Prior to the French Olympic Week regatta in Hyeres, France I was sailing the best I have sailed all season.  I participated in a training camp with the polish team and I was continuing to improve in light air. Additionally, my heavy air sailing was starting to click.  As the event neared I found myself becoming increasingly tired and my day-to-day recovery seemed to be slowing down.  I understood that these were signs of overtraining, so I trained cautiously the few days leading up to the event.

 

The event, similar to every other World Cup event this year, was light.  I did, however, feel like my light air sailing had improved and I was looking forward to the challenge.   The first race of the regatta, I fell into a familiar pattern.  I started the race very well and sailed very well for the first 50%; however, as the race progressed I slowly drifted back into the fleet.  This was the same issue that I had in Palma.

 

Throughout the rest of the regatta, this pattern held.  Meanwhile, as the light air regatta progressed I felt myself becoming more tired than I did earlier on in the month when I was training with the Polish.  This fatigue proved to be detrimental to my sailing and my results.

 

The next regatta is the Delta Lloyd regatta at the end of May.  In the meantime, I will be taking some time off from the board and trying to rest up and recover a bit from this past 6 week training stint.  The past two regattas provided me with some great light air training and I do feel like I am continuing to make strides in these conditions, albeit they may not be represented in the results.  Ultimately, I need to figure out a way to maintain the same level of intensity and technique throughout the entire race, instead of the first twenty minutes.   During the next training stint, I am going to spend a lot of time eliminating this problem.

 

Thanks again to all the sponsors and stay tuned for more updates!

 

 

Bob