Jon Schofield

Hey, well here is a little video showing what a typical day in my life is like. Great times paddling on the Thames with nice weather and no wind..! All filmed on the gobandit HD action camera which have been generously given to us buy the guys at assist creative resources. Enjoy!

LINK FOR IPHONE USERS! (should be working soon..)

P.S. Be sure to watch it it 720pHD!

I’m now well back into the training routine and am also happy to announce some new sponsors onboard. Assist Creative Resources have been kind enough to provide Liam and I with Gobandit GPS action cameras and the latest Timex Ironman GPS. These great products allow us to keep track of our training and also film it…

The Gobandit GPS is also the worlds first GPS enabled action camera, this allows you to overlay skinds indicateding your speed, distance, altitude etc.. You can also track your routes on google maps and display them in realtime along with the video footage.  I look forward to showing off some footage soon! With this in mind, here is a trailer for the next film we are making, be sure to watch it in HD 720p!;

It’s “A day in the life of…” and will be following Liam and i throughout a typical winter training day. Hopefully it will look pretty cool and give you an idea what life is like for a full time 200m athlete..:)

My season is now over, in a good way, all events finished, goals achieved and time to rest and think about next year..

The world championships in Szeged were a great experience, if a bit nervewracking! Hungary are the bigest proponents of flatwater kayaking and put on a show to prove this. The event managament was almost of olympic proportions with everything running super smoothly. The spectators also turned out in force, i dont know how many were there but this picture gives you an idea, i have never not been able to hear my paddle enter the water but during the 200m it was just a wall of noise!

The race was huge for us as we had to finish in the top 6 in order to qualify a boat for next years Olympics. In an event as tight as ours there was no room for being over confident. Our training leading into the champs had been great and we were feeling as comfortable and well drilled in the boat as we ever have, however we still had to convert this. The heats and semis went really well, only 2 boats qualify from the semi to the final which means this is always a nervous time. However we raced really soildly to beat a quality Latvian crew and qualify as the fastest through to the final.

Now the final was something else! The crowed had filled up and the noise was awesome, it really was the situation that every top athlete relishes. We could barely hear the start orders but reacted really well and had the best start of our year, we needed it though! The French crew stayed with us and when they start well they are hard to beat. We managed to push ahead of the rest of

Courtesy of © A Edmonds / AEphotos.co.uk

the field but the French pipped us to the line. Not that i knew this crossing the line, typically in the back of a K2 you cant see the other crews and for some reason i was convinced that we had missed out on the medal, my relief when we saw the score board was huge! Its a nice feeling to better last years result and being beaten by such a quality crew has no shame in it. We can now train in the knowledge that there is an Olympic space available for GB and we are determined to fill it.

Following the world championships i again had the opportunity to compete in the nelo summer challenge, an ocean surfski race. It was a huge amount of fun and in think i learnt a lot! The surfski professionals are a friendly bunch and it was a great break from the racing which i’m so used to.  Everyone raced hard and partied hard, I’m sure ill be back for more after the Olympics.

The final event of our season was the pre-olympic test event at Dorney lake. For us this was not a major goal, more an opportunity to test logistics for the olympics and for the organizers to test the race course setup. This is the first international canoeing regatta which has been held at Dorney so it was really strange for us to see it dressed up as a fully functioning race venue. I have to say the organizers did a great job and the lake looked superb. It was well received by the visiting foreign athletes, who particularly enjoyed how fast the course can be once a tailwind picks up..!

The racing went well despite not having much time training together before. We had a poor start in the final but the rest of the race was really good, pulling us back into a medal position, eventually finishing 3rd. This is however a result that we will be looking to upgrade when we race at Dorney again next august..:)

Courtesy of © A Edmonds / AEphotos.co.uk

Now we have a few weeks to recover and slowly get back into training before hitting the winter hard. Its also time to reflect on the help I have received this year. I am again indebted to my coach Alex Nikonorov who has expertly guided me through the year, getting the most out of me in training and keeping me injury free. Our physio Katherine Ready has been key on keeping me in one piece and Ginny Coyles our performance analyst deserves a medal for all the hard work she has put in. The support of UKsport and the lottery funding has been invaluable in enabling me to train full time with out the need for another job. Lifeplan nutritional products have also been extremely kind in supporting me with various nutritional products which have undoubtedly helped me develop and stay healthy. I hope i can do everyone proud again next year and look forward to working with you!

Courtesy of; © A Edmonds / AEphotos.co.uk

Well you may now know that Liam and I won the European Champs last weekend, defending our title from last year. Here is a link to the race report for us and the rest of the GB team;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/canoeing/13832094.stm

It was a really interesting weekend as in the heat we had to deal with the first bad start we have ever had. I sliced my right blade which meant we had to stop and start again, giving everyone nearly a boat-length head start. From that position it should be all over in the 200m event, however we paddled our best and managed to pull through the whole field to take second place. Securing our place In the final.

This actually gave us a lot of confidence for the final as it was proof our form was good. So long as we got an okay start..! The final went very smoothly, pulling safely out of the blocks and dominating down most of the race.

It was a great feeling to defend a title and definitely harder mentally than winning one!

Now we have 8 weeks to get seriously fast before the World Champs and Olympic qualifying..

