Canoe4Canada

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Farewell to the R.O.C.K. for now...

Greetings all,

Sorry for my tardiness in updating you on what's going on. Gabriel and I are currently just getting ready to say goodbye to Ottawa for now and head down to Welland. We will be staying with my grandmother Ruthie at the one and only Martin Farms. Should be great.

This morning we had a solid workout with the men's kayak group in C-2. While we haven't yet felt like we can easily transition into top speed, we have been able to work through some really nice high travel speeds similar to 1000m race pace. Gab and I are both attempting to make some minor technical changes too, so this brings us out of our comfort zone a bit. Heading into this weekend of the first set of national team trials, I am thinking I will race both of the C-1 distances. I was up in the air a bit, as I don't technically have to compete to secure a spot to Europe, but I think it will be a good warm-up nonetheless. I haven't often had the opportunity to race and focus solely on C-1 during regattas over the past few years, and I am kind of interested to see how it will go.

Anyway, sorry this is short but we are now on the way out the door. More to come soon.

Cheers, and keep it real.

Andrew

Farewell to the R.O.C.K. for now...

Friday, May 1, 2009

Day 2 of Training/Practice Watching

Greetings to all,

Today was my second day in a row with the newfound routine of training early in the morning, and then showering and going back on the water to watch the second practice. Today I joined coach Robert Kuteyko and we took in the men's kayak training session once more, only this time we also enjoyed watching the C-2 of Ian Mortimer and Kyle Jeffery work alongside them.

First things first though, Gab and I were on the water just after seven to work in the C-2 once more. It was our second morning in a row, and was again a very productive practice. The training session involved sets of 3' 1' 3' 1', with one minute rest in between each of the pieces. In total we managed 8 pieces before Gab had to bail to attend his surveying class once again. The water was gorgeous again, nice and flat without a soul out there while we were training. We made the best of the conditions and really concentrated on pushing the pace through the three minute pieces, stroking around 50 per minute, and focusing on leg motion, reach, connected power and the glide of the boat... so pretty much everything. We got off the water very satisfied with the workload and the effort.

After a quick shower I got back on the water for another enjoyable session with Robert. The practice we watched was ten times 100m at 100%, alternating running and dead starts. I did my best to capture some pretty good video clips, and kept a running tally on the total wins. Andrew Willows pulled out the majority with 6, followed by Rhys Hill and Angus Mortimer who each tallied 2 a piece. However, controversy arose as a disgruntled Corey "Hunted" Hamilton insisted one of the pieces was wrongly awarded and he was in fact victorious. Below you can be the judge of the "supposed" controversy... I remain as always a completely unbiased and objective source of information... right. Anyway, that's about it for now, special mention to Rob Samulak for his stunning performance captured below sans shirt. Big time ups.