This weekend sees the National Marathon Champs at Longridge. This offers a great opportunity for the recently selected Worlds team to get in some reasonably high level competition especially as the Dutch are using this event as their final selection for the Worlds and a few guys from Belgium are also in the mix. Our team is a good one though and I would be very suprised to see anyone really challenging for the first two or three places in the mens event.

The womens race will again be an easy one for Belcher and Sawyers but this close to the worlds they must be starting to weigh each other up a bit as they are both contenders for medals in Portugal. My money is on Belcher based purely on the way I have seen her train over the last couple of years. Sawyers has the talent but may be questionable if the going gets tough or things dont quite go to plan.

The mens K2 on Sunday will be the best test for the team guys, the selected crew of Pendle/Simmons will be hard pushed to hold off some of the other crews especially as I beleive both are racing on the Saturday also. The heresay has it that Sawyers and Daniels are to have their first outing since being selected as a "wild card" for Crestuma, also Ben Brown will be racing though the rumour is with John Boyton whos marathon credentials are shakey at best. If all goes well for them though they could be in with a shout.

The womens K2 will just be dull.

I think the junior racing will be pretty high quality and again is a case of people weighing each other up for the big event to come. Dean Terry has a chance for revenge for last weeks defeat at the hands of Mark Childerstone but he definately wont have it all his own way, Mark is on good form and seems to be gaining in confidence all the time. In the K2 I will be keen to see if Jonny Tye can get his K2 anywhere close to the quality of result they got at the Europeans, it was an outstanding performance but Sundays race will be a tough test even if Childerstone and Terry argue through the whole race as they seem to do in training!

The final part of the team is the coaches, Steve Harris back in the team after pretty much telling them to sing for it just a few months ago seems to be a little strange to me but then what would I know. Some people it seems have short memories. I for one think it is a bad decision, why would you leave behind a coach who has 30 World Championship medals and take someone whos interest in the event is shallow at best? There is a saying about bullshit baffling brains that comes to mind, I just hope the decision does not take the edge of any performances. I know who I would rather have.