At the moment I’m training in Betlehem in South Afrika with the national team of Germany. We are now in Betlehem since 10 days. The Training is hard, ’cause the slalom courses are on a high of 1700m. For training we have 2 nature courses with wild water. At the moment we have 25 degress what is much more than in Germany the last month. Last Saturday we had a free day, we used that time to visit Durban, a City at the eastcoast, most time in Durban we were shopping and at the beach. You will get some impressions about south afrika if you look at the pics. We will travel home on Saturday evening, back to Germany and have some training in Augsburg and Leipzig to prepare for our selections in the end of April
Even though our last days in New Zealand were approaching we still had some paddling to do. While driving up from Otaki we decided to stop at Huka Falls. The stop was only brief as none of us wanted to take a chance at 200+ cumecs flow. The beat down scenarios that we imagined in our heads were enough to scare us off. For now that is…
Huka Falls
Three weeks away from frozen streets, cold winter, every where was snow and my feet were blue color, frozen people were smoking in front of the bars in Slovenia, but they didnt mind for minus 15 degreze:) but on Tacen course in Slovenia was the cold what did kill you this winter.
So I am realy happy to do my wild water trainings here in Athens, on course from Olimpic games 2004, so it is a new one. The water is salty beacouse it is the sea water flowing down the course, so the trainings can be good here, the temperatures are on our side.
Hy, riders this is my first post on team blog, today we came to Attene to training for 3 weeks on olympic corse and i hope that we have good conditions. See you with the photos from Attens in nex days
Hello and welcome to my Blog. I’d Like to kick it off by thanking Duem for making me a team rider, i look forward to kicking ass and looking flash with their help this year.
So, 2010…..I think looking back this has been my best winters training to date and there is still a few more weeks to go before i start to speed things up and get sharp for team selection. There’s been quite a shake up in team Marshall since the close of last year. I have a new coach, Neil Caffery who’s the biggest slave driver EVER. I’ve also decided to base myself away from the team in Nottingham and stay based in Scotland, thus working with the Scottish team and there programme which is very different in training as well as the team environment . All of this has left me very happy with the way things are going. Anyway I have a post on my trip to Prague to follow and next week I’m off to Athens for my last tech camp before the racing season kicks off in Britain….stay tuned….or the Squirrel will shoot you!! :)
At Mahinapua Lake
A weekend of rest we took was long and boring but at least we met some new friends. We tried to have some kind of a party on Friday but we only got kicked out of the Mahinapua Tavern by its owner saying “you’re not welcome here” before we even ordered a beer. According to locals most male guests aren’t welcome there anyways so we didn’t get really upset by it.
Happy Whitcomb team. All photos taken on Janez Čižman’s camera. I lost mine before I even got to the river.
It usually takes two days to paddle the Whitcomb River. It can be done in a day if you are really quick, but we were in no hurry to get stranded somewhere in a canyon, especially after what happened to our friends two days before.
Fired-up and ready to go
Feeling rejuvenated by the day of rest, we decided to challenge the surreal Kokatahi River. Kokathi is one of the hardest rivers in the area and surely not a one for the faint-hearted. Bruce took us up again and told us it was maybe the lowest river flow anyone had ever attempted to paddle. Kaokatahi is steep and intensive so it needs to be low, but a few more centimetres wouldn’t hurt a few “bony” rapids.
The day for a first serious trip had finally come. Dany Fenzl, us and two other kayakers decided to go to Waitaha. We called Bruce Dando, a local helicopter pilot legend to take us up. Waitaha landing site is an hour drive south of Hokitika and we were really in a hurry to get there in time. We barely made it there before Bruce. Helicopter ride was just sweet, as the locals would say. Smooth takeoff, ride and landing made me feel no fear, which is quite strange if you know how scared I am of flying with commercial airplanes. I guess as long as I see what pilot is doing it’s OK.
Bruce Dando delivering us to put-in
sunnset on a plane
wakeing up with a perfect view
New tents turned out to be a somehow not so good investment. When we woke up in the morning it was really wet inside, even though it didn’t even rain. Well, what could we expect after paying only about 30€ per each. It seems we have more luck than brain as the weather forecast is good for next ten days – exceptional for the West Coast as they told us.
Tuesday was the day to hit the road to South Island. But there was one more stop we had to do before. We had to go to the Bliss Stick factory to get some brand new Mystic boats we were going to use in the south. That definitely sounds easier than it turned out to be. While it should have taken us about three hours to get there, we made one wrong turn just before the factory and ended up doing an additional hour and a half on a dirt road. At least we got to see some sheep. Well actually we saw a lot of sheep, more sheep than I have probably seen before in my entire life.
Hi everybody, this my new blog on DUEMSTUFF.COM, I just want to use this first articel to show you a little video about me, and to say thank you to DUEM STUFF, that I’m now a DUEM STUFF Team member.
After running the MacLarens Falls, Monday was no day to rest. We hooked up with Mike, Matic Lesjak, Louise Jull, Ciaran Heurteau and Roselyn Lawrence to run the infamous Gnarly Gorge. Gnarly is a narrow gorge that starts just bellow the Okere Falls run on Kaituna River. It is claustrophobic, steep and tree infested, which makes it a fearsome and dangerous run. You can never really tell if there are no trees blocking the whole gorge until you run it. Any new tree is a potential death trap.
