GBR Ladies Rafting – Training Session Mark 3 – What’s in the Box?

There’s nothing quite like getting a big box and not knowing what’s going to be inside…

However, several days after receiving the box from Palm, and the day before we were all to meet in North Wales for Training Bryony was struck down with a bad case of food poisoning… disastrously spelling an uneven number of paddlers for the highly sensitive raft! Luckily, being true professionals and driven by the excitement of what might be in the box for us we soldiered on regardless.

Needless to say it wasn’t long before we ripped open the box, to reveal some gorgeous amazing, warm, dry and sexy Amaris dry pants !

Being decked out in new gear gave us all a chance to get up close to that lush XP150ª 3-layer fabric during the warm up…yummmmm Plus there were rumours that over the next couple of week there may be another delivery!! Very Exciting!

On day one we worked on the Tryweryn making eddies, practicing our timing, using slalom poles and, for the newer members, learning the best lines for a raft. Poor Susie and her new Amaris Pants got to know the drop under Miss Davies pretty intimately as she fell out a couple of times, although she was heroically rescued by the team. She obviously did it on purpose so that we can get practice at rescue scenarios should it happen whilst racing…

On day two we weren’t so lucky with the Tryweryn release so headed instead to the Menai straights for some flat water drilling. With it being spring tides we were strongly warned by some firemen not to park our cars on the jetty unless we wanted to have them floating away on our return! And they were right – don’t park in a tidal car park!

In the morning we worked on sprint starts and sprint pacing setting ourselves pyramids of distance – (we all hurt at the end of those sessions!). In the afternoon we managed to get the tides completely wrong so paddled against the flow to Britania Bridge then against the flow back to Menai Bridge as well! What a good workout it was though. We were all still smiling

All in all a productive weekend.

Ciao till next time!

From Fran and the Girls