Clifden Freestyle Weekend

At the weekend the Galway lads, led by Barry Loughnane, hosted a great event up at Clifden. Two days of camping, kayaking, drinking and generally chilling out in glorious sunshine makes for a pretty perfect kayaking event! The hole was working in the afternoons too, so there was no need for an crazy early drive to get there like with most kayaking events! The general plan for the weekend was to show up on Saturday afternoon, have a paddling/coaching session followed by a flatwater freestyle comp and then head to Dun Loughlin beach for camping, bbq and beers. Sunday then there was the main competition followed by the traditional inflatable class.

The flatwater competition went really well, even though I havn't done much flatwater freestyle recently I think the training I'm doing is helping me hit moves more consistantly than I was a few months ago and I managed to get second place behind Barry Loughnane. Unfortunatly the actual competition on Sunday was nowhere near as successful and I finished the heat feeling like I had done nothing. I came sixth in the end which although it's not last is not where I want to be. Oh well, more work to be done obviously!

On Saturday evening we had a bbq, the Irish Freestyle AGM and a small session. Since the AGM I am now secretary of the Irish Freestyle Committe. Any suggestions on what to do for the year or advice on how to do a  secretarys job is more than welcome! Another advantage of the hole only working in the afternoon was that we got a nice long lie in on Sunday morning. That's another rareity at kayaking events, and a nice change! The less said about the competition the better but paddling the hole afterwards was good craic, my paddling started to kick back into gear and as the hole got faster and more retentive it was entertaining watching people to keep some kind of control over what kind of ends they were doing. Eventually we got sick of getting beaten every time we went into the hole and called it a day, and headed back towards Clifden for the prizegiving.

Next weekend I'm heading back to Clifden with a gang from ULKC, it should be a good chance to get the place properly figured out and hopefully improve the results at the next comp. I'm looking forward to that now, it should be another good weekend. Bis Bald!