Jon Schofield

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!