Hey there,

Another update from C4C has arrived. I hope everyone enjoyed the podcast, we hope to do another one in the near future at full strength. Things here in Ottawa have been going well. We have one more practice on the Rideau before heading off to Montreal next week. I've had some good practices on the water, both in C1 and C4. In C1 I've been thinking a lot about technique, looking at a lot of old race video and trying to fine tune how I'm paddling. I've been feeling pretty good physically, making sure I don't over train, but stay sharp at the same time. My body is holding up well, with no major complaints at the moment which is a nice feeling. Four days of racing is hard on the body, so it's good to go into it without any major issues.
We got out in C4 yesterday for a very solid practice. We did a 200 with the super speedy women's K4, who have had a great season so far and should be a real threat at Worlds. It was good to test our speed against them (we passed), and a good opportunity to work on our start. We've been experimenting a bit with stroke rate, and have come to the conclusion that it's going to have to be higher than it was at Trials, verging on out of control. It's been feeling very promising so far, as even the really high stroke rates have lots of power and don't even feel that fast to us.

Tomorrow will be some course work, followed by a nice weekend off. Rest at this point in the season is just as important as training, so I'll be making sure to take it easy, maybe catch a movie, and check out the local fair/freak show that's at the park near the Canoe Club. I'll also be frequently checking the Jr Worlds results to see how our team is doing. They had some solid results in the heats today, and I'm hoping for good things tomorrow and wishing them all the best. Check out results by clicking HERE
Also, a shout out to the Canadian Women's Waterpolo Team who won a silver medal at the World Championships today, very impressive and inspiring! Alright, that's all I've got for you today, video of C4C practice should be up sometime tomorrow. I hope everyone has a great weekend, thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water.

Greetings,
It's been another good day of training here in Ottawa. The weather got back to it's old tricks, raining on and off, and being quite muggy the whole day. This morning I did some 500's at a fairly high intensity. They went alright, but I still felt a little tired from the day before despite having the afternoon off. The afternoon session was at an easier pace, and I was able to work on some technical stuff and just try to feel good. I am still trying to fine tune some stuff before the worlds. I want to make sure I'm paddling my best, so I've been looking at a lot of video, and plan to do some more technical workouts later this week. Tomorrow morning we'll be doing some 1000's, followed by some work in C4. I've switched from my Vanquish II to my Vanquish III, as seen in the picture above. The red is the II and the green is the III. They are pretty similar, and I've been using them both this year, depending where I am. I'll most likely be using the III at Worlds, as Nelo has sent a special one to Dartmouth for me with higher sides in case of waves. That's all for today, but check back to C4C soon for something new that we put together today and should be up soon. Thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water.

Good day to all,


It has been a nice one here at last! The sun came out and gave us some nice summer loving for the entire day. Training so far this week has been great at the Rideau Club. The mens canoe team and the womens kayak team are both training here under the same program so I've been able to find good training partners for all my workouts. Yesterday I had two solid sessions with Mlle. Genevieve Beauchesne-Sevigny and Ms. Emily Raymond, or "Gab's Girls" as they are now sometimes being called. We did some good intense pieces and I was really starting to feel some speed on the water. I carried that over to this morning's workout, a hard sprinting workout with everyone on the team out in singles. It was a wicked feeling lining up in such a huge group with so many fast, talented paddlers. I had a really good workout, and felt really fast on some of the pieces. It has helped my confidence, especially for the 500. Earlier in the year I really didn't feel like I had that high speed gear that my competitors did, but it's coming together now. I'm excited to line up in a few weeks and test myself against the best in the world.


After the hard morning session, we had the afternoon off, and used it to go and see the new Harry Potter movie. It was a pretty good movie, worth seeing for sure. I had a nice dinner at Carleton University, where we now have a meal plan which has been working out really nicely. I don't mind making my own food, but it's nice to not have to worry about grocery shopping and cooking right now, and great to share meals with my team mates, as well as the Australians that are staying there. I'm happy that the team atmosphere is getting better. The vibe around the club has been great, and I'm looking forward to keeping it going until Worlds. Tomorrow we'll be on the course doing some 500's, followed by some weights, and then a some longer pieces in the afternoon. C4C should be getting out on Thursday, so that will be a lot of fun. I've uploaded some video of this morning's sprint session to check out. Exciting stuff! That's all for now I guess, thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water!

