With a big year ahead of him, David is making the most of winter training as he heads off to Australia for a few weeks of warm weather training.
So far UK winter training has gone really well, with milder temperatures compared to last year, David has been able to spend lots of high quality time on the white water at Lee Valley. Talking about it he said, “I’ve been doing very specifically focussed sessions with my coach, Mark, and we have been spending a great deal of time on video review and analysis too”.
However, this is a big contrast to a bit of training he put in over Christmas, having returned home to Edinburgh to spend the festive season with his family. David explained, “The first ever slalom training I had done was in Edinburgh just a five minute walk from my house on a little basin on the small river running through central Edinburgh, the Water of Leith. We had hung a couple of bamboo canes from a bridge to create slalom poles and my Dad had taught my brother, Fraser, and I the basic paddle strokes to canoe around the gate in an old 1970′s slalom boat that had been sat unused at the side of our house for the previous couple of decades!
“Fifteen years or so on, it was great fun to be back to my roots and using it once again as my training venue for a week. With a couple of poles hung from the same bridge, I used it to keep my training going whilst Lee Valley was shut”.
He has now headed off for Sydney to put in some intensive warm weather training on the 2000 Olympic white water course there.