This Sunday me and Špela Ponomarenko were one of the guests at the Sunday afternoon show called TLP on national TV. It was on air live and we had a cool interview in their studio somewhere in the middle of the show. I enjoyed a lot to see how such a show is being produced and how all this glamour looks like from behind the scenes. I had the pleasure to have a few words with the 2 ladyes (Tjaša Železnik&Mateja Janežič) who conduct the show also before we were on air and that was quite cool too. I was spending the Sunday with Michael Jacob Walker (Beijing 6th place finisher in K2 1000 and today seat 4 in the Kiwi K4) so he also came there with me and played my manager. He really does walk the walk after talking the talk so he set me up with the make-up ladyes in order to have the best possible treatment and i could really deliver my A-game on the show. Good fun for a cold Sunday afternoon in our capital!
This is the foto we took during the live show after one of the conducters took my camera with us on stage:
..and the foto we made after (me really enjoying myself with all these ladyes around):
Posted by Jernej on Monday 17 May 2010 - 22:02:58 |
Wednesday 12 May 2010
World cup1 - Vichy
The World Cup in Vichy was a good experience. First of all it was good to see how the site of 2011 Worlds looks like, experience what can the conditions on the water can be like and feel the vibe in the host town. Most importantly it was a good smack in the face for my present paddling. In a blast from the past i did repeat some old mistakes again and ended up a shocking 8th in my 1000m semifinal. Not a nice feeling at all. But if it had to happen it better happened now! I had some more mojo in the 500 meters where i finished 4th in the semi and 6th in the B Final. Nothing exceptional neither but at least close to standard for my first world cup race every year. In the finals where the real action was going on, the usual suspects were playing the lead roles. And as always there were some newcomers, including our new K2 Rok Kuk – Lovro Leban who finished on an amazing 3rd place in the K2 1000m, plus a 7th place in the 500m. Way to go mates!
Posted by Jernej on Wednesday 12 May 2010 - 21:48:48 |
Sunday 25 April 2010
First racing
Just back from the first race on the new olympic distances. We had our national selection races at the international race in Mantua (Màntova) in the Italian region of Lombardy. I was racing the 1000 and 200 meters. The 200 meters were more of a training and warm up distance while the 1000 meters were my main goal. I felt good in the last 10 days of the lead up to the race, so i was really relaxed and in good spirits. Despite i had to race the largest and strongest competition ever in my own team i managed to win the selection and the race and was pleased with my paddling at this moment. We are still quite far from racing form and haven’t worked yet at all on any kind of racing speed and intensities, neverthereless the racing didn’t hurt as much as i expected and i held my technique and raceplan together quite well. Our Swiss-Austrian-Slovenian training team did quite well overall too: Rok Kuk finished in 2nd, Jošt Zakrajšek in 3rd, Fabio Wyss in 5th, Charly Lohnitz in 7th…leaving to the Italians only 2 places in the K1 1000m final. Nejc Žnidarčič did well also in the 200 meters where he dominated the semis with a 36,51 but finished only 3rd in the final due to some begginers techincal mistakes (but what can you expect from a downriver guy - even if he is the European champ). The team's best performance of the weekend was definitelly the K2 1000m win by Rok Kuk and Lovro Leban who inflicted 2s to Beijing bronze medalists Facchin-Scaduto ( Pierotti-Ripamonti in 3rd and Piemonte-Ricchetti in 4th). Definitelly a nice weekend and a nice and gentle wakeing up before some serious mambo-jumbo racing in Vichy next week!