Hi everybody,

It's been a great weekend for me. Saturday morning Morty, Gab, Cory and I had a really great practice at Burloak. We did a bunch of one minute pieces at 100%, with one minute rest, and we all really charged it the whole way. It was great to get pushed by those guys and I felt like I was paddling well and really giving it everything I had. It was a great end to a good week of training back at home. After practice we had a nice breakfast in Oakville, and packed up the car and headed for Ottawa. A very pleasant drive was highlighted by a great lunch at Arby's. We cruised back in time to head over to good friend and C4C supporter Mylanie Barre's birthday party. It was a fun night and we were happy to celebrate Mel's 25th birthday. I could have sworn that she used to be older than me, but I guess not...
Today I had a very relaxing day of sleeping, reading and rock band, and then went to the McBride's house for a very nice dinner to celebrate another birthday. Ken Wallace (Australian Olympic Champion, fellow 2001 Curitiba Jr Worlder, and friend) turned 26 today. Welcome to the club.
Now I'm getting ready to go to bed, looking forward to getting back to another week of training at the Rideau Club. It will probably be my last week training there before renovations begin for their new club house, so I'll make sure to take in all the sights, and smells... of the the clubhouse.
Alright, that's all for now, come back soon for some C4C video later in the week, and hopefully some new Ask Us Anything answers! Thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water.

Greetings,

Hey everyone,

I'm back in Burlington/Oakville for the week after an exciting weekend of racing in Montreal. The first two days I enjoyed watching some exciting races, and was happy to see two of my roommates, Jamie and Morty, win the C1 1000m and C1 500m respectively. Both C1 races were exciting the whole way, and the 500m especially came down to a 5 boat race right until the last few strokes. The girls K1 was also exciting, with special shout out going to Genevieve Beauchesne Sevigny, who is back on her game after taking some time to become a nurse.

After watching for two days, I was very excited to finally get on the starting line on Sunday for the 200m races, where every race was a qualification for the World Championships. It was a simple selection process, whoever wins gets to race at the Worlds. The only exception was in the singles events, where the top 4 would qualify for the newly added relay event. C1 was first, and in my heat I false started, which made me hesitant on the second start, and in a 200 that can cost you the race. I advanced to the semis, and had a decent race there, winning my semi and advancing to the finals. For the final, I wanted to win, but the main goal was just to come top 4, as it is the relay that I want to race at Worlds, not the individual. Again I false started, but this time I wasn't going to hesitate on the restart, as it was do or die time. The second start wasn't great, but I got going pretty well in the middle. I was a few lanes away from Gab and Rich, who were winning, so I couldn't really tell where I was. Aruss started to make a charge late in the race, so I did everything I could to hold him off, and threw down a pretty mean boat shoot that ended up putting me in second, just ahead of Gab. Rich had a great race to take the win, but I was a little frustrated because I didn't feel as fast as I had earlier in the week. Still, I achieved my goal and made the relay team, along with Rich, Gab and Aruss. It will be a really exciting race at Worlds, and I think we could be a pretty competitive team.

Once C1 was over, it was time to get down to the real business of the day, C4 200m! This is the race that Canoe 4 Canada has wanted to race for 2 years, and finally the day had come for us to try to qualify it. I felt a lot of pressure leading up to the race, it would look pretty silly if we had made a website and everything and then not even gotten the entry. Once we started setting up the boat and getting in the zone though, the nerves started to fade a bit, replaced by excitement. We all put on our separate club jerseys, and were stretching in the boat bay before the race, and I looked around and realized how cool it was that we could all race together like this. Even though we were all from different parts of the country, paddling had brought us together and made us best friends, and now we had the chance to qualify to race at the World Championships together. Once on the water, we felt great, and I knew that as long as we didn't screw things up, we would be able to win. The speed was there, we just had to execute. The start ended up being less than good, I'm not sure what happened, but it kind of just felt like it was slow motion and not quite together. That didn't last long though, and after about ten strokes we got together and started to really move. It was an exhilerating feeling as we quickly moved to the front of the race, with the boat moving really smoothly. We kept charging it the second half of the race, and that's when I heard someone (who turned out to be my brother) scream out C4C! I knew then that we were going to win, and it was hard not to smile. It was a great feeling crossing the line and finally knowing for sure that we would be racing at the Worlds after wanting it for so long. I let out a yell and slapped Aruss on the back in celebration. As usual, Aruss had drained himself during the race, so my slap on the back sent his exhausted body heading for the water, dropping the paddle and almost falling in. The crowd had a good laugh, but I managed to grab him before he went in. Taking a lesson from our team rockstar Tom Hall, Aruss left right from boat control, getting in a cab to catch his afternoon flight. Very rad.

