We are in Bourg Saint Maurice, in the French Alps, for a week of training and a race.

As I am writing this I can hear the sound of singing coming from the Military Training Camp which is just next door to our apartment. I cannot vouch for their fighting skills but if there was a “sing off” instead of war these guys would definitely win.

The apartment Kate, Christian and I are staying in is about the size of most peoples’ bathrooms and I have to fold my bed up in the morning so that we can fold out the kitchen table. That is ok though as we are spending most of our time either training or in the Boulangerie trying the various French pastries.

Kate, Christian and me at the top of a mountain

Bourg is a great course, it is one of the steepest Slalom venues in the world with very fast water making it really tough to get on line and then to stay on it. I have missed more gates in 3 days here than I have in my whole trip so far.

Physically everything is going well, my shoulder which had been giving me problems seems to have benefited from the rest I gave it.

Being able to paddle freely has also helped my enjoyment of the trip. I have been able to focus on some of the technical areas that I need to improve on if I am to be competitive.

The race is this weekend and should be a good field and a challenging course. The Aussie Under 23 team are also here along with a number of other countries.

Christian on Bourg

I believe that the Saturday qualification will be on the bottom part of the river with the Finals being held on the more challenging top section.

We are now in Bratislava after a week in Liptovsky Mikulas, Eastern Slovakia.

We were in Liptovsky for a three day race that doubled as an International Ranking Race and also selection for Slovak, Russian and Polish selection. Understandably, this led to some pretty high quality racing.

Results can be found here

Liptovsky 2011

I was really pleased with parts of my racing but wasn’t able to put it all into a full run. A sure sign that my technique is changing was the number of penalties I got. I think I missed 4 gates and hit 10 in 5 runs and that included one clean run. I have been working hard to become more aggressive with my paddling and these sort of weekends are going to be inevitable but I used to pride my self on my lack of penalties and so the shift in mindset is going to take time.

Bratislava is three hours from Liptovsky and is a city of 500,000 although it seems bigger than that for some reason.

We are in there somewhere!

We are staying in an apartment not far from the Tesco shopping centre in a group of flats that I have to admit always regarded as the “ghetto” when I had been to Bratislava previously, especially as our car was stolen from the Tesco carpark in 2004. It is not the ghetto of course and it teaches me another valuable lesson that the facade is no indication of the person inside. Having said that, we were advised not to leave anything inside the car at night or to leave it too close to the path in case it is vandalised.

On the way to the Police station in 2004 (In the back of the police car)

My shoulder has flared up again. It seems to get worse on the courses with the bigger whitewater, it must be the extra strain. I am going to take some time off the water and wait for it to get better now. It seems like the only way after trying to push through and manage the pain for a few weeks.

Tomorrow is the general election here in Australia and by coinscdence all our family are in marginal seats that will be decisive in who gets to govern.

The Penrith press has been really getting into the swing of things and had this great image in the paper today

I am lucky enough to be heading down to the AIS for a 2 week training camp to focus on regaining my strength. This is going to be a great experience and also I will be able to see my new niece Ivy a lot more (as well as my family). Winner all round.