Tour de Varese
Two weeks have past since last busting out races at Szeged. In those two weeks I have had a fantastic five Day holiday in San Remo, Nice and Monaco before officially starting the European “Summer Slaughter”.
For the last week I have been training in Varese in the North of Italy at the new Australian Institute of Sport European Training Centre (ETC). Whilst being here the ETC has accommodated not just the Kayak squad but also Aussie Woman sailing team, Boxers and Judo players,Athletics and swimmers next week. The weather has been extremely warm which always helps to keep the enthusiasm up in training.
We have busted out around 140km in the boat. Comprising of some classic Gold Coast sessions, 20x500m, 4x2km, and a lot of washleads. All this on top of the “Tour de Varese” time trials to and from training on the bike. We split up into 2 groups, red bikes and white bikes. Morry and myself on red and Smithy, Jimmy and Pistol (Jake) on white. Today was the last day and the final sprint stage. Training partner Morry officially took the yellow jersey with team “Red bikes” taking out the team championship. There were tactics coming into play, drafting and break aways, with the occasional elbow everyday to and from training kept it fun. We definitely could not have kept up the intensity of training without some of the best pizza and pasta i have ever had thanks to Europa restaurant.
We leave for Szolnok, Hungary, tomorrow for the next 4-5 weeks. Szolnok is not the most interesting place but is great for training being that it always seems to be hot, still water with a course, good accommodation with Internet and there are no distractions. It is the same place that I did my final preparation before the Olympics so hopefully I can be paddling just as fast if not faster come August.
The Pic below wasn’t set up at all…... plenty of elbows being thrown and unfortunately Pistol ended up in the garden. Jimmy was absent and under suspicion due to the size of his calves.