Last night I landed at Heathrow, from what definitely started to feel like early summer in Portugal to the unmistakeably winter chill of West London. At the end of the camp Jurgen annouced it had been the biggest camp he had run, and I certainly feel improvements have been made over that time. I come back to the UK with more "water time" under my belt, a better idea of how I am applying the power in the boat and what changes I need to make over the coming weeks.
The spirit on camp was good. When we go on camp there is often two groupings of athletes - the very top few guys just mixing between themselves and a larger group with only intermitant cross-over. This camp was different as we all mixed together for the full length of the camp. This certainly helped me re-acquaint myself with my boat skills and meant I always felt we were moving in one big direction as one big group. I think this really helped everyone develop further. Alot of the camp was conducted in two 8's, with a pair or four going out too. We generally had continuity to who was in which crew, but mixing it up every now and then to keep things moving. When we wern't in the 8's we were in fours, again very much mixed in. All of the camp's timed pieces were done in fours. The first batch I was in a four with Pete, Alex and Alex - you can check out their biographies and see that these are pretty talented guys to row with. The pieces felt Ok and we did alright, middle-top of the pack, but was slightly disappointed I hadn't done better. On Saturday we did the second batch and I was in a four with Moe, Hodge and Alex [again]. This time the pieces felt similar but we gained a better overall position (winning three of the four pieces, with all the boats being very tight together). Overall I was pleased with how camp went and I am looking forward to the coming weeks.
In 10 days time we be having some seat racing. I will explain later what this actually entails, but the crux of it is that we will be raced and raced and raced, to find out how we all rank relative to each other. This will be real tough and so the focus for the next week and a half has to be on recovery and preparation.
My general health is good and my back is feeling ok - but it still needs to pregress further for me to have total confidence in it.
Finally, my sister Charlotte is 21 today. Happy Birthday Charlotte. It's traditional to embarass relatives with photos from the past when approaching these significant milestones so I've had a dig about on the computer and found the pictures below. On the left it shows Charlotte at 15 in all her brace's glory (with mum, dad and Emily). On the right is Charlotte at 16th, minus the braces but plus a hooligan.
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