Thanks to those of you who joined our second virtual training session this morning. What a gorgeous day to do a little bit of cold water something. I bet it was lovely in Dover. I think we got the best of the weekend today though, tomorrow looks decidedly iffy - Dover would definitely be bouncy!

Well done on signing in and out - that worked much better this week!

This week’s theme was VE Day (slightly late), some sported their hangover from yesterday, I was wearing a combination of the gear we use for military week and a toy soldier outfit. Nice to see union jacks too.

The plan for the day

Part 1

The first part was 15 minutes of cold water. Again we had a variety of options on display from tethered swimming in paddling pools, to shallow paddling pools, a bath a shower and a garden hose & bucket!

Part 2

This was the dizzy challenge - run round a broom 10 times then attempt to catch 20 pairs of socks in a rucksack that have been thrown rapidly.

Well done to Annette who scored an impressive 18!! Some others struggled a bit more and I think I would have done too!

Part 3

This was time for the second dip - the score of 18 determined that it was 18 minutes of swimming - well done all.

Special mentions

Special mentions have to go to:

Kayak support from Danny - it really is a team effort
Paul’s attempt at a turn in a tiny paddling pool with about 6” of water
Mandi wearing her green light in the shower

It was lovely to have Joanna with us again - still with technical issues. Maybe one day we’ll get to see and/or hear her. In the meantime I’m looking forward to the spoof blog tomorrow.

Dover training

If you have ideas for how we can use these Saturday sessions whilst we’re not able to congregate in Dover, feel free to let me know. In the meantime, I’ll come up with a new plan for next week.

When it comes to the real training, it’s pretty clear that we can’t train at the moment in Dover. We all intuitively know that. But as we are expecting an announcement from Number 10 tomorrow about how our current lockdown restrictions might change, I thought it would be helpful to share the methodology that I’ll be using to assess each time there is a change in restrictions. Click on the button below to download my current assessment.

Download ME

The first page shows the areas that I think I’ll need to consider and some of the challenges we face in the training environment in each category. Underlining all of this is reputational risk. By that I mean damage to the reputation of DCT, to my personal reputation and to the reputation of the sport as a whole.

The second page assesses our standard ways of working against the restrictions currently in force to assess whether that category is ok or not. Where it is not OK I assess whether we could make sufficient adaptations to make it ok.

I hope this all makes sense. I want to be as transparent as I can when it comes to how I decide if / when it’s ok to start training in Dover again.

The best bits of today

Here’s a short clip of some of the screenshots from this morning. I’ve no idea if I’ve actually captured everyone, it’s pretty much impossible to tell! Apologies for the poor resolution / quality, it’s the best I can manage with screen shots from a zoom recording!

Enjoy!!

PS - one of the people without video was ‘Joanna’ it seems she had technical issues that prevented her from having audio or visual! What could possibly go wrong with a blog!

DCT Virtual Training - Week 2