kayak, kayak, KAYAK!!!!

This summer was a hectic summer… I raced in august and September in Sicily and Italy. I also had an exam in September so i had to continue the balancing like I do in the winter months through summer.

Races in the august were Sicilian regional races and were all about 1000m, but me and Chris were training for the 500m and the 200m, so the 1000m felt really long! but i managed to get a silver in the U23 and came 7Th in the juniors. Chris managed to come in 3rd place in the seniors. Nicki was capsized by another woman :@ (don’t worry she got her revenge) and Gerald managed to get a silver medal in the masters!

In our September trip we had 2 competitions. One was a Sicilian regional and the second one(a week after the first) was the Italian national championships. going up to Sicily was very bad. It made everyone sea sick as it was very rough but me and Chris managed to hold it in. but I paid for my strong stomach because i spend the whole day feeling nauseous. This showed in my races.. I barely made it into the junior 500m final and managed to come 6Th in the final 14 sec behind the first guy! I didn’t even make it into the 200m final. I managed to get a silver medal in the k2 200m with my Sicilian friend Enrico! It was a bit of consolidation for my bad performance in the k1. Chris did really well! making a national record of 1:46 in the 500m but coming 4Th, if there were lanes, and no one was wash hanged he would have been on the podium for sure! He managed to come 5th in the 200m final and set another national record of 40.25sec! Gerald managed to snatch a silver medal in the 200m masters, and Nicki.. well Nicki got her full revenge getting gold in the 500m and silver in the 200m k1!

Chris, Nicki and i spent a week in Catania training while Gerald went home.  while training i saw my very first sword fish.. it was a 2.5m beast jumping 20m in front of us before doing a start! I don’t know about the others but i almost crapped myself! On Friday we started out long trip, by car, to Pescara. we started travelling at 4:30 pm and arrived at the race course at 10:30 am. After sleeping in the van for he night nobody felt like racing. We had lunch at the hotel and went back to the race course to race our 1000m heats. Chris and i didn’t make it through but Nicki managed to get into final A. In the 200m all of us  managed to get to the semi final.

The next day was all about the 500m for  Chris and i but Nicki also had her 1000m final. i managed to to get to the junior and senior semifinal. I was a bit disappointed as i wanted better in my junior semifinal but it was my 4th race in 45 min so i was exhausted.. but i was much faster than the regional the week before. in the 500m i was just 5 sec behind the Sicilian champion compared to 14 sec in the regional. Chris narrowly missed out on the senior final. We both felt that we were so close yet so far. Nicki also managed to get to her 500m semi. in the afternoon Nicki showed us all how its doe by coming 4th in the 1000m Final A!!!!

Even though i was disappointedwith some of my results i still look at these trips in Sicily in a positive way. I learnt so much about racing! I used starting blocks for the first time! and i saw guys that contend for the position of world champion and i saw Josefa idem who go a silver medal in Beijing!

I had a really good time with the Maltese team! had some good laughs! Ate some good Italian food! and made lots of new friends!!!!

i want to thank you and a BIG well done Chris and Nicki for achieving their fantastic results, for organising this trip and helping me in my training and racing.

I come back from these races stronger and more skilled and with motivation to do better next year!

Right now I’m in my first year in university studying podiatry and training to be stronger next year!

FINALLY my exams are over and I’m enjoying training as I should!! The weather got hotter by 8 degrees in 2 days with very humid air so it was hard to breathe!! Today it is better though probably due to a change of wind direction.

There has been a big change of plans about this years races. We are not going to the world championships any more because of financial reasons. Instead we are going to compete in sicilian regional races and Italian national championships. These are ideal for us as we have a great hunger to race and the more races we do the better. Also Chris and Nicki went to scicily a few weeks ago and made friends with a club in Cataniaand it sounds that we’ll be in good company We should also be competing in cyprus, like last year, this time focusing more on k2 and focusing on the 500m and 200m distances. My next race is this Saturday in Birgu

All these races are making me want to jump with excitement!!!

Sorry i haven’t blogged in a while, but i have been extremely busy coping with life!! This was my last year at college and now I have “A” levels and if I do well, I get into university :).

