First Sprint Races of the season

Saturday was the first leg of the KZN Provincial Sprint Championships held at Nagle Dam. Only the 1000m events were raced on this day. Cam Schoeman took the K1 title in a time of 3min 36sec, followed closely by myself and then Michael Arthur. 4th, 5th and 6th in the final went to Len Jenkins, Nic Burden and Nick Stubbs.
In the K2 final Mike Arthur and I won the race in 3min 17sec. The young crew of Schoeman and Waterworth were not at all far off the pace in 2nd with Stubbs and Burden taking 3rd.

Port Edward- some more

Training here in Port Edward for these past 4 weeks has really gone well. Being away from home with no distractions allows you to focus on nothing other than your training. I really enjoyed being back in the K2 with Shaun Ruby again. We had some awesome sessions together and the boat is feeling remarkably comfortable. All the other South Africans left the camp at the end of last week. It is just Bridgette Hartley and I that decided to stay on with the Hungarian group from the club MTK. The time spent with Nandor coaching us again has just as always been tough but enjoyable. Next week I will more than likely go back onto Marcus’s program. I think his new, fresh ideas along with Nandor’s tried and tested methods will work brilliantly together.

Umkomaas Marathon

The Umkomaas river marathon must surely be one of the world’s craziest paddling races. The rapids normally used for rafting are skillfully tackled in standard fiberglass racing boats.
This year’s race was expected to be paddled at an extremely high river level but to my delight the water dropped to an almost manageable level.
Half an hour into day 1 three boats had broken clear of the rest of the field. The combinations were Biggs/Arthur, McGregor/Van der Walt, Deon Bruss and I. As always the river dished out more than enough wake up calls along the way with its massive rapids. Biggs/Arthur eventually dropped off the pace and the cat and mouse games between the remaining 2 leading boats continued all the way to the end of day 1.

Day 2 started at Hella Hella just above the notorious Number 1-8 rapids. We headed off in elapsed time neck and neck with McGregor/Van der Walt. Deon and I entered the first of the monster rapids in the lead. One of the massive waves near the bottom of the rapid flipped us over and we hung in limbo for a moment before we managed to somehow pull ourselves upright again. In the process the nose of our boat ended up facing upstream and we lost valuable time trying to correct the error. The McGregor crew pushed hard after that in order to make us work hard to catch them. Things seemed to almost to be in control again when we unfortunately found ourselves facing upstream once again just after rapid Number 4…
Young Grant Van der Walt was driving his boat faultlessly and with McGregor in the back seat powering away we were sadly unable to reel them in again. We had to settle for 2nd place behind the deserved winners of the race while Biggs/Arthur took 3rd spot.
Well done to Hank and Grant, this was the first time that Deon and I had ever been beaten as a combination after our Fish River marathon as well as our 4 Umkomaas Marathon victories.

Training Camp- Port Edward

From the Monday after Drak Challenge we started our first really hard training camp for the year. Once again the venue is the Pont in Port Edward on the Kwa-Zulu-Natal south coast. This is one of the best pieces of water in the country for training as well as being really beautiful. The Umtumvuna river gorge is spectacular with its towering cliffs and thick natural bush forests. Marcus has put together a great training programme and the training group is responding well. Julia Thomas has joined us once more as the official team physio and is never afraid to inflict some serious pain on the physio bed. Our previous national coach Nandor Almasi is also back out here but this time with a group of 15 Hungarian athletes. Nandor has not been neglecting his old athletes at all and has been present on the speed boat at most of our training sessions. Stu Hastings arrived from the UK yesterday and has also joined the group. I was fortunate to do some training with Stu over in the UK last year at Royal Canoe Club and am sure that he will assist in pushing the intensity of the sessions up another notch or two.