It's not all been about training

In amongst the training I took four days off as my sister, Vix, shouted me to a weekend in Rotorua....... we were going white water rafting.  The weather kept us from keeping our booking and the outfit that we were booked with picked us up from outside of our hotel the next day.  The experience was awesome.
And after that it's been training on the water when the weather isn't disrupting water sessions.  Otherwise it's plan B and it's either a run or erg or both.
My next competition is Rotorua where Nationals are being held.
 I was one of eleven athlete's that were awarded with a Samoan Junior Sports Award for 2011. 
This year they had more applications then any other year.  I'm very grateful to the Samoan Sports Awards for finding that my sporting achievements were worthy of being rewarded by them.  A very big thank you to the Samoan Sports Association and congratulations to the other athlete's.

Rain, rain, rain and wind too.

 Last year, which was only last week, there wasn't much training on the water going on.  The weather was bad, bad, bad.  Here in Auckland we had rain and some gusty winds that made it necessary to do alternative training.  I only managed to get 3 water sessions in due to the weather.  New Year's day I traveled to Hawkes Bay where the rowing club had a regatta and they're very accommodating in having kayaking added to their programme.  For us kayakers there weren't big numbers but there certainly was good competition and quality athletes that turned up.  I was quite flat and didn't accomplish much individually.  However I got some really valuable time in K2.  I also got to paddle K4.  Before returning to Auckland I went back to the Clive River to have the first real training session with my K2 partner.  We had two coaches and both coaches comments to me were pretty much the same thing.  I got home yesterday afternoon and this morning it was straight back on the water and straight back into training.


   

It's been a while

Recently I've become a member of the Hawkes Bay Club.  It gives me the opportunity to do team boats and my K2 partner is really good.  For a combination that only got on the water together the morning of a race was quite good as we got a first place in the under 19 K2 500m race and were pipped in the under 19 K2 200m's by a better team on the day.  Thanks to my k2 buddy for the team effort in getting us on to the podium.
I've changed boats and am now using a Vajda, it's makes for good spectator viewing 'cos it's pink, very pink.  It's a better fit for me as my Bako was a bit of a monster to paddle but I only noticed when I was competing overseas and using other boats and coming home having to adjust to the Bako was quite an eye opener not to mention sore on the arms until I readjusted.
So it's back into training with New Zealand Nationals next year to prepare for and hopefully some competition in Australia.