So this year if I wasn’t training I was studying. Ofcourse I did go out with my friends on week-ends. I also had a great time camping with my kayak club. We walked all the way around the island of gozo in 2 days it ROCKED.

I’m still training with Chris… and Tibi is still trying to kill us.. but it is paying off. We are both feeling much faster than we were this time last year.

We plan to compete in k2 in the world champoinships in Poznan, Poland this year and we also want to win some medals in Cyprus this October.

On Sunday 14th June the federation hosted a 500m, 5000m and 200m race, Held in birgu. I went really well and was really happy with my performance :). Chris shot off and dominated the 500m race and won it with me 11 sec behind, followed by Gerald who was 8 seconds by behind me, who was followed by Nicola 16 seconds behind him. In the 5000m Chris shot off and I managed to stay on his wave, and ended finishing 1 sec behind him, followed by Gerald then Nicola( i forgot the times) and then Peter. In the 200m race we had lots of 1 vs. 1 races, I competed against Gerald were I won by 9 sec, and I competed against Chris were he won by 2 sec.

This means i was second in all my races!

In all it was a very fun day and all of us enjoyed it and went well :), all of us are improving and gettingstronger!

I trained with Chris quite a lot lately. Even though I am slower than him we discovered that when I ride his wave we had a relative heart rate!!

This was great news as we both wanted to train together from the beginning and now the time has come! There was quite a jump from my training to his and it was quite hard to finish sessions!! But I held on as much as I could!! for the past 2 weeks chris went on a training camp, in Portugal, in the NELO training centre. He’s having a blast over there the photos he took are beautiful the water is extremely flat! To see for yourselves check out his blog on     http://chriskayak.blog.com.mt/

These last 2 weeks I made some good times and I’m very pleased!!! the motivation is extremely high!!

It feels good when you see results from a hard winter’s training!! The fact that we never skipped training even though the bad conditions is now paying off! to get good results you need to work for them!

That sentence does not only apply to sports or training but it applies to almost everything in life!!

Weather it’s school, work or even simply cleaning your bedroom!!

On 8th of march we held the trditional manoel island race. I competed in a k2 with my buddy Chris Camilleri, it was our first time racing in a k2 together and… WE CAME FIRST IN EACH RACE!!!!  ;)  We really enjoyed it! Our first race was a 8.5 km race where we did it in 39:46, the second was a 2.7 km race 12:34 and we also won the sprint!!! They were the best races of my life!! I really enjoyed them and for the first race we went better than we wanted to!!! even though the conditions were bad! (winds reaching force 6 )

Both Chris and I learnt a lot from this race and are hoping to compete in a k2 more often but we won’t forget the k1 

I was sick last week and i didn’t train for four days, but on Monday it was back to training! I was relieved to start training again, I was really bored at home doing em… NOTHING! Chris was also quite sick abd he started training this week aswell. At the moment the weather is quite bad with winds going up to force 7 [ ]. Today i did some good times on the ergometer, but it was a sad day because Nicki wet into hospital :(  GET WELL SOON NICKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This week has been rest week, it doesn’t mean we didn’t train, but the sessions were easier than the previous weeks. Chris, Nicki and I all made new pbs in the past two weeks and we were all very happy!! I feel that we’re training harder than ever before! The club’s motivation is playing a big part in the motivation, and it shows in our results!! Yesterday there was a wierd tide and i can’t understand what was going on!

Yesterday we had the first session of a 10 week beginner’s course. Even though me and Nicki had done 25 km and Chris 30 km just a few hours before we still had loads of fun! And everybody seemed to enjoy it which is a great bonus!! Chris and Nicki were fantastic coaches these 8 new members are having the best possible start in kayaking hopefully they will accomplish everything they want to!

Even though it was Christmas it didn’t push us away from training, actually the urge to train was greater!! Even though Nicki was abroad, Chris and I went down and did a session together. It was a really good session and I really enjoyed it!! Chris also had a surprise for Nicki… he showed it to her today (since her plane landed today). It was a masterpiece that showed great work! He did her kayak up for her!!!(Pimp my kayak xD) It looked FANTASTIC!! Literally brand new! very shiny and smooth! The pictures are of Chris onChristmas day and of Nicki’s kayak. happy holidays