It just keeps getting better and better…and more and more painful!

We started off this most recent training weekend down a member or two because of illness and last minute work commitments BUT NOW WITH AN OFFICIAL COACH!!! We are so lucky and pleased to announce that Dave Brown, Coach Extraordinaire, has agreed to come on board with us.

 The North Wales Massive were hosting this training weekend so we headed to Bala Lake for our morning flat water training session  and  the punishing torture that Coach Dave was about to inflict upon us. 7 Sets of 6x100m with 5 people paddling whilst the 6^th person had do press-ups, or sit-ups, or the plank in the middle of the raft until the next 100m mark when we could change. In a sick way we loved it!

On to session number two up at Canolfan Tryweryn, a more ‘sedate’ slalom session with us aiming for certain gates and avoiding kayakers at the same time! No planks or sit-ups to do here, but every time we hit the gates Dave made us carry the raft arms-straight above our heads for 10seconds per gate!! We stopped hitting gates pretty quickly.

 

Most might think that was to have been the end of our day…but Coach Dave had other plans. We went to a village hall in the middle of the Welsh mountains and did the Canadian Abs test (Susie ‘The -Wall’ Jackson did 152 sit-ups in a row!), then a 5minute step-up test (that Nerys ‘BodyRockTV’ Blue insisted on doing in double time!), then a press ups test, and to finish,  flexibility tests (Rosie was delighted to finally quantify the effects of 4years of yoga practise); yoga really does improve strength and reduce your risk of injury! At one point Coach Dave said ‘I had planned to do the bleep test with you tonight but I won’t because I don’t want to break you’…too late, we were already broken, but rolling around on the floor laughing as well, so it wasn’t all torture.

A 5:30am wake up was required the following day as we only had Dave for the morning before he was running up to Scotland (and probably away from us). We thought the day before had been gruelling…we hadn’t seen anything yet! Dave got us to do an hour of pyramid sprints with minimal rests, but we gave it our all, our minds set on the podium in Czech Republic in 3 months time. But it’s not all work and no fun because our reward for such immense effort was to head to the Siabod café for a full Welsh breakfast (shame it wasn’t fried in coconut oil though).

The rest of the day was much more chilled out doing some endurance paced training, and we were off the water at 1pm and driving home by 2. Pretty good work for sure, but then we were all practically on our knees. Afternoon naps were the order of the day next and trying to put off the onset of the inevitable stiffness to come. Gutted for the girlies who had a long drive home!

Words by Fran Kohn and the Girls.

Photos thanks to Gaele at www.coolpicsphotography.co.uk and the girls.