Easter Holidays

Holidays are always over too quickly. I was back to work this week after the Easter hols, it has some advantages though - there is no holiday pay with supply teaching, so a few days of work are actually more than welcome after a two week break from earning!

I managed a fair amount of boating though; 5 more days of Hurley, before it rapidly decreased to one gate. Some fantastic paddling in the sunshine, which doesn't happen all that often at Hurley. There were a few busy days, but as it was school holidays I was surprised to catch it with only one or two people in the eddy on a couple of sessions.

The first event of the Youth Freestyle Series took place in Llangollen on the 8th April. This is a great series of events for all youngsters under the age of 18. The aim is to encourage progressing white-water paddlers to get into Freestyle and also, with river running courses and boater X events as well, to improve their general white-water awareness and paddling skills. I am helping to organise the series for this year, and so I offered my limited coaching (thats twice now in 2 weeks!) and judging services to help out. Unfortunately it was freezing cold, blowing a hoolie and hammering down with rain whilst I was sat on a wet rock trying to judge and hold an umbrella over the scribe to stop the paper getting soaking wet (didn't work) - brrrr! The water levels, ironically, were also quite low, so not ideal for the freestyle competition as there was some real boat-bashing going on. However, the kids, being kids, didn't notice the wet/cold weather and all enjoyed it. They hopefully all got something out of the coaching and I'm sure they were grateful for all of the prizes handed out courtesy of the generous sponsors.

We made the most of the journey up to N.Wales and Cam and I joined Lynsey, Bledd and some friends on a bike ride on the 'Marin trail', which has some fantastic downhill sections. These N.Wale-ians not only have great creek-boating on their doorstep (when it rains) but also have some awesome mountain bike trails just down the road. Although, obviously they don't have Hurley :) . Unfortunately I was left behind a few times as they sped off downhill on their 'full sussers' and I was juddering along on Cam's old bike with no suspension at all (yes, I still haven't got round to buying my own bike - there always seems to be another boating holiday to pay for instead). At least on that bike I could just about keep up with them on the uphills, although my arms were still vibrating a few days afterwards.

The following weekend we were up in N.Wales again for the Easter bank holiday weekend with a group of our Reading friends, all ex-Reading Uni Canoe Club and associates, affectionately known as cling-ons who are now ex-paddlers and current mountain bikers/ climbers/ hill-walkers. So, we did the Marin trail again on the Friday, this time I was a lot more comfortable, and could fully appreciate the downhills, as I was borrowing Neil's very nice Kona Stiffee (thanks Neil).

Anyhoo, back to the boating. I had to get up very early on Saturday morning to get a lift to Nottingham for GB Team Training weekend. We had a useful session on core stability, I now know how to use the stability ball properly, rather than just using it as a chair. This was followed by a lesson on forward paddling, playboaters are not very good at forward paddling. Hopefully we will now get better! Unfortunately the feature for the Europeans is not yet ready, so we couldn't effectively train on there, but Lynsey and I were on the inlet gate practicing back looping and Space Godzillas. Pete (team coach) gave us all moves to put into mock competition rides on the Sunday. All in all a useful training weekend.

It looks like the end of the season for Hurley, so I'm guessing, with the European Championships coming up, I will be making a few trips up to Nottingham (hopefully not all via North Wales).

I have a few choices of boating trips over the spring/summer, as yet I haven't made too many decisions. Augsburg Eurocup in early May followed by creeking in Italy? A trip to Ottawa to catch Buseater? A week in Lyon leading up to the Lyon festival, followed by some boating in the French Alps? With Cam having to arrange holidays around meetings (unfortunately not the other way round) it's looking like the latter will be the most viable option, I'm not sure whether I can afford to get to all of the Eurocups, or the numerous boater X's that are happening across Europe. All of this leading up to the European Championships in June then the World Cup events at the end of August/September catching Gauley season at the end. And a week in the French Alps mountain biking, sometime in August, with above-mentioned cling-on friends. All I have to do now is fit in a whole load of supply teaching to fund it all..... If anyone wants to give me a lift to any of these boating destinations let me know :)

Flea x

Edit: I have been trying to get my head round CSS and Dreamweaver and hope to have a slightly improved website in the next week or so.

Ladies Freestyle Coaching

Cancelling the Hurley Classic Freestyle Event was a good way of ensuring rain. Dutifully the river came up only a few days after the event was postponed, in fact it came up a lot. Thursday saw a high 2 gates at Hurley - very flushy, hard to get into the corner gate, and even harder to stay on. By Friday mid-morning it was on 4 gates, with a very reasonable temperature. It was great to go upside down and not have ice-cream head.

On Saturday I helped out with some Ladies Freestyle Coaching. The half-day(ish) course was run by Kayakojacko and was for ladies of all boating ability - from being able to cartwheel to having only been to Hurley previously on one gate, to those that were only just getting their whitewater roll. For those that hadn't been to Hurley before, 4 gates was a very intimidating level to start with and they were, literally, 'thrown in at the deep end'. We split down into groups straight away as some were ready to get into the wave/hole from the outset, whilst others worked their way up gradually by starting out with ferry-gliding and rolling in the eddy and then rolling in the flow. The fact that there were so many others giving it a go meant that even those with low confidence in their roll or in their paddling ability threw themselves in fairly quickly. It probably helped that there were at least 3 of us ready to rescue as soon as any of them struggled to roll up, and of course the mild temperatures meant that a swim didn't really matter.

Unfortunately it was a difficult level to sit in the eddy and actually get onto the wave, as the water was pushing in from all directions, but everyone had a really good go trying. Several of the ladies ventured into the very sticky gate 2, although some had a few difficulties getting out again, but all ended up with huge smiles, even after a few inevitable swims. It was great to see so many female paddlers at Hurley, we definitely outnumbered the guys, something which is happening a lot more now. In my early days of paddling there would never be more than one or two other ladies in the eddy, and very often I was a lone female. Hopefully days on the water like this will encourage more ladies into playboating.

Everyone enjoyed the session, and I think got a lot out of being on the water with other ladies (although it's a shame we couldn't have got all of those men off the water to lessen the queue). After the on-water coaching we headed back to Jacko's place for the best bit: tea and cake - excellent. I couldn't say for certain, but possibly the first time Jacko has had at least 10 ladies following him into his house! Obviously I was there just for the cake, but there was also some really useful video analysis of the morning's session. I find slow-motion video analysis is such a good way of figuring out what is going right, and what needs to be improved on, for all levels of freestyle paddling. Unfortunately I had to leave this session early (the cake had run out), but I hope all of the ladies got something out of this really useful post-water session, and out of the day in general; it certainly gave me a few tips on how to coach others in the basics of playboating. Hopefully we will see these ladies back at Hurley in the next few days, putting into practice what they learnt from the day, and having fun on the water.





It's Easter Holidays - no work for 2 weeks- and Hurley is still running. Hopefully it will stay up for a few more days. I'm off for a boating session, maybe see you there.