A True Off Day and Clean Lines

(Monday 18^th) Since I had done a flatout race pace the day before I was due for an off day and a real one, not spontaneously doing a 20mile hike.  I had a pretty much a day of eating nutella and laying on a couch. Later in the afternoon Emmanuel and did a short hike down into the gorge of the isere were is narrows down to about 15ft wide, and the volume is about 1200cfs. It was pretty cool and good to do something light that didn’t involve the arms 

We also did a grocery store run and I was able to pick out some good race fuel 

(Tuesday 19^th) Today would be a hard day after having a day off. The classic can be broken up into thirds which are all quite different from each other. The first third has a few rapids none, particularly long or difficult.  The middle third is very flat and easy, this is the place to put on the power and make the boat move. The final third is the hardest and most continuous.  It is particularly hard in a race because you just had a long flat section to get good speed in.  This day Emmanuel and I did 3 classic runs with certains thirds being easy and hard. For the first and third runs we would take it easy on the 1^st and 3^rd, 3rds and go hard in the middle third and on the 2^nd run we would go hard on the 1^st and 3^rd, 3rds and take it easy on the middle third.  My first run had to careless stern hits, but for my 2^nd and 3^rd runs I had completely clean lines for the first time since I got here.  Needless to say I didn’t really care about the times, hopefully the abuse to my nice boat is over. After this morning session we went back, ate a standard lunch of pasta with some chicken and relaxed for a bit.

In the early evening, Chris, Cas, Emmanuel and I went to the lake to do an easy recover session. I was raining lightly and with the cold water temperatures there was a heavy fog on the water which was pretty neat.  Most of the time it’s hard to focus on what I’m doing just because you are surrounded by snow covered mountains.