During the warm up (old city center in the backgound):
Posted by Jernej on Sunday 25 April 2010 - 18:58:23 |
Friday 16 April 2010
Back from Italy
This was a hard camp and i loved it. Finally the time has come for some more intense training on the water and i am sure all the athletes in the team have liked that too. After a long winter and beginning of spring stuffed with steady aerobic sessions( mostly wash leads) it was really time for a change. We do work on pretty much all the intensities all year round but the focus changes through the season. So far i have done almost 3000km of pure aerobic work and from now on we will spend less time in this zone, work more on anaerobic threshold and VO2max paces (called by our german coach GA2&GA3) and come back to GA1 only for endurance maintenance and technical work. I have been also working on eliminating some bad habits in my tehnicque and at moments i still struggle to put it all together, but it is a great challenge and i am not going to give up on it. It was a pleasant camp also off the water. I managed to do a good bike ride twice. One was during Easter and there were amazing numbers of people on racing bikes on the local roads, perhaps more than cars!!! The second ride was along Lago di Como wich is a spectacular venue for bike riding (haven't managed to reach George Clooney's house though). There was also Stefania Cicali (2008 olympic finalist in K4 and marathon world champ) training on the lake. As last year we were eating at Eupilio where i really enjoy the everyday pasta, the atmosphere and Guilio's (the owner) hospitality. While for the rest of our stay Mr.Mario Pizzi (from the CKC Lago Pusiano) and Antonio Rossi were taking care we weren't missing a thing. And when Antonio Rossi - haven't checked with him if he prefers the nickname 'bell'Antonio' (given to him by the Italian media) or 'il Turbodiesel' (given to him by the TV legend Gianpiero Galeazzi) – keeps bringing you the morning donuts, you know you are training on the right lake
Training group lined up for a 250:
Having a glass of Bibock beer. Left to right: Antonio Rossi, Simon Blaževič, me, amico 1, Stefania Cicali, amico 2.
By the Como lake:
Underground gym in the Beauharnais palace in Pusiano:
On the Pusiano lake:
Posted by Jernej on Friday 16 April 2010 - 13:48:39 |
Monday 05 April 2010
Nelo power boat
I've picked up my new Nelo Vanquish XXL a few days ago. This is the boat i will be racing the coming seasona and as i am on a training camp some 40km north of Milano, the guys at Nelo kindly delivered me the boat to the Idroscalo. It was really easy to pick it up this way and i have been enjoing to ride it for the last coupple of days already. It is slightly bigger than the L model i was using last year, while i kept the rest of the fittings the same as in the past ( the Rotofix seat with some comfy airex padding and a full plate footrest with the crabon pull bar). It is the 5th (the 'all white', the 'chinese letters', the 'fast forward', the 'sun on dark surface' and finally the 'white with a red line' one) boat i got from Nelo (not counting those they landed me just for racing) since i use these boats. They had delivered me custom made boats to places like Greece, Germany, Portugal, China and now Italy. Since when i have visited their fabric in 2007 i also know how much effort is put in making these boats top notch. It's a pleasure to ride one of these every day! So again a Big up and a big Thank you to guys at Nelo.
Posted by Jernej on Monday 05 April 2010 - 17:34:22 |
Friday 02 April 2010
Pusiano
I am now in Pusiano (north Italy) for a 2 week training camp. Got into hard training straight away after arrival, so not much else is going on except the usual easter-switch from mostly endurance training to some more intensity. And just as Jesus must have had a bad feeling in this same week some 2000 years ago i also have not the best feeling yet at higher speeds! All good for now though and experience tells me once we get home i will be ready to start hammering out some good treshold paces! Will be back to you when we roll into the second half of the camp as it is when normaly things start to become more challenging and more interesting.
Posted by Jernej on Friday 02 April 2010 - 21:56:39 |
Sunday 21 March 2010
JustStoppedToSayHi
Just a short update to let you know i am alive and kicking. I've burried myself into some hard training in the past days and i am feeling pretty tired. But except this, all is fine and i have been enjoing life as much training permits it. The coaches have been using again the motorboat on the lake without any limitations and at silly speeds and it has been awesome to upset the fishermen (who can start fishing only in April anyway). During the week Jošt Zakrajšek come back to Most to train together for a few days. In the evenings together we had the oportunity for some cooking experiences including: wild dandelion salad, wild (or not) pig steaks and the not so extravagant pasta 'ai 1000 sugi Barilla'! Latelly i was also impressed by this two movies: Gran Torino - with the great Clint Eastwood as a director and main role and The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Cameron's ex-wife who got more Oscars this year than Avatar). And Sunday i had the pleasure to visit the final day of the Ski Flying World Championships in Planica. A usually calm, peacefull and magic place was transformed into a huge arena for the biggest Slovenian sporting feast in 2010! 16.000 spectators on Sunaday and 35.000 on Saturday (on the individual race when Simon Ammann won) is a crowd that i am sure gives you wings.
