November 16, 2005

Subject: France Training! Wicked!


Hey to all!!

I've just arrived back home after some serious training over in the south
of France.

The short short version: It went really well!!

But here's a little more for those of you who like to hear about these
things!!

The first few days I was in Hyeres. The set up here was that we would do 5
or 6 races a day, different lengths and the coaches would keep track of
points. Each day we sailed for at least 4 hours with lots of wind for the
first four days and some light wind for the last two. With 25 Radials in our
fleet we had people from France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Finland, Denmark,
Austria, Switzerland and of course, yours truly... hailing all the way from
Canada! The Laser Standard fleet also had a very strong showing. Not a bad
turnout I thought!

The waves here were really nice, and apparently quite similar to what we
can expect at our worlds in Brazil. So that's an added bonus to the
training here! I do admit that I was having some troubles getting off the
line a couple of times, but I had managed to make it a priority for my
training to win some starts. I ended up with some much better starts later
on in the training!

The coaches here did a really excellent job at making it feel like a low
key regatta, even though it was only training. Sophie and Solenne were very
helpful with getting a boat for me to use and I really appreciate that! It
was bizarre to be at a training camp with no coach to help me at all, but in
the end with some reflection and the re-birth of my logbook, I think I
managed okay.

After the training in Hyeres, I went only 40 mins away from there to
another place called Ile des Embiez. I did a week training camp with
Sailcoach at their sailbase. Alp Alpagut coached us. It was really great to
have some small group training to really focus on those basic skills. We did
lots of mark roundings and it was quite good. We had all kinds of winds
again here, and again we sailed a minimum of 4 hours each day. After that
coaching, I still had an extra 4 days to kill in France and I managed to
sail all of those days as well, even though I was quite ready for a break.

In the end, after all this training I am feeling very tired. BUT what's
most important is that I'm feeling good. Strong, fast and ready to head down
to Brazil. I leave Calgary on the 24th of November. Only a few more days of
downtime and easy exercise before its back to the grind of heavy wind
sailing. Bring it on!

That's all for now. I heard that there is internet access in the lobby of
the hotel we're staying at, so I hope to send a few e-mails from Brazil to
all of you.

ciao for now,
~~Keamia~~