June 28, 2003
Augsburg, Germany

We are just finishing up the first stop during what will be a long summer of traveling on the international whitewater circuit. Here in Augsburg, Germany, about 30 countries are in town for their final training camp on the World Championship course before returning for the actual event in late July.

Click here for a few more photos from our latest training camp in Augsburg.

For the Jacobi/Taylor canoe team, the focus has been on race-day technique and psyche (mental preparation.) Instead of an emphasis on repetition and the rigor of whitewater training, we are building up to first World Cup race in less than two weeks.

For each session, we rehearse our race-day warm-up. We then move to the main channel of the Eiskanal (so-called because it was constructed from an original side channel on the Lech river, used to move ice around the dam). Early in the week we backed off our usual intensity in an effort to get oriented after a trans-Atlantic flight. We also wanted to see how effective (i.e. ‘fast’) we could go with a slower pace and minimal effort.

Our goal is to find ‘easy speed,’ a term borrowed from Olympic swimming. Slalom canoeing, at its best, should not be a struggle against the river (or yourself … or your partner). Instead, great paddling is very efficient and uses the water to guide the boat through the course. ‘Easy speed’ is elusive, and only occurs when gliding and hard paddling are well timed. As the week progressed, we increased our power, and found our ability to carry speed (glide) through the whitewater greatly improved.

That’s the technical nitty-gritty of what we are doing. We are also enjoying the unprecedented sunshine in Augsburg, a town remembered by many athletes as perpetually affected by sporadic showers and midsummer chills. To counter the splendid weather, we are also spending time outside amidst the peak swarming season for the pernicious German ‘gnat.’ Matt proved a delicacy, and received more bites than the entire team combined. Any (polite) theories on why this occurred are welcomed.

Looking forward to next week, we will be getting ready for our first World Cup in La Seu d’Urgell. It begins on the 4th of July, and will take place on the 1992 Olympic whitewater course, the very place where Joe won a Gold medal. It will be his first time back on the course in C-2 since that great day. Matt’s wife and children (Kieran, Josie Mae and Maggie) will be joining us on our way down to Seu. The adventure, no doubt, gets more exciting.

Stay tuned!

Matt & Joe