A river and town transformed...

Aime is a place transformed today. The first official controlled release is today. All of the European teams arrived late last night or early this morning and were out on the river. The car park at the get out has been Painted up into lanes for busses with trailers and car parks around the edges for teams like us with no trailer. It is a relative hive of activity, with people and boats everywhere. It is great to catch up with people that I haven't seen for two years 

This morning the river is being controlled down to classic level, we again had a little classic time trial amongst ourselves with the British team. I paddled my race boat for the first time on the river... Some may say not such a smart idea... I must admit that I was paddling down the first rapid thinking to myself... I haven't got the set up right, I'm too loose...I felt like I paddled pretty well reasonable control considering the looseness and only made a couple of small mistakes, that I can easily neaten up in the next couple of days...unfortunately I made one large mistake which resulted in my spinning out on the mouton rapid, having a couple of rolls and generally making a goose of myself in front of lots of spectators.... Watching the video I lost over 45 seconds dicking around with this so taking that into account and the fact I had a little bit of a sulk to the finish line I can potentially do a fast time on race day if I can keep things straight... I have spent a lot of time laughing at myself over this... 

We cracked out a bit of teams run practice in the 2nd run of the day.. Which was a little messy in places, but the strategy is really going to depend on how we all go race day, who is in the team and what sort of time differences there are between us.

All in all I am feeling pretty good about where I am at, I want to change my foam slightly in the boat so I am a little tighter which will improve my control in key places. I will also wet and dry the hull off the boat on Monday just to take out all the little mold imperfections in the finish and to hopefully make the hull slightly faster. 

The next few days of paddling are all about tuning up at race level on the river, resting and staying cool and collected. As someone pointed out I am old and experienced and should be able to keep my head better than some of young guys, and I just need to back myself in to get it done. Fingers crossed...