Category: Kayaking

What goes up must come down

A few weeks ago I was feeling great. I was erging longer and longer distances every night, feeling good and not feeling any pain. I was up to doing 3 sets of 2000 metres, at pretty good speed and not much pause between then, and I had every expectation that I was going to increase the number of sets and distances continually. But then I started doing some extra stuff with Dan, trying to build up my core and other muscles and other things I’d need for the up coming season. But instead, I ended up overdoing it (due to the strange slowness of the way my body responds to pain, I never feel it when I’m overdoing it, only afterwards).

The next day, my shoulder was a little bit sore when I woke up, but I attempted to go paddling with the guys, but ended up falling in at the dock (due to using a different boat) and not going, but by evening my shoulder was killing me. And it kept feeling bad. I tried icing it, I tried stretching, and I tried taking more Aleve than usual. Nothing has really helped.

Yesterday I had a massage from my favourite massage therapist, and then a few hours later I tried a tiny bit of erging. By tiny bit, I mean less than a minute. I felt a tiny twinge, so I stopped. And a few hours later, it was back to feeling really bad.

My enthusiasm and optimism for next season has pretty much evaporated now.

Training on the erg

Because the weather is turning bad, I’ve been turning to the erg to do most of my training on. I’ve been doing a lot of kayaking, trying to build up the distance I could go on it. When I first started using the erg, I was disappointed that I could only seem to go a very short distance on it before my muscles got tired, like 500 metres a few days after I’d managed 4 miles (6.5km) in a kayak. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that in the boat, the wing paddle “kicks out” on its own, assisting you in getting your rear arm up in the air ready for the next stroke, whereas with the erg you have to lift it up yourself. Also in the erg there is some resistance at the rear part of the stroke where in the boat your paddle is fully out of the water and just “following through” with no resistance. (Hey, here’s an idea – why not use an electromagnet instead of a fan for resistance, then you could trigger it to remove the resistance when your paddle stroke hits the part where you’d normally have no resistance?)

Anyway, Dan said not to be discouraged, and if I could only do 500 metres to do 500 metres. So that’s what I did – I did 500 metres the first day, the next day I did 500 metres, rested until my heart rate was down under 100 bpm and did another 200 metres, and so on until I was doing 5 reps of 500 metres. Then I stepped up to 600m, doing 3x600m the first day, 3×600 plus a bit the next, 4×600 the next, and so on.

Two nights ago I did 5x700m. Last night I did my 5x700m but when I hit the end of the last 700, I just hit reset on the computer and did another 700m without stopping. It felt good to do that.

It’s a definite trend that I don’t feel as sore and tired at the end of the third and subsequent reps as I do at the first two. I’m starting to experiment to see if I can do some stretches and the like so the first two don’t feel so bad. Another thing I might try is doing a couple of short reps to warm up, then doing longer ones.

One interesting thing about this is that I’m having more trouble with the shoulder that didn’t get operated on than the one that did. On Friday I’d had a really good work-out, thought that maybe next day I could really step it up (to 1000m at a time or something like that) but I woke up the next morning feeling like I’d torn my rotator cuff. I had to take two days off erging, icing and gulping down Aleve and Tylenol (and missing out on two days where it would have been nice to get out on the boat) but by Sunday night I was fine again. Again this morning, I’m a little sore in that shoulder – not as bad as last Saturday, but still enough to worry.

My goal is to be ready in spring to race again. That means this winter I want to be able to do some very long (over 16km) LSD (long slow distance) erg sessions, and also keep my speed up through interval work and fartlek, again on the erg. I’m starting to feel like this might be possible. I’m even working on improving my technique – I never had a forward lean, mostly because my big fat gut gets in the way, but I’m working on that. I’m also trying to stop splaying out my legs and keep them down the center of the boat, but I’m having some anatomical problems with that.

Notice anything missing?

Last night somebody stole my roof rack. The Yakima rack was nearly 12 years old (except the new q-towers, which are only a few months old) but it might be worth something to somebody. The really annoying thing is the v-rack. The only people who use v-racks are kayak racers, and it’s unlikely anybody will use this – more likely they’ll sell it scrap for less than what it cost me for the ropes to tie it down.

I’ve phoned a few aluminium recyclers, but nobody has seen it yet.

A long boat on a short car

One of the problems with my car is that the gap between the roof rack bars is so short. I bought a v-rack so that I wouldn’t be supporting the boat at two points near the middle and having it flexing all over the place, but the fact that such a long object is supported by two bars very close together means that the v-rack itself bounces up and down, or more accurately pivots forward and back, and places a lot of stress on the bars of the rack. It makes a lot of noise as it flexes, and I’m continually worried that the rack is just going to tear out as I go over a bump.

So today I took some action. I bought a couple of Seattle Sports “Hood Loops”, which are little nylon loops with a grommet on the end that you can attach using one of the quarter panel bolts under the hood of your car. I also bought a couple of “Quick Loops” from the same company. They’re a similar idea except instead of bolting them to the car, you just close them in the rear hatch and a soft but strong piece of plastic tubing prevents the loops from coming back out. Those are more experimental – once I figure out exactly where I want them, I might replace them with something bolted or otherwise more permanently attached. I ran a rope from one Hood Loop over the v-rack and down to the other Hood Loop, and did the same in the back with the Quick Loops. I then put the boat on the rack and went for a short drive. The difference in stability is incredible. It’s so much more stable, and quieter. Also, when I take the rack off for the winter, I can flip the Hood Loops inside the hood out of the way, and take out the Quick Loops, and take the car to the car wash.




Progress

For the last several months I’ve been trying to slowly build myself back up after the surgery. I paddle once or twice a week, and generally I do one “long” (for values of long that seem ridiculously short to me) continuous go at first, and then continue for as long as I can doing paddle/rest/paddle/rest. Sometimes I have to stop because my shoulder is sore, sometimes because my muscles are tired, sometimes because my aerobic system is worn out, and sometimes it’s all three. Up until last week, my maximum “long” stretch was about 1.25 miles, and my total distance was generally around 3 to 4 miles with a lot of stops.

Last week, I was off work, so I actually managed to get out 3 times. I also started getting much more diligent about doing the stretches and exercises my physiotherapist prescribed back when I was still doing that. And I went to see the massage therapist I was seeing a couple of years ago about my shoulder and neck.

On Wednesday, I managed to paddle 1.5 miles, take a quick drink of water, and keep paddling to a total of 2.5 miles, and then do stop/start paddling for a total of 4 miles. That’s the first time all year I’ve seen two miles in less than 11 minutes per mile. (Oh yeah, did I mention that my speed compared to last year also sucks?) So that was pretty good.

Today, I did even more. I managed to paddle 2 miles, take a quick drink of water, and continue to a total of 3.2 miles, and then do stop/start paddling for a total of 4 miles. That’s 3 miles in a row at less than 11 minutes per mile! That’s real progress!

Ok, granted both times my shoulder was pretty damn sore afterwards, but I’m so tired of waiting for the pain to go away before I start getting fit again. I have an appointment with the surgeon next week to see why it’s taking so long, but I suspect he’s going to tell me to stop paddling.

I’m making progress, and I’ve got the erg so I can keep going all winter. Here’s hoping I can bring the endurance up to the old level and then start bringing up the speed.