Category: Kayaking

My plan today was to see whether the Thunderbolt or the ski would be faster for the Fairport race coming up. The Thunderbolt is a little longer, a little narrower, a few pounds lighter, so I assume it’s a bit faster on the straights, but it turns like a tank. The ski turns very quickly, and would probably allow me to handle wakes and waves better. Since the race has three turns in 7.5 miles, the ability to turn might be critical.

What I decided to do was to paddle 1 mile downstream, do the turn at Turk Hill Bridge, and paddle 1 mile upstream, and do this in both boats to see which is faster. I was originally going to do the experiment at the upstream turn at the pylons, but that’s further away from where I parked so I would have had to paddle a lot longer on what is supposed to be a “periodization” easy week. If I knew how to get my boats to the boat house that the rowers use, that might be possible.

I did the Thunderbolt first. A boat came by and produced an extremely huge wake on the way down, but that wasn’t too big a problem. I tried to keep my heart rate under 160, although once or twice it crept up – the GPS reports my maximum heart rate on the first mile was 162. As expected, I had to slow right down for the turn. But I quickly accelerated again. But about half way up, I realized that my speed had been dropping – if you look at the graph it’s dropping steadily between 1.3 miles and 1.6 miles. I started concentrating on making a very hard catch and a quick exit, and my speed immediately jumped from 5.9 mph to 6.9, and stayed above 6.3 the entire rest of the way.

Second time was the ski. Again, tried to keep my heart rate below 160 and not work any harder than I did the first time. No boat wakes to contend with, but as expected I was ten seconds slower after a mile. I kept my speed up much better in the turn. But more importantly, I didn’t let my speed drop off and my technique deteriorate on the way up, so at the end I was only 7 seconds slower.

So here’s the problem. I didn’t go as fast as I could in the Thunderbolt, because I let my speed drop and my technique deteriorate. And I didn’t go as fast as I could in the ski, because I have my large rudder on it. I don’t actually know if the speed advantage of having the smaller rudder (and less drag) on the ski would be countered by the worse turning performance. So now I’m going to have to repeat the experiment again, maybe twice.

The workout for the day was “Easy Distance” – I was to try to keep my heart rate under 135 and just go, but every mile do 30 seconds really hard. I wasn’t sure how far I could go, and it was raining, so I decided to go upstream for mile, then downstream for two miles, and just keep doing that as long as I could or until it started thundering – I’d always be within a mile of the dock, so it would be able to stop at just about any time.

I ended up doing 8 miles. But after I passed the dock and was spinning around to dock up again, I noticed something – my PFD (life jacket) was floating jammed up against the upstream edge of the dock. I have no idea when the bungee net that holds it down on the back of my boat popped off – it could have been when I first started, or it could have been at the end, I don’t know. All I know is that I’m damn lucky that I didn’t do my usual up and back and lose it up at the furthest point and then have to go back, or that it didn’t miss the dock and go floating downstream and get lost in bushes somewhere. Especially since my car key was in the pocket of it. And the pocket wasn’t totally zipped up, so I was also lucky it didn’t fall out.

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The Owasco Lake Challenge was a very different race than it probably could have been. Because it was only a week after I got back from England, I decided that I wouldn’t be ready to do the 12 mile long course. That lead to some other decisions – because I was only going to do the short course race and so I wouldn’t be racing for points, I decided that rather than doing everything I could to do the best I could at this race, I was going to make it part of my plan to get back into shape and try to get back some of the speed that I’d had in the early season races like Round the Mountain and Tupper Lake but which seemed to be missing in Armond Bassett.

So contrary to any logical tapering for a race, I went out and did the Bay Creek Time Trial twice on Wednesday, and on Thursday I did a slow 10 mile paddle. I did rest Saturday, but only because it was horribly stormy and rainy. Otherwise I probably would have gone out and done some more long slow distance.