Posted by Jernej on Sunday 21 March 2010 - 20:15:09 |
Sunday 14 March 2010
5000 meter nationals
Yesterday we raced our 5000m national championships. It was held only for the second time in a row now and i managed to keep my title from last year. This time though i had a not easy job with at least 3 more guys who wouldn't allow me to make any mistakes. I decided to go out hard and get rid of as many guys as possible early in the race. I've done that quite succesfully and after 2k's it was down to only me and Jošt Zakrajšek. You don't really kill Jošt by gradually driving him out of the comfort zone so i prefered to wait for the finishing sprint on the home stretch. At the end it was me, Jošt, Rok Kuk in third and Lovro Leban in fourth. For a change the organisation on a home race was on a proper level and i think we all had a great day out in the spring sun!
This is Jošt and me somewhere in the second part of the race (foto: Milko Lesjak):
And this is the video blog #8 (only in Slovenian):
Posted by Jernej on Sunday 14 March 2010 - 21:31:53 |
Tuesday 02 March 2010
End of first spring camp
Just made it to the end of the spring camp no.1. It was a great camp with lots of hard work and lots of fun too. I believe we have done an amazing amount of hard work and it makes me happy to know i could stand all this heavy load. The largest amount of our work here were hard and long washlead sessions that i have done mostly with Fabio Wyss from Swizzerland and Charles Lohnitz from Germany. Big thanks to both of them for keeping me at honest speeds! We've also done some really intense sessions like speed, resistance sessions in the boat or 2km TT and that's where all the team was coming together and we really went for it. It is amazing how many we have suddenly become, with the 2 Swiss, the Austrian and the German guy we were sometimes in 11 hammering it out. Such a great feeling! Now it is down to a few easy days for a few deep breaths and to heal the sore ass. And only then back into it again with full steam!
Posted by Jernej on Tuesday 02 March 2010 - 12:07:43 |
Sunday 14 February 2010
Spring camp
Just made it to the end of the winter as it looks. This winter was hard and at momemts i really wished to be not where i was but in some warm nicely warm place instead. Neverthereless i totally agree with what Mark Oldeshaw wrote here about enjoing the moment and the place you live in the present moment. Anyway it is carneval time so winter will be officially aksed to leave the stage and let the spring start. But most importantlly today we drive to our training camp in Skradin. This should be a great adventure and i am looking to it a lot (ok, the weather should be great too there). Skradin is a small town on the central part of Dalamtia (wich is the part of the coast of the Adriatic sea stretching between the island of Rab and the Gulf of Kotor) and sits very close to the Prokljansko jezero where river Krka ends (tke Croatian Krka river ofcourse not to be confused with the 3 Krka rivers in Slovenia or the 1 in Austria). Also the famous Paklenica national park (especially among rock climbers) is not that far and there are antient cityes of Šibenik and Zadar pretty close too. You can train both on the sea and on the lake wich gives you a wide variety of water surfaces and directions to go. Both the lake, Krka river and its famous waterfalls are part of the Krka national park. It will be a big group of athletes again: 8 slovenian, 3 austrian and 2 Swiss seniors, almost 15 juniors and 6 coaches. Unthinkable numbers just a year or two ago. We will be staying there for 2 weeks with the main focus on endurance and techicque training. So there is going to be A LOT of hard-yards to paddle! Looking forward to the tough challenge.
