It has been a while since I have wrote as I have been busy getting back into the groove of school, training, and work. I am very happy to be back in school though it is nice to be home and have some consistency. It is the end of the competition season, but there is no end to training. Fall is when we ramp up our lactic and aerobic capascity and ease into weights again. I also completed a 30 day yoga challange that finished on Oct. 9 at Moksha Yoga West.
At the beginning of the summer I injured my left knee while running. Throughout the summer my knee dislocated and dispute my efforts to strengthen the muscles in my quadriceps and surrounding my knee I still felt pain and had dislocations. Therefore, I recently had medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction knee surgery. Because of this I am forced to sit on a couch all day with my knee elevated and iced. This is a challenge for me as I am a very busy and active person. This time resting has caused me to reflect on my previous competition season. I made huge strides this year within my motivation, technique, and overall involvement.
In Prague I placed 21st, which was not the result that I expected of myself. Vajda (a carbon/Kevlar boat production company in Slovakia) had a abnormally large amount of orders for boats. Therefore, when I arrived in Europe I expected to pick up a brand new boat and have it outfitted for World Cup #4. Unfortunately, this was not the case and I was forced to paddle a TEST boat which was outfitted very differently to how I have my own boat outfitted; the seat was to high, there were no hip pads, and the slots where my knees go were too loose forcing me to constantly slide around in my boat. In the end I was 1 second away from making semi-finals. Senior World Championships will take place in Prague for the 2013 competition season. I am exited to get back there and show that river what I am made of!
Bratislava was the last World Cup of the season. Every year there is a World Cup here and there always seems to be a cold snap with intense wind and rain. Michal Martikan, who is a famous C1 paddler from Bratislava designed the course, he made all of the moves very difficult, but attainable if you used the water. In my race run I made a mistake on one of the easier moves in my semi final run, which caused me to flip over and miss 2 gates. I was also in the middle of fighting cold which really weakened my body. In the end I placed 12th overall, with a significant improvement from last year from 22nd.I then went on from there to take a vacation with my Austrian side of the family and my boyfriend to the Cote De Azur, South of France. It was a well deserved break, where I swam in the ocean and ate way to many croissants!
On the way home from Europe my brand new boat that had only been paddled about 10 times was badly damaged by Air Canada. I am still in the process of getting it covered by insurance. Luckily I have my older boat that I was able to train with up until my knee surgery.
To finish off the paddling season we had our first ever slalom race at the Harvie Passage on the Bow river. It was a great turn out with people from all over Alberta and many spectators. I had very good race runs, but I had more fun coaching the up and coming paddlers Calgary and Alta area has. There were some open boaters that came out and a bunch of the kids were trying different categories!
That same day while I was taking down the course I was informed of some very sad news that a respected fellow paddler passed away the day before while running a class IV waterfall on the Cheakamus river. Peter Thompson was a person who made impact on you even if you had only known him for a short time. He was always optimistic and his smile was infectious.
Peter you will be greatly missed and I will continue to paddle hard for you.
Peter Thomson 1993-2012
Here are some links to check out live video from my races and results:
