World Series Race #1

2008 has started in earnest with the qualifier for the first World Series event in the bag. In the men’s kayak class 110 competitors started the race with no fewer than 5 past and present world champions and the reigning Olympic champion as well. It is by far the best World Series start line to date.

 

My day started with a solid run marred by one bad split section and a touch. I felt good during warm up despite the early 8:17 am start time but was not quite on my A game. Fabien Doerfler of Germany led the first runs and I was quite happy to have most of my splits on pace with his.

 

Second runs I was much more within myself and tried to go for controlled precision and had one of those effortless runs. There were a few places I probably should have pressed a little bit harder but I wanted to test the waters on my pacing model and stuck to my plan. I managed to move up to 7^th place for the day and my time was good enough for one of the fastest on the day, in fact if you double my second run time it would have won the competition by over 1.5 seconds. Not a bad start.

 

Tomorrow is the semi final and the A and B final so it will be a full day of racing. I am curious to see how things will shake out.

Where is the sun?

While I must admit it is better for training, coming all this way for cloudy weather is not really the point. Still it is good to be training down here again with lots of really fast paddlers from all over the world. With the World Series starting here in only a couple of weeks it will be fun to get back into the competitive groove.

 

The course here which was used for the 2000 Olympic Games has been modified significantly taking advantage of the design features which allow for the obstacles to be moved quite easily. The course has significantly more texture in what I assume is an attempt to emulate the conditions in Beijing. Having spent so much time here it will be good to have a slightly different environment to paddle on.