The was a pretty good crowd at the race – Tom Murn, Stephen B and Matt and Julia T were all in the short course with me, and Jim M, Mike and Paul D all did the long course. As well as old familiar faces, there were a few I’d never seen before. Quite the biggest surprise was Roger Gocking, who is a bit of a legend of the 90 Miler as well races like the Mayor’s Cup. The guy is incredibly tall, skinny, and has a “wingspan” that looked like a foot longer than mine.

I brought both boats – I was planning to evaluate the conditions and decide right at the last possible minute which boat to take. But when Scott said that he was shortening the long course to 10 miles because there was a possibility of thunderstorms later in the day, I settled on the ski, just in case the wind whipped up the lake. In retrospect, I probably could have paddled the Thunderbolt, but I doubt it made all that much difference.

As I was getting the ski ready, I did something which in retrospect was pretty dumb – I figured that because there weren’t many waves yet, I’d tape over the venturi drain so I was sitting in tepid water at the start. I’d seen other ski paddlers do that, and it made sense to me. What I didn’t count on, however, was the amazing amount of splashing at the start of the race – before we had gotten out of the shallows at the beginning, I was swamped and thanks to that stupid piece of tape I wasn’t draining. If you watch the video, in the first part you can see me pause quickly and say “SHIT” – that’s because my first attempt at removing the tape was unsuccessful because my Camelbak had slipped over it. It’s not on the video, but a few minutes later I took a longer pause and got it off.

One thing I didn’t realize until afterwards is that Matt Tole had been riding my wake from the start, and on one of those pauses he’d tried to pass me. I’d started paddling, caught a nice boat wake, and dropped him and he never got close to me again.

Tom Murn was well ahead of me after the tape removal exercise, and I tried like hell to catch him. I was getting closer every time I got a good surf on a wake, and at the turn it looks on the video like he’s only 20 to 25 seconds ahead. But I lost too much time at the turn, and with just enough tail wind to make sure I wasn’t getting cooled off, but not enough to kick up any good surf, I faded fast. I ended up finishing several minutes behind him. Stephen B was also up there ahead – early on I’d seen him way off to the right with his son Erin, and I assumed he was paddling with Erin, but then he suddenly came back into my view right at the turn fairly close to Tom, and he stayed pretty even with Tom from my viewpoint all the way to the finish.

On the way back in Dan was yelling encouragement – he’d come, but decided not to paddle, so he was out on the course coaching us. He advised me to punch it hard just before the shallows at the last half mile, and then surf my own wake in. Nice plan, but I didn’t have the energy to punch it more than a tiny bit, and I didn’t feel any wake. I guess it’s good that even for a shorter race I managed to use up all my energy by the end, but man I wish I had a faster time to show for it.

After finishing I paddled around a bit to warm down, and watch the other finishers. And then I went to try out the Nelo surf ski that Janet the Nelo rep brought out to demo. It’s tippier than the V10 Sport, for sure, but after dumping it once I managed to keep it upright. I can’t extend the foot brace far enough forward for my tastes – my knees were quite high, probably higher than a sprinter would have. It seemed strange that you needed an allen key to adjust the foot brace, but then again I never adjust my foot brace after I got it right the first time, so I guess it wouldn’t be too big a deal. Anyway, I don’t see another surf ski in my immediate future.

While I was messing about in the Nelo ski, I got to see Jim Mallory win the long race, and Roger Gocking come only a few minutes behind. That was impressive. I think some C-2s came in between the two of them – three of them came in within a few seconds of each other.

Just about every participant got a “OLC” branded boat chamois, and a nice medal for top three finishers. As well, Jim and the two paddlers in the top C-2 got these really beautiful framed 1905(?) hydrological maps of Owasco Lake. Probably the nicest prizes I’ve ever seen at a paddle race.

Oh well, time to get serious and see about getting some speed back in time for Long Lake.

Today was the Armond Bassett race, right here in Rochester. I’ve been looking forward to this race because last year it was my first long distance race ever, and since I was coming back with a lot more base, a lot more hours of training, and a faster boat, I assumed I’d demolish my old time, and possibly the competition as well. Didn’t work out like that. As you can see, last year I was 1:36:12, and this year I was 1:33:05 (actually, I was a bit faster than that, because I started my GPS on one of the “x seconds to go” marks.) So in spite of having a boat that’s probably 30 seconds to a minute per mile faster, I only gained 4 minutes. That’s disappointing.

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They started the kayaks in one wave this year, with no canoes around. That certainly reduced the pile up problem we had last year – most people didn’t even come up to the line until 30 seconds to go, and there wasn’t as much back-paddling. Immediately on the start, Jim Mallory was off like a shot like we expected. Bill Feeney did one of his awesomely quick starts, and I tried to stay with the group with him and Doug. Pretty quickly, though, we dropped Bill and so it was me, Doug, a guy with a mullet in a greenish EFT (I mentioned him in the blog at last year’s race – I think his name is Jim but I’m going to call him Mullet Man) and a guy with short greyish hair in a Thunderbolt or Marauder (I’m going to call him GHG), all trying to catch Mike Littlejohn who had a phenomenal start. We did catch his wake, and so it was GHG to his left, Doug on his stern wash, and me trying to ride Littlejohn’s. I couldn’t hold it, though, and dropped back to his stern wash. I’m not sure where Mullet Man was at this point. I was going way to fast, and my pulse rate was up around 170.

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At the turn, they all gapped me, including Mullet Man. I pulled hard to try to catch them back up, or at least catch Littlejohn who was starting to drop off from them. Scott Stenberg was around me, on one side or the other, and somebody (who I eventually discovered was Paul D) was bumping into my stern as he rode my stern wake. Scott started talking to Paul D, and then just before the railway bridge, as I’d been pulling them along for 2 miles, he suggested I drop onto their stern wakes and take a breather so we could work together. Paul D took the lead, Scott took second, and I was in the best seat in the house behind them, trying to recover from that way too hard start and that long pull.

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As we passed the start line, Scott was trying to tell Paul what line to take around a C-4. They ended up getting so close to them that their paddles clashed, and then as I passed them they did a perfect “pit turn” and turned me out 90 degrees from my line. I swore at them, and then sprinted to get back on Paul D’s wake, but the sprint was just too much and I soon lost them. Looking back on the video, I can see now that the C-4 wasn’t really to blame for pitting me – I think they actually weren’t all that good, and I crossed too close in front of them trying to stay on Scott and Paul. So whoever you are, sorry I called you bastards.

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The rest of the way was just one long hot grind. I didn’t pass any kayakers, and no kayakers passed me. I kept thinking I was getting closer to Paul D (who’d been dropped by Scott) but I never actually did. Jim and I crossed (him downstream and me upstream) quite a bit higher upstream than last year, which I think might indicate some improvement on my part, at least.

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And the return downstream was so hot and airless that I couldn’t maintain anywhere near the speed I had on the first downstream portion after the start. A few times I could get a respite behind a C-2 or C-1 stock boat before I’d go blasting past it, and once as Holly Reynold’s C-2 pro boat came by I was able to hold her wake for a tenth of a mile or so. But most of the C-2 pros came by in groups, which made it too hard for me to get on their wake for any length of time.

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On the way down, I knew I had about 30 seconds to a minute on Mike F, and so while I was mad at myself for not being able to catch Paul D, I could at least take comfort that so far Mike hadn’t caught me. And that’s about how it stayed to the end – the video shows him finishing less than a minute behind me, which would put him about a minute slower than last year (1:32:13 last year).

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I don’t know what it’s going to take to get the speed increase I should have gotten with this faster boat. Cooler weather, I guess, and maybe not wearing dark blue on a brilliantly sunny day. And man, I wish I had the self discipline to lose weight. That’s what it’s going to take to improve, but I just can’t seem to do it.