TAMSIN HINCHLEY: ATHLETE DIARIES

A great start to 2012 for our Cook/Hinchley team. We've come off back to back Renault National Tour wins with Gold Coast gold in January and now St Kilda gold after yesterday's win. 

We've added to our team with Peter "Chico" Jones coming on board to coach me at South Melbourne beach and I am extremely happy and lucky to have him. It works out well with Nat and I getting individually skilled up in our home bases and then our coaches Steve and Chico working together to combine what we have done on our training camps. We both have separate Strength and Conditioning teams too (Nat with Phil Moreland from ACTAS and my with Micheal Crooks from VIS) but it is all monitored and combined so that we are working together to peak at the same time.  All in all it is working well and enabling us to make what may look like a complicated situation into a very simple and smoothly operating team. And hey, we're not the only team that does it.

But back to yesterday, it was absolutely brilliant winning a home National Tour and St Kilda beach was alive with it's full breadth of character and pizzazz as everyone came out into the sun.  We even had James Tomkins, the Opals and the Ekstein brothers out on the sand to "hot up" the beach in a celeb match (thanks guys). I love our Vic beach crew and it made me so proud to win in front of them with my friends and family watching.  Arley was happy too as he managed to wiggle his way on to TV camera and wear another medal home!

Next on the calendar is a 3-day camp at the AIS Adelaide this week, then off to New Zealand on Valentines day for a very unromantic second round of Continental Cup. This is a vital and complicated part of the Olympic Qualification process which will culminate with the finals in June where we will have to compete against the best in Asia to win an Olympic spot if we have not already done so through winning automatic entry in top-16 world ranking.

Thanks for everyone's continued support, on track for London and ready to go!