After that it was time to pack up the boats, and the feeling around the course felt more like Nationals than Trials. It was a great day, and the atmosphere was very positive and everyone was really charged up watching the 200s. There were so many close, exciting races, that I won't go into them all here, but if you weren't there, you definitely missed out on a great day of racing. I'm excited to see our team race at the Worlds, where hopefully the home crowd will create and even bigger and more exciting vibe for our team to feed off of.

I'm now back home training at Burloak. It's been great so far, as it always is when I get back on the creek. I've been feeling really good the last few days on the water, and am getting really excited for Worlds. I'm also looking forward to the next few weeks of preparation, focusing on every practice to get myself 100% ready to race. This week I'll be helping out at the Canadian Open Golf Tournament, and attending Tamas Buday Jr's stag party as well, which should be a fun night. I'll head back to Ottawa for training camp next week. I'll be updating a lot more regularly now, to keep everyone up to date on our journey to the Worlds, so check back soon. Thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water!

C 4 C !

Team Canoe 4 Canada has qualified for the C4 200m at the Senior World Championships, starting August 13 in Dartmouth, NS. After a bit of a slow motion start, we kept it together and quickly surged to the front of a very competitive field to win the trials and secure our entry. The journey can now officially begin, follow us for the rest of the summer for our lead up to the Worlds, it's going to be exciting!

Congratulations to everyone else who made the team as well, it was a day full of amazing performances and some very tight races.

Greetings to all,

It's been a week since I last posted, and the time has flown by. Canada Day was a blast! The regatta was fun to watch from my seats under the Level Six tent. I had a great time selling tickets for our raffle, which raised money for the Ottawa River Canoe Club, who recently had a bunch of equipment stolen. I think it went really well and it was nice to see how happy it made the kids. There were some exciting races as well, with Gab and Ian finishing a close 1-2 in the C1 100m, just passing Rideau's young gun Ben Tardioli in the last few strokes. My sister Tessa rocked the girls K1 100m by about a boat, a very impressive display of kayaking if I do say so myself. We finished off the day with a wicked BBQ at our house, full of boating and swimming and tarzan rope adventures.

I took the rest of last week fairly easy on the water, letting my body recover after a lot of hard races. I helped Tamas in the motorboat while they selected the C4 1000m crew that will race at the next set of trials. Everyone that tried out looked really solid and I'm very impressed with the level of our team. Morty got the nod for the "A" crew, so congratulations to him, a very deserved selection to say the least.

This week it's been back to business on the water. Training has been long and hard, and it's been a bit of a shock to the system after so many weeks of peaking for competitions. I felt a bit out of shape at first, but it's coming back quickly, and I think it was more a case of not being used to that kind of work rather than a lack of fitness. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks of hard training to get myself ready for Worlds. That's all for now, I've posted video of the 500m race from trials for those interested. Thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water.

It's the first of July! Canada's Birthday and the first day of the second half of the year! It seems crazy that we're this far into 2009, but I guess a lot of things have happened so far and it's been pretty busy. Gab and I arrived in Ottawa Monday afternoon after some delays at the airport in Halifax. We seemed to bring the weather with us, as they say, because upon arriving we were welcomed with a heavy downpour. Luckily Ian and Jenna had made a great dinner and we were able to just sit inside and enjoy the food and the sound of the rain outside. It was then time for a much needed sleep to help recover from the weekend. I took yesterday to rest as well, as I know I have a lot of hard work coming up in the next month and need to be ready for it. The Canoe Team training camp will start this Thursday here in Ottawa. A big team has been invited, and they will try to decide who is going to race with who in C4 1000 at the next set of Trials, and ultimately at the Worlds in Dartmouth. With so many guys trying to make the boats, I hope it will push everybody to be their best, and make Canada's C4 at worlds that much better. I'm also excited that there will be such a big team around to train C1 with me, as training alone is not my specialty. It should be a fun camp, as our team usually gets along really well even when there is tough selection going on.

Today is the annual Canada Day Regatta, hosted by the Rideau Canoe Club on Mooney's Bay. It is a great regatta that is usually well attended by people from all over the country, and continent. People come decked out in all red and white with maple leafs flying, showing their national pride. The racing is very exciting, most notably the famous Rideau 100, a hundred metre sprint that is known by many as the world championship of this distance. I am the defending champ (no big deal), but am still deciding whether I'm going to race or not. It will be a last minute decision, depending on how I feel later in the day. After the races, the festivities really begin, with BBQs, parties, and of course the annual trip downtown to see the firework display. I'm looking forward to a fun day, and wish everyone out there a happy Canada Day! Thanks for reading and keep your paddle in the water.

Mark, Rich, Cory, Paul. Photo by Bernie Irvin