The weekend at Elton was focussed mainly on starting. Saturday kicked off with a briefing, and as there was no wind we had a long talk about how to do the perfect start. That led us up to lunch, which was a very nice curry. In the afternoon the sun came out and brought a steady breeze with it. It took the entire squad to launch the RIBs due to the reservoir level having been lowered by a metre for maintenance work on the dam.
The Mirrors also took a fair time to launch, due to having to wade out about 50m before the water was deep enough to float them. By the time we'd waded back with the trolleys then waddled back out to the boats there was no longer a need for warm up exercises, so on with the training!
Which consisted of lots and lots of practising things to do with starting, such as parking up, box starts etc. We stayed out for a good while to make up for the time lost during the morning , only finally coming in when bad light stopped play to be greeted with hot chocolate and cake (thanks Mum!).
After a a video debrief it was time for tea and the squad evening social. Pizzas all round were followed by a table tennis knockout tournament. After a lengthy and entertaining battle the final was a family affair, with team fitness guru Grayson (senior) being crowned champion.
On Sunday we started bright and early with a fitness session led by Matt Grayson aka "toughen up princess"! Unfortunately the forecast breeze never came, so we stayed inside for some great shore based activities, to help us all to learn how to prepare for competing in big events. We also covered how to set goals and discussed the forthcoming season's events.
With the flat calm continuing into the afternoon it was agreed that we'd spent long enough in the class room this weekend so by majority vote we had an early finish so everyone could get away and prepare for the first day back at school on Monday.
Thank you to Dave and Sarah for keeping us all busy and entertained during a weekend of difficult and frustrating conditions - there are now 26 pairs of fingers firmly crossed wishing for wind in three weeks time when we return to Elton again for our 4th training weekend.
