Reality check was harsh after returning from New Zealand in February. A lot of work to be done on my college final paper, a job and short cold winter days meant not much paddling was on horizon. Furthermore, compared to last year, this winter wasn’t as generous with snow and not much water was coming down the Slovenian Alps this spring. Yes, this spring sucked for me from a kayaker’s point of view. Nevertheless I did join the white-water rescue training programme and I got to train as an instructor under supervision of Slovene water rescue guru Urban Herzog. If I don’t feel my best as a kayaker at least you can rely on me to be more accurate throwing stones at you when you get stuck in some sticky hole. Keep that in mind when looking for a companion to some crazy creeks this summer!
Safety crew
I spent 14 days in travelling with Palo, Eva, Zajic and many others from Czech and Slovakia.
First stop was World Champinoship of extreme kayaking – Teva Outdoor mountains games 2010. The river Chuisella had low water level then last year. But in the evening the water rised and it was fun and pushy.In long race I was 4., because I paddled across the rock twice:(.
Plattling was canceled, so only one freestyle world cup took place in Europe.
There were about hundred competitors from four continent.
It’s been time! Lots has been happening over the last few weeks but i’m going to try and keep this short as a lot of it is bad news for me!
Selection was a nightmare basically and i failed to make the team. To be honest it was the same old story for me.I got distracted all the way into selection instead of just focusing on myself and this lead to me not being 100% on the day. Silly touches cost me my place on the team again……Afterwards i had a lot to think about.
7 weeks on and i’m glad to say i’m all charged up again and am more determined then ever to achieve my goals.I have almost 10 months to prepare for selection and have set myself some very tough goals both on and off the water. My training has increased and I’ve also relocated to Nottingham to train at the national watersports center which is also a lot close to the Olympic course in London which i will be planning trips to over the winter months.
I’ll also be working hard on keeping this up to date as things happen.
Over the next 2 weeks i will be traveling to Prague for a weeks training before i move onto Augsburg for another week and also to watch the final world cup race.From there i move onto the first race at the newest artificial course in the Uk which is in Cardiff,Wales for the 3rd national ranking race of the year. I am currently leading the rankings and hope to get the number 1 bid back this year if all goes well!
Bring on the summer! :)
Marcel Bloder was trying some of Duemstuff gear during winter in Uganda. Here’s his report:
Uganda 2010
This year Linda Künstl and I decided to go for wintertraining tot he playboaters paradise during wintertime, tot he famous White Nile in Uganda. We were there for 4 weeks from middle of March to middle of April and met lot of new paddle friends there. We were also lucky to met Daniel Deußen (he made all the pictures from me) there, who was fortunately going there almost the same 4 weeks as we. We were paddling the first Days just on Theo Superhole and went for the rest of the time to Hairy Lemon Island that is a camping island on whitch we stayed almost the rest of the trip. I couldn’t paddle for 10 days because I got a bad ear infection and had to take antibiotics. We were also for safari to Murchinson Falls Nationalpark, that was really beatifull.
From the nice guys from Duem I got some gear with to test there under this perfekt White Nile conditions, the Extreme Spraydeck LTD and the Neo Shorts 001. Needless to say it was „unfortunetly“ too hot to wear the Neo Shorts, but afterwards when I came back home I saw that they were just the most confortable and good looking Neoshorts I ever had. The Spraydeck is also very awesome and much more dry than most other Spraydecks on the marked.
Airscrew right
Yesterday was the last day of the first world cup 2010. I was a bit disapointed about my result in the end. After the qualification on friday i was on 14th place but in the semifinal on Sunday it was just the 31st place, because of big mistake at gate 12, I lost 7seconds and that was the time I was to slow to be in the final. Now I’m looking forward to the 2nd world cup in Spain on next Saturday.
cheers
by the way you can watch videos on www.slalomtroja.cz
