Bronte Surfboat News

Hi all,
I hope we're all feeling fresh and fast for the last month of competition.
With States and Aussies just around the corner, training is ramping up along with the pressure to succeed.
We've been training hard with Troy at the East Side Crew at Bronte, fine tuning our surf skills and putting in a massive effort to maximize our physical abilities.
After the many hard weeks leading up to this point, take some time to reflect on all you've put in. Countless hours in training, sacrificing time away from family and friends, money and pain have all gone in to you crossing that line before anyone else.
Enjoy these last few weeks with teammates, coaches and club supporters.
And when the time comes, enjoy racing. Very few people are in the priviledged position of lining up and giving it a red hot crack.
However, this is surf competition and is, by its nature, unpredictable.

So on race day, commit to a winning performance, stroke by stroke, stride by stride, because that's all you can control.

During an excruciating erg this morning, a thought occurred to me:
The question is asked of you in training so you know how to answer on race day.

How are you going to answer?

Greetings wave lovers, 

The Bronte Boaties have had a whirlwind few weeks of racing, results and revelations.

Below is a shot from Ocean Thunder Round 1, on the 12th November. 

We raced hard, started fast and headed out to sea with the rest of them, but turned slow and were still coming to grips on how to best run the chop. So we left the beach with only 6 rows under our belt, first off the beach. We were disappointed but we had plenty to work on for the upcoming week.

The next week was dedicated to turns and running chop. We started to get a hang of how this boat best turns, and ran chop the best we have this season. With a solid week of concerted effort under our belt, we headed in to round 2 of Elouera quietly confident and excited to see what we could do.

First race we were off to a cracking start, neck and neck with North Cronulla, turning together, running chop together, and crossing the line a nose in front. A great start.

Second race began with another solid start, a great relaxed run out, and an easy run back to claim first place by a few lengths.

Third race was close, but resulted in another win, allowing us the points to claim victory for the day.

Our thanks to Cam Allison for replacing Tom for the finals due to a back twinge. He slotted right in, and held on for a close second.

I later found out that we had amassed enough points to become Branch Champions, and to represent the Sydney Branch in the upcoming Inter-Branch competition!

This news came just in time to make us look good at the boat christening...

I present to you, our new boat - The Bluey Graham.

Bluey himself sat in the boat for it's christening run. He had a few pointers for us, as well as a massive grin.
If anyone has some shots from the day, send them through to me and I'll put them up: josh_sch@bigpond.net.au

A few weeks have passed, and we've since discovered that although we fulfilled the agreed criteria to represent our branch, the branch convener kindly notified us that we weren't considered good enough to represent the branch, and that North Cronulla would take our place. 

By a happy coincidence, the convener is a North Cronulla member. Good times.

We've also raced at Mollymook. It was raining sideways & the sea was pumping. It was a toss-up whether to head down, but we persisted as I was sure we would learn something. 

And learn something we did, as the video below shows:

a few good starts, a few big waves and a few bruises to take home.

We've got ocean thunder this weekend, and we're ready to give it a red hot crack. 

After last weekend's technically & physically demanding sessions, we're confident, relaxed and feeling pretty damn good.

I'll post our results and a wrap-up of 2011.

Until then, my good friend Bruce Lee once told me: "If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them"

Sometimes you have something looming ahead.

Or sometimes you're in the thick of it. 

This is something I found; it sums up the essence of competition, the urge to plow ahead and the drive to self-actualise.

I hope you find it as powerful as I did.