After a long winters training I was back in action this weekend with the rest of the GB canoeing team at the first world cup of the year.  It was our first opportunity to gauge our progress and standard against the rest of the world and the signs were good. After a really good heat we had a good duel with the French crew in the final and were pipped to the line to take second place behind the reigning world champions.

We now have two weeks to get some more training and refocus before the second world cup which will be held in Racice in the Czech republic. Hopefully we can step up from this weekend and take a win which will be a great step towards the defense of our European title later in the year..

Pictures and video of the racing to come soon..

We are back in our usual winter haunt #Seville and I’ve got a new boat courtesy of Nelo Kayaks..! Its fantastic to see how close to the design the guys at Nelo managed to make it. Liam also has a matching one so we look a right pair on the water..!

Liam`s Boat

New nelo 1

New nelo 2

New nelo 3

So far the weather here has been pretty wet and cool though things seem to be picking up now so fingers crossed for a nice few weeks warm weather training.. The breakfast buffet at the hotel we are staying in is legendary so we make sure to eat a small breafast in our rooms, fit in the first training session before returning to have a giant second breakfast. Its the little things ey..!

Also here is a pic of my coffee making setup out here.. The Aeropress is a godsend and another one of the little things that keeps me going..

My coffee "travel" kit..!

So i’m feeling a little spaced out right now, back in the UK after a good flight back from Aus. The jet lag has been a little bit worse coming back, so much so that yesterday i managed to fall asleep during “Stomp” in the west end (It is awsome though..!).  The last couple of weeks of the Australia camp went really well, i achieved the best and most consistent block of training i think i have ever had, got a really good feeling back in the K2 and generally enjoyed the Australian life!

I have also got to say that the generosity shown to us by the Maroochydore locals has been humbling. During our second to last session Maureen and Norm Jackson braved the monsoon style rains and came down to the club to bake us a fresh fruit loaf to eat after the session.

Kind message from our favorite coffee shope

It must have been one of the best things I have ever tasted and is great to have met such kind people. We were also treated by my favorite coffee haunt, Caffeine Culture who sell Veneziano roasted coffee. Alicia and Zoie make absolutely top notch speciality coffee and had been drawing us back day after day. On our last day they made us all coffees and muffins on the house and sent us packing with a selection of their best single origin and blend beans, really kind of them and I only hope we will be back next year..  I’d also like to thank the Sunshine Coast canoe club and Maroochydore surf club for letting us use their facilities and generally helping make the our stay in Aus very enjoyable.

We now have a couple of days off training to recover from the flight and our last hard block in Aus before getting back into it and heading out to Seville for another 3 week camp. Seville gives us a great opportunity to start sharpening up, training over race distances and getting in the K2 a bit more often.

I’m also looking forward to collecting my new Nelo kayak..! Liam designed a new color scheme for the both of us which im very excited to see in the flesh. Here is a rendering he made of it;

Saw this on youtube, things have changed slightly…

Australian food is amazing..

So it has been a while since i last updated and it has been a pretty cool 2011 so far for myself and the rest of the GB 200m squad. As i write we are in the middle of a 6 week training camp on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, prior to this to kick off 2012 we had 2 week cross country skiing in St Moritz, Switzerland. It is a schedule many paddlers would be envious of however i hope we have earned it over the last year. It is also a program common to many top paddling countries with the Italians training at the same place out here and the German team also skiing in St Moritz at the same time as us.

The cross country camp was a really useful period for us to take some load off our bodies from the paddling we had been doing from september through to january. Indeed the German team were instructed that for the first two weeks of the year they were only allowed to cross-train, no paddling allowed. I think this is a sensible recognition of the fact that we are in a physically demanding sport, with a long racing season and it is sensible to manage levels of physical and emotional fatigue over the year. The ultimate goal after all is in august.. We achieved a good hard block of endurance work in this camp, hopefully improved our leg conditioning work and came out fit strong and looking forward to paddling again!

After a week training at Dorney/Bisham in the UK we flew out to Aus. The first week out here is always a process of acclimatizing and trying to switch your body clock over to Aussie time. We all did a good sleep strategy on the flight over and adjusted as quickly as could be expected. This first week we spent in Penrith and Sydney, training and watching the 1000metre boys race the best of AUS in the GP2 regatta. Some solid results, especially from Paul Wycherly who seems to be building on his form from last year. Overall though it was great to see the guys race as much as possible and attack every race hard..

We then travelled down to Maroochydore on the Sunshine coast, where with the help of fantastic facilities we settled in to our hardest training block of the year so far. We are building on last years physical and technical conditioning and achieving a great consistent high quality work load with the perfect conditions this venue allows. We also were given the opportunity of a little racing outing this weekend organized by the Sunshine Coast Canoe Club. They put on a fantastic 200m only regatta which attracted paddlers from all over the coast and had a really good atmosphere. It was nice to try hitting the full 200m race distance though it did confirm that we still have a lot of work to do..! Also included in the regatta format was the “Pertho relay”. How this works is a blog post for another day, but basically it is a 4/5 paddler 100m relay in a box shaped course. We raced two mixed sunshine coast/GBR teams with my team coming out on top, just..! It is a great relay format that introduced an extra element of fun and interaction as the teams were mixed up at random.

Off the water, been loving the coffee from the local Veneziano shop in Maroochydore and having a surf spot pretty much at our front door…

Next up we have a regeneration week this week before another two hard development weeks before we head back to blighty..

Till next time.. Ta ta!