Like all good things (and small intestines) this year’s wildwater selections comes in three parts. The first of which was just held this weekend up at Grandtully.

Scenically situated along the river Tay, the Grandtully slalom site is just a little bit too far from almost everywhere in the UK. Nevertheless it is here that the frigid Scottish waters tumble down the valley to form a rare thing in the UK: a whitewater river with barely any rocks! (The exception being the one rather large rock). And it is here that the first third of the 2023 British Wildwater selection races took place.

The startline and Jacob in his camouflage whopper

The selection policy is (almost) simple. There are three selection events, each with a sprint and a longer distance classic race. There are 3 international events, but not all with a classic. For each race you are awarded points for your position, 1st gets 25, 2nd gets 19, and third gets 14 with points declining exponentially-ish as you go on. All the points get added up and the best 4 paddlers for each category (MK1, WK1, MC1, …) are selected. However not all selection races count towards all the international races, and for the world cups 6 people can go. With this in mind I believe the best tactic for selections is to just try as hard as you can in everything and then work out which trips you can afford to go on later. 

The weekend at Tully followed a familiar format, sprints on Saturday (best of 2 runs) and the Classic on Sunday. I traveled up the Tully Thursday evening to get in some sneaky practice on the Friday, letting Scotland put the ‘remote’ into ‘remote working’. I’d brought with me the new boat, which looks very dashing and is significantly less leaky than my old one. Jealous eyes declared it the ‘spiderman boat’ or ‘naff captain america’. Either way you’ll now hear me shouting ‘Avengers Assemble!’ whenever our team run formation starts falling apart.

Unfortunately my beautiful Sicario had only arrived in the UK two weeks prior, thanks to a shipping headache created by the  “B-that-must-not-be-named”. This led to a fairly manic week of trying to outfit the boat while it dominated my small flat. Fortunately, my panic prevailed and I more or less managed to fit the footrest and knee foam in time for at least a couple of sessions on the flat before I departed for Scotland. 

Above, the new boat takes over my flat. (Cardboard was used for templating the footest and was not the final product!)

However, this did mean that the Friday in Scotland was the first day I actually paddled the boat on ‘the rough’. Coincidentally this was also when I discovered that I hadn’t quite gotten everything to how I wanted it. Thus, despite some Friday fiddling, I found myself duct-taping additional foam hip pads into the boat with less than 20 minutes before my first sprint run. This is definitely not the best race prep I’ve ever done, yet it somehow wasn’t the worst or most chaotic pre-race I’ve had.

Unfortunately even with my last minute additions, my sprint results were a little disappointing. This wasn’t all too surprising given I was (or am) still getting used to the handling of the new boat and while I managed to mostly put the boat where I wanted it, I was struggling to find the power throughout the run. Still while it stung to be so far off the pace, I’m sure this will come with some time. Plus, Sunday was the classic, and classics are my jam.

We awoke Sunday fueled with a lovingly cooked family meal and fearful of forecasts of snow and sub-zero temperatures. Daylight savings had cruelly robbed us of an hour of precious sleep, but being as knackered as we were we’d mostly passed out around 9pm anyway. As we loaded kit into cars the weather was not nearly as frightful as forecast, but Scotland by and large had not received the notification that it was now officially Spring. This led to some debate on the shuttle as to what to wear for the race and emboldened by anything above 2⁰C I opted for a shorty kag. Mostly, hoping that the threat of hypothermia would encourage me to get to the finish just that little bit quicker.

Phtotos from the weekends’ racing

I like classic racing. The longer distance just gives me a bit of time to settle into the race and I can focus on just getting the boat running well. That said I definitely spent the first few minutes of this race cursing Alex as his prophesied tail wind manifested itself as biting head wind, freezing hands and sucking all the speed from the boat. But once I’d dropped further into the rapids I  found my ‘happy’ place and began to feel comfortably at home in the new boat. This all seemed to pay off and having navigated the main Tully rapid with an appropriate amount of “face melt” I crossed the line to claim a 2nd place and the 19 points it brings.  Hopefully this should be enough to get me to Euros…

Arguably more important than my position was that with a time of 14:31.69 I’d beaten Kerry. This has become a bit of a running joke amongst the senior men but having beaten all the boys at the last couple of events she’s actually a real threat (and a lovely training partner). Honestly, I’m not quite comfortable with my 10s margin on a 14 minute race!

Selections part 2 of 3 comes this weekend at Nottingham’s own HPP, which will be the decider for the Senior, U23 and Junior worlds. Tune in to the next blog post for a slightly delayed recap of events! 

Photos by the lovely Dave Singleton

Full Results on https://www.wildwater.org.uk/