The last two weekends I have been playing touch. We did a tournament in Berlin and have been coached by some Scottish coaches that we flew in to Vienna to train us.
The Berlin tournament was really fun. I played for Prague and Vienna. Prague were made up of guys from Prague and some form Vienna. The Vienna players helped both teams get into the finals for 3rd and 4th. So we mixed up the teams for the final and agreed we would again share the 3rd spot before we played, and then just had a fun game without even counting the score.
We did not have the competitive ambition of the winners but the relaxed play for fun team mix up was really great and revitalized my enthusiasm for touch. If we want to win then we have to field our best players in one team and not let them play other games so they have energy for finals. However in my line of work it is important to have fun and I was not the only one that felt like they had won coming 3rd.
We then did a day and a half of tourism in Berlin. I learned lots about German and Berlin's History both of which are really fascinating and I was totally ignorant about. I can really recommend the Fat Tire bike tour of Berlin and the German History Museum. Really an intense and fascinating story that is well worth doing at least once.
In just under 20 years on from the falling of the Iron Curtain you can drive from Vienna to Berlin through Czechoslovakia without even a passport. After the History of Berlin this is a really cool thing, (apart for it is bloody long drive).
This week I switch back to Mothing. Thursday is a National holiday and I will train and practice some crowd pleasing cunning stunts. Then on Friday afternoon Niki and I will get filmed for a Austrian TV show. The plan is to full off a mix of cool moves and spectacular crashes in front of the camera, without taking myself, my boat or any expensive TV cameras out of action. After the filming I will drive to Ammersee in southern Germany for the Moth regatta there this weekend.
I hope the Ammersee regatta will give me 2 days of racing practice before the Euros and it will be the last opportunity I have to sail before I drive to Denmark for the Euros. Niki is probably not coming this year so I will have total control of the car keys and I have learned again (the hard way) to learn the bloody course. So I hope to finish my first race in Germany and not come last! I also hope to have enough fitness and energy so I do not fall asleep in the bar afterwards like last year. Basically it will be hard not to do better.
I have just got to wet flat the paint drips off the foils and I think I am sorted. This years Euros/Worlds preparation has raised my bar considerably from previous years. A stunning 3 days racing (hopefully) and more than 1 hour flying time in a boat that I know works! This year my Euros targets are to not have to count any DNFs in my score, get some real racing in, and come in the middle of the fleet AGAIN...
So hope to see some of you at Ammersee and even more a the Euros.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment