Downtime

So as I mentioned during the week the last race of the local paddling season was yesterday. My day went all around okay, but I have to say it is nice to have made it to the off season.

For me personally the racing was about in line with where I gauge my ability. This is in contrast with my last race where I thought a lack of fitness and race skills meant I didn't do as well as I was capable of, kind of a frustrating experience. This time I came around 6th, which is about right. More importantly than that is that I wasn't too far off 5th, which is where the big improvement is over last time. Happy with that and a nice way to end the season.

Now that the season is over I am going to try and force myself to pratice what I preach, which is take it easy for a couple of weeks. I really struggle with this bit personally (as many athletes do), but I was getting pretty worn out by the end of racing, so I think mentally I need to hold myself to it. This is particularly hard given the recent news about the Australian Championships, which makes it easy to get excited about training in the short term, but to be honest, that is 23 weeks away, so I can probably afford to take it easy for a couple of weeks.

This break will be important coming into the start of next season. With most sports these days it is easy to make the season very long and paddling is no different. The season kind of starts in August and goes through to May. Most people start training properly for the season in July which means you can find yourself only have a month of downtime if you aren't careful. This is a long time to keep yourself mentally energised, which means you can find yourself hitting a wall about half way through.

My plan for the next couple of weeks is to just train when I feel like it. I am not sure if that means I will simply train as normal or whether I will not train at all or settle somewhere in between. I think it will mean that I will be prioritising sleep over training rather than the other way around for once which will be good. I

Whatever happens I think the important thing will be making sure I have some fun so that when the work starts again I am ready for it.