Bright and early on a wet Sunday morning James and I set off with my new shinny boat to join the elite at Hurley. I’m not sure which elite we had more chance of joining, the locals with their driveways that James reckons are bigger than his house or the Tricky Woo pulling freestylers in the weir, still we did out best!
The event was well organised with a range of coaching sessions for all abilities. I took part in advanced moving water technique, freestyle starting out and freestyle improver which covered topics such as;
There was also time for some comical “virtual Hurley” where we pretended to be pulling all kinds of tricks on the wave while standing on the bank with our paddles. Apparently freestyle is a three stage process all about “visualising, doing and evaluating” and making a fool of yourself on the bank is a key part of the visualising! I did discover that playboating is much easier on the bank; it’s the water that’s the problem!
There were also sessions for beginners. I took along two friends form work that had never been in a boat before and they got almost one to one tuition all day and even got the chance to try out open boating as well as kayaking. Chris was able to impress everyone at work on Monday with his knowledge of the difference between round bottom and flat bottom boats and advising me what feather my paddles should be at.
All in all a great day was had by all and even AJ’s predicted torrential rain held off. I’d thoroughly recommend that you keep your eye open for similar events in the future, we picked up loads of useful tips and my muscles told me later that I’d been pushing myself a lot harder than a normal day floating down the river! James and I both manage a few successful surfs on the wave so you never know, give us 6 months and we’ll be full fledged members of the freestyle elite and if anyone’s offering to pay I’ll happily buy a river side property to match!Linda