Wednesday 18 March 2015

Race Report: Lee Valley Premier Division 14/15th March 2015

The first race of the season is always an interesting outing, dusting off your racing mindset that has been under wraps for the winter months and getting down to the business that you train for. This particular weekend was doubly interesting, as it was selection for the Junior and Under 23 teams. Our focus was on testing our racing process as thoroughly as possible, with an eye to making refinements ahead of Senior selection in three weeks time.

Our 1st Place Trophy from Saturday
Saturday's race ended very well for us, with a win. Most satisfying was the way we raced our runs, especially our second run. Our first effort was okay, but we had six seconds of penalties added to our time, and we also had some other mistakes to iron out. We worked hard to prepare a really good plan for the second run, and we attacked the run aggressively, but with composure. It was a really fun run, we were a little wild here and there, but we executed the lines well and made the improvements we had wanted. It was a great feeling to be stretching our legs and putting our skills to work. As well as winning the C2 race, we would have won the K1 Women's race too, which is sometimes a good marker, as the pace of world class K1W and C2's is often similar. So to finish Saturday in that way allowed us to say that not only had we executed our race process well, but that our race process could deliver some fast canoeing too!

As we were the first category to race, it meant we had a little time after our runs to watch the other competitors. The stand-out effort of the day was Joe Clarke's first run. It was an absolute scorcher! Joe has a really solid, composed style, but with some tasty tricks to add to the dish, and he served it up spicy on that run! It was a pleasure to watch and gave him the win that day.

Sweet glass model trophy for 2nd place on Sunday!
The next race on Sunday was another chance to get out and mix it up with the other crews. David Florence and Richard Hounslow fired an excellent run straight off the bat, and we had a bit of a tough run, again with a couple of penalty touches added, but some significant time losses too. Our largest mistake came in the 'Oval' section (the area just after the half way mark). We misread a tricky sequence, taking on a spin to try and make things a bit easier for ourselves. As it turned out, we did a bad job of it, which meant we lost a lot of time against the other crews, who all chose the alternative option. Between runs we analysed what we could and decided to change our plan. Our second run turned out very well, we sorted out most of the problems we'd had on the first runs and we were a lot faster. David and Richard did not improve, but their first run withstood our assault, and we came in second, by 1.14 seconds. Davies/Lister and Westley/Franklin also had a good go, but fell foul of the tricky course.

On Sunday, it was Mallory Franklin's turn to impress, she ripped an excellent run down to win the kayak women's race. Tom Brady won his first ever Premier Division race, something that may surprise people, as he is a very swift kayaker. It was also great to see so much quality paddling in the Junior and Under 23 selections. The standards of paddling at this level are climbing all the time worldwide, but it is hard not to imagine some of our young guns getting stuck in. It's just great to see such young athletes racing so well, against such good opposition, on such a hard river as Lee Valley. I'll have my fingers crossed when the squad goes out to Brazil for the Junior and Under 23 World Championships in Brazil in the back end of April!

As for us, we have a few more weeks of preparation to get involved with before we aim to book our place on the British Team for 2015. It's a very important race for everyone, and always delivers some drama. So I will keep you posted, bye for now!