November 4, 2011 - By: Richard Hounslow. The 2011 season has now drawn to a close, and so has GB Canoeings review period. There have been some tough discussions, and the biggest change to come out of my review is that I now have a new coach, Mark Delaney.

With David and I still pushing hard at ‘doubling up’, we have been looking into how the day-to-day training can be made more efficient.  For the past 3 years we have had a different coach for every category. This was by no means a bad set-up, but we often found it quite inflexible. A change from David and I would affect 3 coaching groups and 8 athletes! For us, the best way to push forward was to have a single coach who would be fully bought into our goals across all 3 categories. This change has probably impacted on me the most, because David was already coached by Mark in C1. But 2 weeks in, and training is progressing really well. Performance Analyst, Julia Wells has been busy putting together footage from the years racing for us to watch. From this, we can decide areas to work on in our technical training sessions. So with winter training now fully under-way, its all work, work, work!

The other bit of news is that after a 3 year stint being sponsored by Sandiline UK, I’m back paddling in PeakUK kit……almost. PeakUK have been putting a lot of time and effort into developing their slalom kit recently. Their new Speed Skin 2 race wear will soon be met with a new life jacket design and their winter topdecks are still as good as ever. And I’m in good company, canoeing legend Michal Martikan (Slovakia) has also officially joined Team PeakUK. I hope to get my first lot of winter kit within the next couple of weeks.