If you think laying in bed an extra 5 minutes is going to make you less tired…you’re going to have a bad time!!!
Once again our training weekend was set for North Wales. Spirits were high as were the water levels! But so was the strength of the wind. We were minus our coach for this weekend but he had done his home work and left us with a gruelling weekend plan to follow. Session one was a flat water session on Bala Lake doing sustained speed sprints. It was really hard to sustain anything with the wind that we were having to battle against, but we are ‘in it to win it’ so we soldiered on! After about an hour morale was pretty low when we realised we wern’t even half way through the session, but at least we were all still dry thanks to our Palm cags and dry trousers!! With an almighty roar from Suzie of “I am NOT TIRED” we put our heads down and finished what we had started! Then we quickly made a run for a lovely warm café in Bala for a cuppa, chat and re-coup.
Session 2 was spent on The Mighty Tryweryn practising our slalom skills. If only sometimes the water could flow a bit slower…and annoying rocks weren’t always in the way…
Most people might go home after a full day rafting like that, put their feet up, have a well earned cup of tea and watch Antiques Roadshow or re-runs of The Good Life. Not us. Nerys was ready to Body-Rock us with half an hour of pain with a Capital P! We set up in Debs living room and did a pretty immense core/plyometric workout which had the bonus effect of giving the floor a good polish too! I’m not sure what was harder, a day full of rafting or that evening session.
We didnt' think it was appropriate to show you a photo of us looking sweaty in Nezza's workout so have one of us doing handstands instead!
Sunday brought us much nicer weather and a day spent in Llangollen. We once again worked ourselves hard in the morning using the canal as our flat water venue this time doing endurance style sets, then we moved onto the Dee in the afternoon running down from Chainbridge to Town Falls for some more endurance based training. It was fab running the river with water in it and was great preparation for the European Championships in August – our next major competition!
Our formations for the Europeans are:
Sprint: Front – Deb, Rosie
Middle – Suzie, Alli
Back – Bryony, Nerys
Slalom: Front – Deb, Rosie
Middle – Fran, Alli
Back – Bryony, Nerys
Endurance: Front – Deb, Rosie
Middle – Fran, Suzie
Back – Bryony, Nerys
So watch out for us and cheer us on!!
We all trailed off home on Sunday sad for another weekend to be over, but Fran and Suzie, being gluttens for punishment, couldn’t wait to get out again. So two days later they were on the Menai Straights this time in Sea Kayaks doing sprints once again…maybe they should hook us up to the mains power supply.
Words by Fran and the girls,
Photos by Coolpics Photography, Alli McIntosh, Naomi James, Sea Kayaking Anglesey
