Do you want a chance to race against the GB Women? Read on and you can find out how – and get some training tips in the process…

Our most recent training weekend was in Nottingham once again, clearly we can’t get enough of the smell of sewerage at 8 o’clock in the morning, or the suspicious brown things floating next to our raft! This weekend we were lucky enough to have all 8 of the squad present this time as we were finalising positions for the team going to New Zealand, and, as usual, Coach Dave had a hard weekend lined up for us (but an even harder task of managing 8 ladies in 6 positions all weekend!).

Saturday started early with an endurance set lasting about 3 hours! If you were one of the ‘lucky’ 2 people not in a paddling seat for a rep. then you either had to do the plank, sit-ups or dips in the middle of the raft until it was your turn to swap.

Saturday afternoon had us doing Sprint and H2H practice. We set up 2 boats of 4 Ladies and raced each other across the lake. Amusingly as soon as we all realised there was an element of competition we were fighting tooth and nail, its lucky we didn’t snap any paddles because it got pretty vicious!! Amazingly no matter which pairing was in which boat we were always neck and neck. Fantastic!!

Usually a 2 session day is where we leave it but Dave had organised us a Slalom session as well. So we protein-shook it up and got on the white water and fought to make our gates! ‘NO TOUCHES’ were our instructions, but since we were all moving around the raft to sit in different positions, this wasn’t always achieved and it made for some amusing lines! That evening we all got to hang out with Olympic Gold medalist Etienne Stott ( it helps that he is the boyfriend of one of Georgie our very own WAG on the squad) and Rosie just couldn’t help herself!

Although Saturday was a three session day, Sunday was the day of pain! We did our 6 monthly fitness tests to see how our individual training is paying off. Susie and Rosie won the bleep test (that’s right we did a bleep test – flash backs of Secondary School anyone?), Fran won the Push Ups just beating Nezza by one push up to 55 in a row! Deb won the sit and reach, and we all won the satisfaction of having improved on pretty much everything we had done 6 months previously (except I’m pretty sure someone’s arms were shorter than the time before – Bizarre!).

 

 

So with all that over we were free to start getting ready for our next race which is in Llandysul in November. Its an Open event so if you can get a team of 6 together check out the website and enter.http://www.britishraftteam.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45:llandysul-raft-race-2012&catid=4:british-raft-race-series&Itemid=7 . Not only will you get to battle it out against Team GB , it is also going to be brilliant fun with lots of races, prizes and of course the PARRRRTTTTTYYYYY!! Although obviously none of us will be drinking because it isn’t allowed in our diet plan (hah yeah right!!).

See you there!!!!

Words Fran Kohn, Photos Deb and Alli.