Month: May 2009

Excursion around the bay

I made another foray out into Irondequoit Bay. The conditions were pretty favourable – there was no wind at first, although it built steadily during the time I was out there, and was in my face on the way back. There were almost no wind-drive waves, which meant I was dealing almost entirely with boat wakes. And boy, did I deal with a lot of boat wakes. I don’t understand power boaters at all – well, except the ones out fishing, anyway. It seemed like there were 3 or 4 boats with two or three guys in each one that were just going up and down the bay. I don’t think there wasn’t a time when I couldn’t see at least one of the 4 approaching and another one receding. I don’t see the point, myself.

I made a pretty steady 6.0 mph up the bay. On the way back, the wind and my tiredness and the wakes slowed me down to around 5.0 mph for the first mile and a half. I had to keep stopping to rest on the last mile, and barely averaged 4.8 mph. My total time back to Baycreek was around 57 minutes. My best recorded time last year was 1:05, so that’s a big improvement, but not as much as I’d hoped.

After finishing, I went for another 2 miles on the creek. It was very hard. I was extremely tired and had to keep stopping for a rest. I’ve *got* to do better than that.

Afterwards, I met a couple of members of the team, and we were standing around talking when Paul D asked me what was on my shirt. I looked, and it seems like Yeah, I'm hard core! I had a bit of a rub spot on where my shirt bunched up under my PFD. That’s not good.

Five Mile Time Trial

Almost the entire kayak team met at Dan’s today for a 5 mile time trial. As well as most of the Baycreek Team, we also had Jason Quagliata, Jim Mallory, and Nicole Mallory, so basically the elite of the Upstate New York kayaking world. Jason is currently on the US national marathon kayak team, and Nicole either is or soon will be on the national team, and she’s been on the junior team in the past. Jim Mallory has represented the US in the Olympics in sprint kayaking and used to be on the national marathon team as well. Like I said, an impressive gathering.

Dan had set up a 5 Mile Time Trial course, but the start was two miles from his dock, going upstream for 1.5 miles and coming down 3.5 miles. I didn’t think I needed or wanted a 2 mile warm up, so I paddled up half a mile and started. I went up 2.5 miles and back, using my GPS to track the distance and watch my team.

Dan had pushed me to set a goal time of 50 minutes, which seemed too fast for me. But 10 minutes per mile sure makes the mental math easy – look at the distance, and multiply by 10, and if your time is below that, you’re on time. The first two miles went by in less than 20 minutes. I grabbed a quick sip of water on the turn around, but the third mile was slower than 10 minutes. I’d sort of hoped that turning down stream would mean that I’d get a bit of an advantage, and be able to maintain the magic 6 mph with less effort, but alas it wasn’t to be. The fourth mile was a real struggle, but I was a hair slower than 10 minutes. In the fifth mile, I had to stop for a quick drink and stretch, and I kept slowing and speeding up as I pushed myself above 6 mph and sagged, pushed and sagged, over and over again. I was very glad to see the bridge where I’d started. I yelled “damn” as the GPS showed 50 minutes tick by before reaching the bridge.

My total time was 50:14, which is better than I expected, but not as good as I’d hoped. But even better, a couple of the other guys on the team where within a minute or so of me, so maybe I won’t be the slowest one on the team forever.

Splits:

Mile Time
1 09:55.20
2 09:56.16
3 10:10.17
4 10:04.89
5 10.07.95
Total 50:14.37

Considering how shitty the rest of the day was, it wasn’t a bad finish.