Caribbean breakthrough
Written by Bryony Shaw | 10 January 2011
The focus for my final training session of 2010 to prepare for the all-important “Pre-Olympic” season has been about time on the water and ultimately enjoying my windsurfing.
Having worked hard throughout 2010 on my training, racing and sponsorship relationships, this winter has certainly not been a time to let the foot off the gas.
Consistency has been the key focus in my training plan and heading out to Martinique, a French Caribbean island, was the ultimate venue to get quality time on the board. My training group included my coach Dom Tidey, who has at least fifteen years of Olympic Campaigning experience, four of which have been working with me, and we are confident that we’re on track to dominate in 2011. The three girls from the French Elite Squad who invited me to join their training camp have all shown their strengths throughout this season, and with their coach Stephane it was a fun crowd to be with.
Although we were hoping for the wind to blow around 20 knots each days, it did not always play ball and most of the two weeks we trained in around 10-12 knots. To be honest that suited me just fine as I had a bit of a breakthrough in this wind range, which has been an inconsistent area of my sailing for a while. We did a lot of upwind speed testing and so I was able to really analyse my stance and technique, and by the end of the first week of Dom coaching we had identified I potential speed gain. So the second week I could spend engraining and refining it on both port & starboard. This was an invaluable improvement and one that I hope I can take into 2011 and repeat in a race situation.
Martinique is a beautiful island, of which we did get to do a bit of exploring. One day we waded up to the base of a waterfall, another day we did a long distance windsurf to another bay and had lunch there, and down from our apartment there was an awesome surf beach so I went surfing most days! In our little village of Tartane there were lots of little stalls selling tropical fruit, freshly caught fish, home made jams, straw bags, coconut shell purses, locally distilled rum & fruit flavoured punch … so we had some great gifts to take home with us.
These last few weeks have been about staying fit and active. I have just been part of a training camp down in Weymouth, seeing the team specialists including our psychologist, physio, massage therapist, strength & conditioning trainer, physiologist, nutritionist & my coach. It was great to catch up with some of the sailors and windsurfers about their winter training & Christmas festivities. I have been busy with my sponsors Skandia, Fat Face & VW, and I have also done some cool press interviews including Hello! Magazine, which is part of their February issue…! Check it out on my Facebook page –
Bryony Shaw Windsurfing.