Finally back home, landed in on sunday night after 3 weeks of touring around australia over the new year, claiming some national titles! The trip started with training in eildon about 2 hours out of melbourne in the middle of no where.. we trained for about 5days or so untill the australian secondary schools competition, by the time the race came the water levels have dropped to a third of what they were when we were training! so the course changed to a completeley flat course which is a bit disapointing going all that way, to race on flat. but the nz team managed to deal with it fine with heaps of medals and wins! I had a pretty consistent race to post two 94s clean, taking out the under 16 oz title. There was some other good results as well with Ben Gibb an Bradyn Church winning the under 18 years title by quite alot, and cole oconner stratton one of the youngsters coming second in the NZ team, which at 15 is pretty good! finishing 2nd in the under15s. Next race was the southern cup race which had been changed to each run being one race so, not best of two runs anymore.. race one, i was having a great run nailing most of the moves on the course, posting an 89 ahead of second in 93 or something, getting out of my boat at the finish stoked with my run, coach ian told me i paddled straight past a gate on the flat, probably the easiest gate on the course! i couldn't even remember doing it, just a blank mind, which was really frustrating getting given a 50 second penalty, pushing me way down the results list.. second race/run, the water had increased to level it was during training, so was a proper course, i was trying to push really hard down the course, which worked untill the first upstream gate 3... where i touched then just got worse touching down the course and picking up another 50, which pushed me out of the southern cup winnings or placings alot..but it was a bit of a learning curve. We then had a rest day between the australian nationals which were to be held in two days, so i pulled out of downriver, but ended up having to run DR boats up to the top of the course! the course for nationals was a bit zig zag, with about 5 huge crosses across the river. first run i was a bit offline down the course but was an alright run with one touch 1st after first runs. 2nd runs i wanted to just stay on line and have a solid run. which i managed to do. going a second faster and clean taking out the australian national title for under 18men! also i got medals in other catagories such as teams and c1 getting 2 gold and 5 silver on the trip, results for k1 can be found at http://www.canoe.org.au/default.asp?Page=18380
Most of the team headed to penrith after the 2 weeks in eildon for a weeks training on the olympic course from the sydney 2000 olympics. Being a pretty physical course, a few of the younger guys had problems with their shoulders, subluxing them and so. but i managed to not get injured! in training i was feeling pretty warn out but felt like i improved alot technically, over the weeks training. I owe a big thanks to Roy Bailey for managing the dev. trip, Ian Mercer for coaching also andrew n aaron. and Pip Arnold for assistant manager. also sue clarke for organising the trip to penrith and the croft family for letting me and malcolm stay with them for the week in penrith! now im home for selections at kawerau and mangahou! this weekend, the 23rd and 24th the race is at kawerau and then it's off to mangahou the weekend after for the ICF World Ranking Race, and the 3rd and 4th selection races. Will add more photos later.
