Change of training routine may work the trick

FEBRUARY 17, 2012 4:13am

Puckpaunyal's Olympic aspirant fine-tunes his prepapration as the day of reckoning gets closer.

By Chalpat Sonti

Puckapunyal’s Olympic hopeful Kevin Vowles is learning a lot about what’s needed to make the team to London, and it went a step further at the weekend.

Vowles travelled to Adelaide last week to do some more work with his coach, who is based there, as well as take in the South Australian state short course championships.

After a solid week of training, the results on the water showed Vowles what he needed to work on.

‘‘Once again the tempo was not quite up there so we’re going to continue to focus on speed training,’’ he said.

That won’t just be on the water, either.

‘‘I can also do it in the gym using a Theraband Gymstick,’’ he said.

The carbon fibre stick has bands on both ends of the shaft which can be attached to another person or a fixed point.

Vowles intends to mimic kayaking technique with the equipment and use a metronome to ‘‘really fire up the rotation of my trunk’’.

He’ll also be competing at the Victorian 500m and 1000m titles at Carrum this weekend.

‘‘The race experience is helping me fine-tune my training program in order to make sure I’m ready for the Olympic selection regattas.’’

Those will be held in Sydney next month, and Vowles will head up earlier for squad training.

From the selection regattas, a team will be chosen for the World Cup in Europe, and from that the Olympic squad will be finalised.

■A raffle is being run to help Vowles’ bid for Olympic glory.

The first prize is a $300 vehicle service voucher from Neil Beer Seymour, 12 bottles of local wine and two bottles of local organic olive oil.

Second prize is a $100 Neil Beer Seymour service voucher, six bottles of wine and one bottle of olive oil.

Nine runners-up will each receive four bottles of local wine and one bottle of olive oil.

Tickets are $5 each, $13 for three or $20 for five.

They are available by emailing kathryn.rooney1@defence.gov.au with your name, contact number and the number of tickets you have bought after transferring the money to BSB 803-205, account number 3884220.

The raffle will be drawn on February 24.