(Posted - 01 Dec 2009)
MANSFIELD'S former world champion kayaker Chad Meek is quietly determined to beat his seventh placing at the Gold Coast Anaconda Adventure Race when he lines up for the series' Lorne event on December 6.
Chad, 36, who was the 1996 K1 world marathon kayaking champion and champion K2 kayaker in 1993 and 1997, has been spending a lot more time on running and mountain biking since the Queensland race.
Meek's life, work and training partner is Skye Taylor, 26, who placed third in the open women's category at the Gold Coast Anaconda Adventure Race in September, is also a former member of the senior Australian marathon kayaking team. "Because we're both from a marathon kayaking background there's a lot of new disciplines for us," Meek said."We've been doing a fair bit of running and riding to lift that part of our game.
"We only train on our own, so it will be an adventure in every sense of the word to see how we get on in Lorne. This will be a good chance to measure ourselves."
Meek said he was using the Anaconda Adventure Race series as a stepping stone to regaining his elite athlete status. He said commitments to the couple's kayak paddle manufacture business in recent years had left them short of time for competitive sport."I've been too busy with work and not able to apply myself properly to training," Meek said. "This last eight weeks we've done some good training and re-learning how to train properly."
Meek is confident he can record a good time at Lorne over the 1.9km ocean swim, 13km ocean paddle, 14km coastal run, 24km mountain bike and 1.5km beach run. "I certainly hope to do better than top seven in the men's, but you never know who's going to enter," he said. "My race plan is basically to ignore everyone else as best as we can and focus in on the best possible race time."