The Vaal marathon this weekend went really well. As i mentioned in my previous post, I paddled with Ant Stott and we combined really well, to win the race fairly comfortably. It was the first time in my life that I sat in the back of a boat down a river so I was a bit worried about how well I would combine, but it was actually really good and I quite enjoyed sitting in the back of the boat. Second place went to Peirs Cruickshanks and Mike Mbanjwa followed by Gavin Payne and Alex Roberts. The race was really well organised and it was a pleasure to be back on the river and of course paddling with Ant.

I am flying down to Pietermaritzburg tomorrow to do a talk with Ant and Cam Schoeman about my Olympic experience and Ant and Cam’s world marathon win. My next race will be the 94.7 cycle challenge in 2 weeks time, so I am going to get back on my bike soon before getting back into the boat again.

The picture above is of us shooting Visgat Weir. Ant and I got stuck on the weir, which cracked our boat quite badly. The only way for us to eventually get over the weir was for me to jump out the boat and push Ant down, losing valuable time. At that stage, we had about a 40 second break on the rest of the field so luckily it wasn’t too much of a problem.