Hi all, (Photos above of Hamilton Island and my girl)
Back again after a long time away from the blog. We are now coming up to the Sail Down Under Series again for 2008\2009. This year I will compete in Sydney International Regatta, Sail Melbourne and Australian National Titles. This means I end up in Melbourne and Perth and some expensive flights !!!
Since Europe I have worked and only recently in late October finished my resignation period for a full campaigning season. I now live in Maroubra on the North End of the beach with my beautiful girlfriend Apple who is from Thailand but has Cambodian and Lao ancestory. We have been together 6 months and she is a little dynamo and some weeks trains harder in the gym then me !!! She’s very supportive and things are going well so happy days on the misses front. On the financial front I had a strong budget but numerous things went wrong !!! a lot of bad luck and stupidity on my behalf …
In July I was caught going 70kms an hour in what i thought was a 60km zone. Not such a big crime but when the police officer says are you aware this is a school zone (40km between 3 – 430 pm) … SHATTERED … lost my license had to sell my motorbike and an $800 fine …
Next thing was an expectation for a large tax return … I thought I would get around $2400 and my tax calculator certainly gave me that impression. Unfortuantely and noone told me this I lose almost 85% of my tax return to pay back my university degree … ARGHHHHHH !!! I got $367 tax back !!!
Next thing was I left my gepida racing bike I bought in Europe outside my mates house locked up in Bondi. I walked back up 35 mins later and it was gone … stolen and locks bolt cuttered … $1100 to replace it with a new TREK 1.2 road bike (Which is now my only means of transport !!!) can you believe it >!?!?!
All of a sudden the budget wasn’t looking so spectacular … Even after selling my motorbike I have just enough to buy a new boat and sail and pull together an average campaign in Australia …
So I worked as much as I could till I needed to train and since the end of October I’ve been training full time. times in the gym, cycling to the sailing club and back (30kms a day) and 4 - 5 on water sessions a week.
I went to Hamilton Island with the Australian Sailing Team and enjoyed a brilliant week up there. Fully piad for and well looked after it was as if my dream of pro sailing came true for but a week. We were fitness tested, Physio and Psych Tested and also assessed on water.
Fitness was my biggest suprise and I came out far and above the fittest out of the laser lads. The test involved chin ups, 4 min row and chest pull (the opposite of press as we pull on ropes in our sport of sailing!)
The AST requirements are 15 chin ups, more then 1170m on the rower in 4 mins and 20 chest pulls (hanging off the bar and touching your chest to the pad while your feet rest on a bench). I did 15 chins, 1202m on the rower and 20 chest pulls !!! So the good news is I made the entry fitness requirements for the full team already … now I just need to come top 10 at the worlds hahahaha … oh my
Anyway Hamilton was a great opputunity and I learned alot from the coaches and under Tom Slingsby who also did some coaching. I’ll attach some photos !!!
From Nov 8 till SIRS (Dec 6, 2008) i will be full time training and going as intense as possible till 1 week before where I recover and eat well coming into SIRS. That means 10 hours of cycling a week, 4 -5 on water sessions and 5 gym sessions a week. Good news is that isn’t all talk and I have actually done it the last week (but admittably am sore and tired!). I’m also surfing alot which is cool as it is something else to learn and a bit of a detour from the constant training. Going all out for this one as I want to be number 1 in Australia this year.
Watch this space as i’ll be putting up alot more blogs in the next few weeks to document training and regattas and also my life!
Thanks for reading …
