The GB Women’s path to the Worlds Part 1: Champions Are Made In The Winter

Over the coming 11 months we are going to be training hard, rafting harder and eating as much protein as is humanly possible! All to get to the World Championships in New Zealand and hopefully glory on the podium. We are going to share this journey with you and tell you, bit by bit, a little more about us, who we are and why we love this great sport so much.

January Training:

On a weekend forecast for really bad snow, wind and generally rubbish winter weather, we were all a little hesitant to make the journey to Cardiff, but with Coach Dave’s words echoing in our ears “Champions are made in the winter” we took some “man-up juice” and went for it.

Our first session on Saturday was an endurance session; how many laps we could do of the course in 90mins!

The great guys at Cardiff are always really welcoming and the boaters always let us pass (probably scared of getting run over!) and the warm showers at the end certainly make it all that bit easier to get going.

 

Session number two was a whole different story. The wind had picked up, as had the rain. This time we were completing pyramids of 100m lengths, attempting to work on technique, but with the wind making it 10 times harder it became a will power session. We all felt battered and pretty miserable, but it was character building and will only help us when it comes to going the distance in the endurance event.

Paddling against the wind.

Day two was a new, bright and windless day, with our first session in the morning working in our pairings on power balance and technique (without the wind YIPPEE) and secondly a repeat of day one: session one in the afternoon, aiming to beat our lap number from the previous day!! But the glamorous twist to this day was that we had our very own photographer come down from Sport Wales Magazine! Its hard to have a good camera face though when you are gurning through the effort!

 

Our next training weekend is up in “the North” (of Wales) so bring it on Bala! During the month we will be doing as much personal training as we can and the girls who live in North Wales will be lucky enough to be able to get out on a raft together during the week come rain, shine or more likely snow.

’til next time!

Words by Fran Kohn

Photos by the Girls.