Last week was a great week of training here in Ottawa, with almost the entire National Canoe Team here for a short camp. The women's kayakers also had their camp here, which means more fast people to train with, and friends to have BBQs with. It also means my dad was here for the week, so I could get some coaching from him, which is always nice with a big race coming up. My sister Tessa, and Delaire also came up for the week, to train here while looking for apartments for next year. It was nice to have them around, even if the bathroom became a lot harder to get into all week.The camp went really well for me, and I think for everyone on our team. It was really fun getting out in a massive C1 group again, with 14 fast guys lining up against each other. It got really competitive out there, especially around the corners, and I was really able to push myself hard. It isn't often we get that big of a group training that hard together, other than sometimes in Florida. It was a great feeling knowing that we were all working together to train hard even though we all have to race each other next weekend. With all the intense workouts we were doing, I made sure to have equally intense rest and recovery this week. I took some extra practices off, knowing that I needed to recover and that an easy paddle or a crappy practice was not what I needed this week. Sometimes you need to go out there and hammer even you are tired or sore or not feeling it, but this close to a big race, rest is just as important as training. The extra rest also meant I could really push myself closer to race intensity when I was on the water. After racing in Europe, I realized that I needed more practice at those really high intensities, and I think I accomplished that this week, without over doing it and getting tired. My best workout came near the end of the week, on Friday morning. We just did a simple workout, some 3, 2 and 1 minute pieces, but it turned into a really hard, solid session. I pushed it from the start and challenged myself each piece, with the help of some very speedy training partners of course. We finished off the camp with a relay race Saturday morning, much to our coach Tamas' delight. There were two C1's and two C2's on each team, and we
went back and forth on the course, first for 500m, and then 300m. It was a back and forth race, but I was able to hunt down Klev in C1 in the anchor leg of the first one, and hold of Gab and Aruss in C2 in the second one to give my team the double victory.Off the water, like I said I've been resting and recovering well. Our physio Paul has been helping a lot with the recovery part, making sure I don't fall apart after hard workouts. His clinic is just down the road, and the river, from our house. It is called Riverside Physiotherapy, and we also live on the river, so I decided to take advantage of that fact. I was stuck without a car or a ride, so I grabbed my boat and paddled to physio. I brought my bike lock and locked my boat on the side of the river, and walked up to his clinic with my paddle, ready to be treated. It was fun to actually use my boat for transportation, rather than just paddling up and down the river for fitness.
We also had a nice BBQ with our whole team, and took out anyone who wanted to out behind Kyle's motorboat. Almost everyone went out for a ski or wakeskate, and the smiles on peoples faces when they got up for the first time was really awesome to see, and put everyone there in a really good mood. There was a lot of hunched over, clinging on for dear life kind of skiing, but there was also lots of laughter and waving to the shore, as well as numerous thumbs up and fist pumps. After a relaxing afternoon in the water, we cooked up our meat and had a great dinner, with shish kebobs, steaks, ribs, shrimp and more. I don't remember anything other than meat being served, but that's what BBQs are all about right?
Yesterday Gab and I went to the Museum of Civilization to check out the Mythical Beasts exhibit. It was really awesome. I was like a little kid I was so excited to go, as I've been pretty obsessed with dragons and the like since I was young. It wasn't a huge exhibit, and there were no live creatures, but it was nonetheless very awesome, and set my imagination racing into the world of myth and legend. While I was checking out dragons at the museum, there were thousands of people on Mooney's Bay checking out Dragon boating, as the Ottawa festival is on this weekend. It's a huge event, and a lot of fun to race in, but I opted out because of our upcoming Trials, despite some heavy recruitment from Scott Seaby, whose crew has won the last 8 years or something like that. I'm pretty sure they'll be ok without me, and I'll probably head over today to cheer them on.This week I'll be heading back to Burloak for a few days to see my mom, make sure vank doesn't go crazy sitting at home, and rest up for racing before flying to Halifax on Thursday. I'm excited to race again, and looking forward to seeing the improvements that Dartmouth has made for the World Championships later this summer. Thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water.