The following report was provided by CANI Sprint Squad member Zoe Thompson on her experiences during a Sprint Camp held at Castlewellan earlier this month
During the Half Term break Craig, Chloe, Adam & I attended a two-day training camp at Castlewellan lake. We met Ray Sweetlove on Sunday 14th February at 9am sharp and were greeted by some snow. Ray worked us hard with 4 sessions on the water and 1 off. Over these sessions we looked at our technique, speed & conditioning.
We stayed at Tollymore activity centre. When we checked in, the man told us he was glad he wasn’t on the night shift because we were all so hyper. After we got our dorms sorted, Jane, Adam’s mum drove us to Newcastle for our dinner. We were walking down the Main Street and saw a joke shop. We all decided it would be good idea to play a few jokes on Matt who was returning from the Slalom camp at Sluice, Dublin!! We put fake spiders in his bed but unfortunately that didn’t work so we put a fake parking ticket on the minibus but that didn’t work either as Zoe and Chloe left the packet in the van. We watched a few movies and went to bed to get early up for our Monday morning training session.
Matt took us on Monday, during the first session we looked at our sprinting technique whilst doing distance. Following lunch, we came back to do our warm up run with Zoe Chloe and Adam going cross-country on the way back. We started into second session which was a lap round lake doing the stroke and pause technique. The on water training finished with all members looking at some balancing drills.
When we finished on the water we were allowed to finish the camp with some fun around the Maze! Chloe and Zoe got lost while Adam was already up in the middle waiting for us. We stopped for ice-cream on the way home before heading back to meet our parents at Shaw’s Bridge.
Many thanks to
Matt McKnight and Ray Sweetlove for the coaching and Kirsty Lemon, Chloe’s mum for looking after us so well.
