biggest fireworks display I have ever seen in my life!

 

 

Above: Cam about to take in some of the nutrients we prepared for dinner! Mince, mash, egg, chicken, pasta, mixed veg, tomato, peach and water.

 

Our Olympic athletes

All our paddlers at the games have made us extremely proud. Ruby is still a legend and we could see that he gave it his everything. For all of us who have had the honour of training with him, we are the ones who know how fast he really is!

The girls have been awesome, Jen with her K1 final and Mish, Carol, Nix and Jen with there K4 final, brilliant!

South African sprinting is most definately going places, well done guys!

Nic not a Burden and powers us through to 2 wins and a 3rd place in Spain!

Rio Alto Ebro on Sunday 17 August. The Ebro is a fast flowing exciting river with 2 weirs just before the finish. My last race with Nic, this time we made our break when the whole front bunch got snagged on some rocks. A quick clamber over the rocks followed by a hard interval was enough to open up a fair size gap which we held and then opened up before the finish.

Rio Piseurga on Friday 15 August, a 14km river race with good rapids and 5 weirs.

Again with Nic, we made our break from the group about 2km before the finish to win by 30 seconds. A huge honour is that our names will now be added to the statue at the finish along with previous South African winners like the Chalupsky’s, Perrow/Evans, and Conradie/Wilson.

Rio Carrion, a two lap 8km flat water race, Thursday 14 August. This time I teamed up with my training partner Nic Burden. In a heavy fibreglass boat we managed a creditable 3^rd after an extremely close tussle for the line against a Spanish K2 marathon national team boat. The winners of the race were this years Sella Descent champions Martinez and Hernanz.

Some other results:

Villaviciosa, 9km K2 flat water race, Tuesday 12 August. With the 2000e prize for 1^st place not one person was missing from the start of this race. The wind and waves on the course were pretty extreme, conditions suiting myself and Matt Bouman to a T. Immediately off the start line another boat hit our rudder sending us flying up and over the middle of another crew resulting in an early swim. After emptying our boat battled on to finish the race at the back of the field.

Rio Cares Diva, 14km river race. I was seeded 25th for this race but had a good start and managed to make it onto th first group of four boats by the 1st weir. The weir is 1km after the start and is a 3m drop that needs to be taken almost fully sideways. Unfortunately I snagged my nose on something at the bottom damaging it badly. From there to the end it was a slog to the end with a boat full of water to settle for 4th.

 

Nic and I with our trophies.

Riba De Sella International K4

Yesterdays K4 race on the tidal flat water of Riba De Sella was an interesting one. Having only 3 South Africans, made up of myself Matt Bouman and Nic Burden, we needed one more paddler. We managed to hook up a Spanish junior junior to join us although he had just finished his own junior race!

The start was le mans style with 3 of us in the boat and one on the bank with his paddle locked in the starting gates. We had a good start and made it onto the front group. After one lap of two we had broken away with one of the Spanish boats. Towards the end our junior was tiring slightly and we dropped of the wave to finish 2nd. A pretty descent result I thought beating some very strong crews from other countries.

Things however turned slightly sour when our crew was disqualified from the race as a result of having a crew member who had already taken part in a previous race. A strange decision we thought and could not quite see the advantage of having an already exhausted paddler in the boat with us.

Sella, Tha Race

Matt and I had a pretty average seeding for the race, number 29. All the boats are lined up along the river bank from 1 to one thousand and something. It is is mass start and everyones paddles get locked into a gate system.  As the start is called the paddles are released and you run the 20m to your boat, jump in and paddle. With it being a mass start it  is absolute chaos!

We got an ok start and made up some places in the first 200m. The river is really shalolw and pretty narrow so it is fairly tough to overtake. After we settled down a bit we sat iun about 7th place. The Spaniards in front of us were mind blowing with the pace they set and simply pulled further and further ahead…

We ended up paddling the last 7km alone with two Spanish national team boats chasing us down on the final flats towards the finish. We got the 7th place, 3 and a half min off 2nd and 5 and a half off 1st.

An ok result I suppose, but nothing too exciting.

The results don´t seem to be up yet but here is the link to the Sella site

http://www.descensodelsella.com/eng/p_caract.asp

Tomorrow is the K4 in Ribba de Sella. Tuesday K2 flatwater in  Villavisosa, Thursday, Carrion, Friday Rio Pisuerga and finally Saturday, Cares Deva.

Above: Matt and I with our Sella trophies.

Off to Spain Tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning Nic Burden and I will be leaving Budapest to go and race in the Sella Descent in northern Spain. Matt Bouman will be meeting us there and I will be doing the Sella in a K2 with him on 9 Sept.

