Wow time is really flying at the moment. Another week has gone by and its blog time, so what have we been up to at the Artemis Offshore Academy for our first week in 2012?
Well the first order of business for the squad was to meet up on the Isle of Wight for a meteorology day. Funnily enough this was also the day of the big storm which cut 26 000 homes across the UK of power and shut many roads, bridges and other transport networks, including the Isle of Wight ferry. Well and truly putting a stop to ‘met day’.
On Wednesday we did manage to get over to the island and we spent a fantastic day with Dr Neil Western our psychologist working on the specifics of our programme, more specifically dealing with the build up to big races and how to be in the right frame of mind mentally. Generally I find myself getting quite wound up before many of my races worrying if I am ready to go out and do well. Have I done the right training to be competitive? Have I prepared the boat well enough to finish the race? The idea here being to work backwards from these worries and make best laid plans to ensure you can answer all of them with a solid yes!
The next part of our shore based programme was a meeting with our Physiologist Pete Cunningham. This was another fascinating day looking at our fitness levels in a more scientific way than I have ever done before by measuring our blood lactate levels. We were also taught technique for lifting heavier weights which was very useful. We were all given notes alongside a video of ourselves doing each exercise with specific parts to work and concentrate on. Depending on our fitness requirements we are now all working on different aspects. Personally I am working on my cardio still, with lots of volume training. This means lots of long distance stuff at a low intensity, which is often quite hard to fit in but I vow not to make this an excuse for slacking! Others who want to beef up a bit are hitting the gym more, the Figaro’s can be quite a handful at times and so a certain amount of strength is needed to be able to fight off exhaustion that little bit longer.
It was then off to the London boat show with all the Artemis team which was a grand day out. We all jumped on the train, and bar a few slightly embarrassing navigational errors on the tube (not a concern as it wasn’t like we were all wearing our branded clothing…) we made it to the Excel arena. We met Mike Golding and listened to his talk on the Vendee and also Ian and Bart on their road to the Olympics 2012 which was very interesting.
A quick flight the next day and before we knew it, Aaron, Ollie and I were in the sunnier climes of the south of France. After a weekend of boat work our boats went in the water this morning. Unfortunately I missed the first days training trying to fix my ballast problem which has become an unrelenting issue. I seem to have spent far to many hours trying to fix it and it certainly is a touchy subject for me at the moment! I had a small tantrum about it earlier and got it out my system, I think I was just annoyed at having missed a days training, what have the others got from today that I haven’t?
Anyway… All part of the experience, and when I get it fixed (which I will!) I put out a fair warning now, I may become far to annoyingly jubilant to be around for a least a day or two!
