The past week has turned out to be a really productive training week, with some solid 2k efforts on Monday followed by a couple of good endurance sessions. A key session I do (this is a long session of intervals) to test out my fitness about this time each year was a slight improvement on this time last year, which I was pleased with after having such an average week before. I am finding now that I have been paddling for a while that the gains are so much smaller and they are noticed further apart and that can make it a little harder mentally at times.
On Saturday we had the NZ marathon championships at Lake Karapiro. I was pleased to win my 4th National marathon title. The competition was not super strong. The other sprint guys opted not to race with the sprint world cups only a few weeks away. I on the other hand was only too happy to get some more miles under my belt.
It was a good hit out with 5 laps and 5 portages. I averaged 4m33s per km on my own for 36k so it was a good way to finish a solid training week. Second place was Matt Thompson just 5 minutes back.
I now have a week in Auckland packing and tidying up loose ends before we leave for Europe to race the second and third World Cups.
