Rain and Work

Everyone knows me as the weather witch - when I go away the heavens open here, the weirs come up and the water levels at my destination become unusually 'wrong' (too low, too high); when I come back the rain stops; when I get a full time job the rains start etc. etc.

This year, apart from the Ottawa having some 50+ year snow-drought, and Shepperton/Sunbury mostly being at the wrong levels when I turned up, the weather has generally been good to me. However, last week I was offered an admin job for 6 weeks - full time, that's 5 days a week, 9 to 5. Hmmm. OK then, I thought... good money-earner with no screaming/noisy kids.... and seeing as I'm not going to get any boating done (summer season - all weirs shut)...and I can start doing some biking in the evenings with Cam - perfect.

Obviously the rain gods heard my decision being made, as no sooner as I had agreed to work, it started raining.

24 hours later Hurley was on 2 gates, thankfully it was still Sunday, and even more thankfully it had only just reached the web update when we were on our way - a late-May (although the temperatures felt like November) bank-holiday evening, chilled out paddling (no competition training to think about) with only 4 of us in the eddy.

36 hours after continuous rain Hurley was on 4. After 6 months of wave-paddling I didn't want to be too hasty in getting back into hole moves (the only option when Hurley is on 4) so we went to check out Sunbury weir. For once it was actually working for me, and once again the news hadn't reached the www so only 5 of us there. Due to the gate configuration and boily eddy it was a huge workout to get onto the thing and after just 5 goes on the wave my arms were totally pumped (due to the number of misses/subbing out/ falling over on the eddyline). But once on the wave it was great fun - really fast, good for all the wave moves and it was made even better as it was so unexpected to be surfing a decent wave, in England, at the end of May!



Sunbury on Monday (photo from http://www.lowridavies.co.uk)

Apparently Sunbury is still forming a good wave, although I haven't been able to check it out again as I've been working...no excuses though, the evenings are light 'till late (although I'm not sure I can face rush-hour motorway traffic), and who knows maybe it will work just once more for me this season :)

A little bit of river running

Straight after the World's I travelled to Slovenia and then Austria for a couple of weeks of chilled out river running with Cam and some ex-RUCC friends.

One of said friends - Erica

In Slovenia we ate lots of pizza and ran different sections of the crystal-clear waters of the Soca river.

We then drove to the Landeck area of Austria where we ate lots of pizza and ran a number of different rivers. It was early season so the rivers were relatively low, but as I hadn't been to that area of Austria before it was all good fun.

Worlds Round Up

After an awesome surf on Wednesday night on a greening buseater, the water level dropped gradually throughout the remainder of the competition. The hole started to get a bit bigger, which did make the wave more retentive, but also made it a bit harder to get the huge bounces that were really easy to do on the greener wave. We were lucky to still have water by the end of the men's finals, and straight after the water dropped significantly and turned into a big pit!

Andrew Holcombe went big on the green wave in prelims.

I was up on Thursday and did not seem to have the wave wired at all, not really surprising after just 6 rides in practice. There seemed to be a fine line between flushing off on playboater's right and getting hammered on the left, I managed to do all of these in my 4 rides - one of which resulted in a few seconds of downtime and an underwater 'Harry Potter' sequence where I only just managed to hold onto my paddle with one hand - a very powerful wave. However, in between times I managed to get a few left and right blunts which was enough to take 3rd place and move through to the semis.

Friday was semis and finals day. Just 3 Brits made it through to finals (Flic - Junior ladies; Lynsey Evans and myself - ladies). Ed Smith and Dicky Chrimes both paddled really well in the men's semis and Ed narrowly missed out on a finals place by 0.33 points.

The ladies semis started with 10 and was cut to 5. We had 2 rides, best ride counted. Ruth Gordon threw down some huge backblunts and nice cleant blunts which gave her a huge 50 point score. Tanya Faux got a couple of big pan ams to put her in 2nd place. The fear of flushing got to me once more as I stayed safe with lefty blunts. This was once again enough to put me into 3rd place. The finals were in the afternoon and we had 3 rides, meaning 2 throw away rides - good job as my first 2 rides did not really happen. I managed to pull it out of the bag on the last ride, and despite still not really feeling comfortable on the wave to go for back blunts or pan ams, I got some left air blunts and right blunts, and just managed to avoid a beat down on left side of the wave. This was just enough to creep in front of fellow brit Lynsey Evans into bronze medal position. Lynsey put in a solid first ride, but dissapoint for her as she once again (as happened in Oz) just missed out on a medal posititon.

So, another bronze medal for me, and this time a lone Brit float-boat medalist. A different colour would have been nice for a change, but on that wave this week I was never really in contention against Tanya Faux or Ruth. And from my first few rides of the week, and the first 2 rides in finals I didn't think I'd make the cut at all (good job it wasn't knockouts this time!) so I was very happy to get on the podium. I'm looking forward to going back to bussy at somepoint though to throw down some big moves.

A close men's final, but EJ came out on top again.

Some big clean back pan-ams and pistol flips put him just a few points ahead of 2nd place Peter Csonka.

Other results are on www.worldfreestylekayakingchampionships.com, or www.ukfreestyle.com

Hopefully I'll get some pictures of me on here soon, but need to find people who took them! Just back to England briefly as I'm off to Slovenia tomorrow - you can never have enough holidays :)

Start of World Championships 2007

The opening ceremony on Sunday night kicked off the World Championships 2007

Team GBR gather for the start of the official opening cermony. All dressed in some gratefully received nice warm down jackets (thanks to TOG24 and Terry Best) and Madyaker T-shirts.

Monday saw the first competitors take to the water in the form of squirt boating. The whole squirt competition was completed on one day allowing for maximum crowd attendance. For the first time in a few World Championships there was a really good eddyline enabling huge mystery moves.

Ben White is under there somewhere!

The Brits were out in full force both on the water and in support on the bank. 5 out of the 10 finalists were brits and this led to 4 medals. The knockout finals provided their usual blows for a few competitors, mainly in the form of mystery moves not working properly. James Reeves was unlucky in this way and just missed out on a medal. Ben White got some amazing downtime all the way through to Gold, and Greg Nicks (European champion) took bronze.

Greg Nicks in a shiny new squirt boat (he first paddled it yesterday morning!)

In the ladies event Claire O'Hara was very narrowly beaten to Gold, after leading through most of the rounds and despite sticking a tricky whu on her last ride, she caught an inconsistent boil on the eddyline meaning she didn't get her mystery move. But, well done to Claire for a fantastic flatwater performance and for getting the Silver medal. Emma Runciman was extremely happy to be in the final in her first international squirt boating competition (having only been paddling squirt for a year) and was even more happy as she consistently moved up each round to earn a bronze medal.

Well done all!

After a couple of weeks of no water Mini Bus has finally, thankfully, arrived!

Billy Harris helixing on Bus

Just a 40 minute queue to get on the low-level wave on Monday. First, and last, day of team training was today, with higher water levels, and I was pleased to just make it onto the wave with the rope which definitely has a certain technique. I wasn't concentrating too much on what to do when I got on the wave as my arms were pumped and hands were cold from the rope, but it was great fun! Luckily we have 2 throw away rides in the heats (Ladies are up on Wednesday) where I can sort out my run plan :)

Men are up tomorrow - will probably be a long day with 4 rides and a long time taken to tow on to the wave. But if today's practice rides are anything to go by we should see some huge air and big moves. Due to the lack of practice time the locals definitely have an advantage, but even with just a short time to get used to the waves the Brits are looking strong.