Volvo

I love Miami; back in my Yngling days we’d always spend most of January out here training and competing. The people here are really outdoorsy and are always out running or cycling or out on the water.

Training conditions have been ideal; we’ve had the whole range of winds around 10 knots and flat water, which has enabled us to really get back into the full swing of things. We’ve been really happy with how things have gone so far and are looking forward to testing our equipment at the 470 North America Championships, which start on Friday (14 January).

My Mum was out here for the first week to help look after Thomas, mine and Nick’s 18-month-old son, but she went into classic Mum mode and looked after all the rest of us too!

At the moment there are seven of us, staying in a lovely villa about a five minute cycle from the sailing club. Saskia (Clark), Paul Goodison and Joe Glanfield (our coach and double Olympic silver medallist) are sharing the villa with me, Nick and Thomas as renting a house made more economic sense than staying in a hotel.

This way we can also cook for ourselves and really stay on top of our nutrition programmes. With the portions the size they are here we’d come back as big as houses if we ate out all the time! Mum was cooking for us all and ordering all our food shopping online for us. We’re a bit lost now she’s gone home.

I’ve been out on my road bike every morning although people keep flying past me! Hopefully, by the end of the trip, I’ll be passing them. There are great restaurants and shopping malls here and the whole place just really suits our lifestyle.

Thomas’ nanny Peggy has arrived to take over childcare duties now though and his eyes lit up when he saw her. He loves Peggy! Although I’m not sure how pleased she was to see him; he has had a bit of a tummy bug for the past few days and there have been some pretty unpleasant ‘Little Britain’ style projectile vomiting incidents going on! Not what you need at all!

It’s going to be a busy few weeks as after the 470 North America Championships we have the Miami Olympic Classes regatta to look forward to, starting on Monday 24 January. This will mark exactly one year since I returned to Olympic sailing and teamed up with Saskia, so it will be great to be able to gauge just how much we’ve come on over the past 12 months and assess what we still need to do heading into what is a big year for everyone with ambitions of competing at London 2012.

Sarah Ayton

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