Christmas Camps

It's kind of customary for Scottish canoeists to spend a good deal of December and January training down south, on the English and Welsh slalom courses. Traditionally these camps finish on Christmas eve, and recommence on the first of January. A lot of my friends always exclaim at the length of time I spend away from home during the festive season, when really I should be getting enthusiastically fed and 'watered'. The truth is, though, that these are actually my favourite training camps. There is something incredibly privileged about being able to take nearly two months and commit them to doing something I love. My friends are never surprised when they have to work right up to and immediately after and sometimes during Christmas, but they manage to express regret for me when I am spending the best holiday doing the best sport with some of my favorite people. That rant over, it leads to something Etienne Stott Mbe said to us during a talk at the home nations training camp this last weekend. He said that it is a privilege to be able to strive for excellence, and that he tries to aquire it in everything he attempts. Along with a lot of other valuable one-liners, such as 'use your rivals as an invaluable source of knowledge', this had an impact on me and the way I think about racing. It is so easy to get caught up in other people's lives. My winter training has revolved around focusing extensively on myself and my own sessions, but I have decided I don't want that to reach a point that it excludes other athletes for the sake of my own ego. The weekend at the Olympic course at lee valley shed some light on that for me, because during training with girls I compete against, I tried to open my mind. Possibly more importantly, I also had to let go of my pride. This is a struggle for any athlete, because to learn how to do something better, you have to come to terms with possible fractures in your own technique. I think it really helped to discuss techniques and plans with other girls in my category, because once you can get over the initial bizzareness of helping one another, there's a huge depth in having a second, third and even fourth opinion. I found myself in the learning category many, many more times than in the instructive one, and got way more out of the weekend than I expected.
Prior to the home nations camp, I had been in Nottingham training with my Scottish teammates and my coach. This was a special camp for all of us, as it kind of highlighted how far we had come since the first time Neil coached us. The Christmas atmosphere and closure of an old year brings up a lot of thoughts of the future, and how far we have to go before excellence. I love ending this time of year with an intense training camp, and it felt like we packed libraries of information into every session, transferring between each other and encoding new found techniques. Now though, there are nine days left until Christmas, and I have a  whole week left until I go home. I'm currently in Cardiff training on the international whitewater site, getting as many things sorted out as I can before Christmas. This is such a good time of year to push yourself to the absolute limit, because at the end of it there is a whole beautiful day for family, eating, drinking and presents. And more importantly for me, there is new year, and the start of a whole new season.