BOSNIA PRE EUROPEANS
The time has come where the Junior and U23 GB teams have returned to Bosnia. Thankfully the river is staying at a consistent level now, not like in our training camp, where the water rose each day from 25 cumecs to 200, which was challenging to say the least with gates having to be risen every 5 minutes. The course has been altered very little since I was last here, and although it is not the most technical river out there, I am still thoroughly looking forward to racing, which starts with my individual and team qualification races on Thursday.
And yes, it’s a little hot, 40+ deg c :O :O :O
PADDLING MY NEW PYRANHA VARUN AND CARBON FREERIDE BLADES AT HPP
As my training started to dip for racing, and "hot" weather visiting the UK I decided it was about time to get comfortable in my Varun, before I get on larger rivers in central Europe in 3 weeks time. I really enjoyed paddling the boat down river, its a lot faster than other play boats of its type, yet also carves nicely on a wave as well as it being playful in a hole. It really is ace for all round paddling, which is exactly what I intend to do in Austria, Slovinia and Switzerland.
The carbon blades were also great; I am still using the Freeride blade design, which as I said in a previous review are nice strong, powerful blades. The carbon blades are quite a lot lighter, making them more similar to my slalom blades.
BOURG ST MAURICE
A few weeks back I had a camp in Bourg, which is by far my favourite course! It’s just amazing big powerful water that really tests every paddler. After a hard week training it came to the race day. Unfortunately my first run did not go to plan with a 50 given and unfortunately as second runs were cancelled I did not get another chance to qualify however the week was still very valuable.
On that evening myself and Tom Brady decided to go for a light run to ARK 1600, which is abut 15km up and the same down ;) We reached ARK 1600 in good time, so we decided to continue to ARK 2000, only another 15km up. We did reach ARK 2000, after a good 30kms and climbing over 1300 meters. Unfortunately once we approached the top the weather closed in with wet snow and sleet. We both got rather cold rather quickly so a quick decent to lower ground, and a lift down the rest of the mountain with blankets and glucose powder from our coach was greatly appreciated.
http://nrsweb.com/
