Nearly half way!

 

We are pretty much half way through the first of our month long training camps. The group has been pushing hard and it is awesome to see how all of our bodies have adapted to the heavy work load. Our swimming times have been improving steadily and there are very noticeable improvements in the gym.

A huge bonus has been the arrival of our own personal full time physio. Julia Thomas has been a huge help with uncovering the source of all of our little problems as well as providing some soft tissue massage.

It’s time to train, bring on the pain!

The time of the year is upon us again where we need to follow that black line back and forth in the swimming pool. Swimming and gym is now the primary focus for this period of our base training. Paddling sessions are only in the afternoon with two or three runs thrown in during each week.

We are normally down in Port Edward during this phase with national coach Nandor Almasi. Unfortunately South Africa was not able to secure Nandors contract after the Olympics and as a result he is in Hungary at the moment. Most of the top paddlers have pulled together and we have put together a month long training camp running in Durban. It is based at my house just north of Durban where we have a choice of two lagoons, the Umhlanga and the Umdloti to paddle on. We have set up an awesome gym on our veranda and the running trails are ideal. All of the swimming is done in the 50m heated, indoor Kings Park pool. Junior national coach Attila Adrovics will be coming down once or twice a week to lend a helping hand as well as providing vital technique training.

This weekend is the Popes Canoe Centre weekend. The Popes walk is tomorrow morning and about 200 paddlers, mostly novices meet and take a jog down the Dusi valley. The jog is about 20km and runs from 1^st Saddle portage on day 2 of the Dusi route to Umfula store. The run covers pretty much all of the tricky Day 2 rapids section. Paddlers get to take a look at the tricky Confluence section as well as the big three being Gumtree, Thombi and Hippo rapids. On Sunday it is the Pope-Ellis Challenge. The course is from Just below Ibis point and takes the paddlers almost all the way to the Dusi day 2 overnight stop.

I will be involved in the Popes walk on Saturday but will not be racing on Sunday as my body needs to recover before training commences on Monday morning.   

Ithala Challenge

Every year Yann from Matelec organizes two fantastic social weekends away for the Matelec paddlers. One being over the Ithala Challenge weekend and the other over the two day Tugela marathon. Each of the top paddlers gets teamed upped with one of the more social ‘bullie’ paddlers and the Matelec pack takes a leisurely cruise down the river. Both the Ithala and Tugela have some extremely challenging rapids so the use of stable Accords from Popes Canoe Centre makes the races far more enjoyable.

In this years Ithala I had the privilege of paddling with Yann himself while Deon paddled with Gary Campbell and Sven with Brian Kurrs.

The race is paddled through one of the most pristine valleys in the world and is totally inaccessible other than by boat. The water is clean and the rapids are large, tricky and almost non stop for the full 43km. If you have problems with your boat you are told not attempt to walk through the bush and out of the valley because there is nowhere to walk to! Instead you must wait on the river bank until one of the rafts picks you up and takes you to the end.

Yann and I unfortunately holed our boat pretty badly only 4km into the race and spent 45 minutes repairing with resin and fiberglass in the cold and wet conditions. Once on our way again we had the whole river to ourselves but it was not too long before we began to overtake boats with similar problems. I had my longest day of my life in a boat when we came in after 5hrs 41min! Paddling through such amazing scenery along with the adrenalin of the rapids made time fly by and I was shocked when I checked the time on my Garmin at the end of the day!

Vaal River Marathon success

When Shaun Rubenstein and I decided early on in the year that we would be racing the 2 Day Vaal Marathon together we knew that we would be in for an exciting race. I arrived in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning before the race so that we would have enough time to get comfortable in the boat together. Immediately the boat felt smooth and we found a good rhythm. We decided that it would be best for me to drive because Shaun has not been doing much river racing over these past few years while focusing on the Beijing Olympics.

3km into the start of day 1 we all had to portage around a weir. It was here that our major opposition Hank McGregor /Mike Arthur and ourselves broke away from the rest of the field. At the 6km mark Shaun and I broke clear of Hank/Mike and opened up a reasonable size gap.

8km in at Visgat weir there was absolute chaos. Our boat got stuck and the hull got badly damaged on the weir. Shaun had to jump out, pull us free and then jump back in with us loosing valuable time in the process. Hank/Mike had the exact same problem and while they were jammed 3 other boats came past them. On the flats below the weir we had to decide whether to go for it alone into the very strong head wind. We decided to wait for some of the other crews and formed a bunch of 4 boats that could work together into the wind. With 27km of day 1 remaining this proved to be a good decision and Hank/Mike, just off the back of our bunch continued to fight hard with their damaged boat in an attempt to reel us in. After a few more kilometers the strength of the group was too much for them and Hank/Mike eventually ended up dropping a long way back.

At the end of day 1 it was us 1^st, Piers Cruickshank/Michael Mbanjwa 2^nd and on our wave, Gavin Payne/Alex Roberts 3^rd 10sec behind, Jacques Theron/Jonathan Nieman 4^th 30sec behind us.

 

Day 2 was elapsed time format. Theron/Nieman were not able to close the gap so the lead group was down to 3 boats. Half way into the day at Goose bay weir we put in a hard burn, followed by another hard burn by Piers and Banji which resulted in Payne/Roberts dropping off the pace. 5km from the end we managed to open a small gap over Piers/Banji through one of the rapids. We immediately put the hammer down and gave it all we had for the final 20min of the day. Shaun and I crossed the line a minute and a half clear of Piers Cruickshank/Michael Mbanjwa to claim the title. Payne/Roberts did well to hang on to their 3^rd spot while staying ahead of the chasing 2^nd group of boats.

An interesting fact: This is my 6^th Vaal win and each one with a different partner. My first win was in 1998 with Kelby Murray. My other partners were Len Jenkins, Jacques Theron, Martin Dreyer, Sven Bruss and now Shaun Rubenstein.

A link to the vaal marathon results.