Will be saying goodbye to our training partners of the past few weeks as they jet off to China for the Olympic Games. We wish them all the best of luck over there and hope that someone can bring us back a medal!

Nic and I hope to do as many as the races that we can on the Spanish circuit. We are hoping to fit in about 7 races in various locations over those 2 weeks.

Below left: Chaos at the start of Sella 2004

 

Above right: Cares Deva, the final race on the circuit 18 August

 

Training in Szolnok, Hungary

For the past month I have been training in Szolnok with Shaun Rubenstein and Nic Burden. Shaun has been preparing for the Olympics so the quality of the sessions have been really high. We have also done numerous sessions with the Aussie guys, including Australias top K1 Olympic contender, Ken Wallace and Slovenias Juppa Renic. Our gruop also contained a some really fast Hungarian u23’s.

The SA ladys K4 also really pushed the pace quite a lot as well as the ladys K2 of Eray and Hartley.

We have been under the excellent guidence of National coach Nandor Almasi, with lots of help from Robbie Hegadus and Australias Jimmy Owen.

After a tough block of training we arrived back in Budapest on Saturday and were back training at Csepel today Monday 4 August.  

Portugal World Cup Gold!

Portugal World Cup Marathon 12 August

18 Nations took part and there were 29 boats entered in the men’s K1 race.

 

The format was the same as at SA champs with 7x 4.3km laps with 7x 130m portages.

 

The wind was blowing really hard making it pretty choppy. They really packed us closely in the starting blocks and there was no way I could take a proper stroke on either side of me when the starter called his ‘go’.

Within my first 5 strokes my paddle had been knocked out of my hands and I was immediately squeezed to the back of the pack.

With the wind and the fairly big waves it was chaos for the 1^st 1.5km to the 1^st turn. Boats were bashing into each other, guys were spinning out and some guys even swam.

Trying to fight my way back through the field I must have been holding my paddles a bit too tightly and my forearms seized up.

On the way to the 1^st portage the leading bunch of 4 hugged the right bank. There were one or two boats trailing off the back of the bunch and two boats that went far left and ended up getting to the portage 1^st. I’d guess I took out about 40sec back in about 10^th.

I had a good run and put in catching up to one of the Spanish boats. The 2 of us worked together and closed the front group of 4 to about 20sec when we turned for the 1.5km down wind section to the 2^nd portage. At the same time we were also caught by another 4 boats though.

 

Just when I was beginning to have nightmares of not ever catching the front bunch again I decided I was going to give it my all in an attempt to catch the front group. Being a big fan of paddling with the wind on my back I went for it and managed to catch the front guys just before the 2^nd portage, but also dragged another 3 boats up there with me making the front group 8.

Again I ran hard but this time putting in 1^st at the start of the 3rd lap. I was back in the race. I immediately did a hard pull and broke the bunch down to 4. Including myself, Spain, Hungary and Czech.

3 more boats caught us into the wind just before the turn. From the turn we headed back with the wind again towards the 3rd portage. With the wind behind me I went hard again getting the group down to 4 boats yet again. The 4^th and 5^th laps followed pretty much the same pattern as that 3rd lap with the same boats catching and then being dropped again.

At the 6^th portage we dropped the Hungarian, so now we were down to fighting it out for the colour of our medals.

At the 7^th and final portage I ran as hard as I could and we dropped the Czech paddler with only 1km of paddling left to the finish.

I pulled the 500m to the final turn with the Spaniard on my wave. The last 500m was into the really strong wind, normally a weakness of mine but this time I decided it wasn’t going to be a hindrance.

I crossed the line 1^st and looked back see the Spanish paddler had dropped back about 10sec, followed by the Czech paddler another minute back.

The pride you feel when you stand on that top step of the podium listening to your country’s National anthem and seeing your flag being hoisted to the top of the centre pole is something difficult to be put into words. What an honor. As a country we are so fortunate to have had so many of our top paddlers experience just that.

 

Here is a link to the results:  http://secretaria.fpcanoagem.pt/wc2008/

 

 

 

Training in Hugary from June 17th

I arrived in Budapest on 17 July to join up with the SA team preparing for the Bejing Olympics. Although my focus is flat water marathons this year and the World Championships in the Chech Repuplic on 21 and 22 September.

I decided that it would be a good place to train in order to work on my speed as my endurance seems to be at a pretty good level already.

I will be based here for all of my training for the next three months and just travelling out of the country for races.

I will be racing in the UK, Portugal, Spain and finally the Czech Republic.  

 

      

The antstott.com site worked pretty well while it was active so I decided to give this new blog a shot. Lets see how things go!