The summer months have been pretty busy ones with Christmas being spent with family and then 2012 started with a road trip with caravan in tow. With friends we headed from Napier up around East Cape, stopped off in Tauranga to pick up Pete and finished up in the Coromandel at the Corogold festival in the mud.
More recently we just finished competing at Sail Auckland over the weekend, we were up against one other boat, but this provided good competition for us as Marcus and Josh will be our training partners when we are based in New Zealand, they are really pushing us to go faster and think quicker, which we see as a real benefit leading into the olympics.
Looking back we had an amazing finish to 2011 - winning silver at the World Champs in Perth and then gaining selection for the NZ Olympic team, it has meant we have been able to just plan for 2012 and the main goal being the Olympic Games. We will be training in NZ for the next two months, towards the end of the month we will have the Irish team training with us in Auckland for ten days, following this we will be doing some training with the Spanish team when they are in Auckland for the Volvo Ocean Race stopover.
Next week with the NZ Olympic Committee we will be taking part in the London Athlete Workshops at North Harbour Stadium and we are really looking forward to it. It will be good fun trying on and getting sized up for our uniforms as well as meeting other athletes from different sports who are looking at gaining their spots in the games team. The workshop will definitely provide us an opportunity to learn more about the Olympic Games and feel proud that we are a part of the team.
Next week we are also loading up a container which is bound for France with our sailing equipment for the year ahead. Some of the equipment we are packing will be being used at Games time which is very exciting.
With 170 days to go until the London Olympic Games, 2012 is about business.