“Training has really ramped up the last couple of weeks as we’re now less than 5 weeks out from national marathon championships. I headed over to Canberra during the Easter long weekend for a training camp organised by Margi Bohm and Australian Canoeing. I left on the Friday and got back to Perth Monday with 2 solid 12 hour days of training in between so I had a slightly less relaxing Easter than most enjoyed. Was definitely a worthwhile trip however.

We had a professional running coach come down who showed us the proper running technique with video analysis and demonstrations. We also had video analysis and time trials with our portage running and portage entries and exits which will definitely pay dividends during the portages at the champs. As well as this, we did some time trials over 5000, 1800, 1000, 500 and 200 metre distances (we had to wait till 9 o’clock until we could see across the river through the fog) and my results were very pleasing. A physiotherapist came down and gave us an assessment which proved very valuable for me especially as I’ve never had access to physiotherapist help of that quality. She certainly had some very interesting things to say which I need to work on! We were coached on our flat water technique and came away with some great quality footage and instructions. The most interesting part however was the blood lactate testing. We began at 10kms/hr and paddled at a constant speed for 3 minutes. We were then pricked in the ear, had our blood lactate levels tested and paddled for another 3 minutes, picking up the pace by 0.5 kms/hr. We continued in this fashion until we were no longer able to hold the pace.

We ended up with a lovely J curve at the finish which is some of the most helpful numbers a marathon paddler can look at as I can determine my threshold boat speed and heart rate. It was a full on Easter weekend and so I was pretty glad to return home and still have the Monday night and the Tuesday to have a bit of a relax.