Category: Kayaking

Not my best day paddling

Today the team met for our first paddle on the lake. Originally Stephen had said I might be able to paddle his v10 sport surf ski, while he used his new v12. But it was too rough, so he took the sport, leaving me in the Thunderbolt. This is my first time on the lake in it, and probably only my second time in waves – the race being the first.

I was moderately nervous as I went out a few hundred metres into the swell. I waited for a small lull and turned down, and actually got a few nice runs. But as I attempted to turn up swell again, I dumped leaving me cold, wet, and even more nervous about the swell.

Dan immediately set course to a lighthouse which is about 5 miles away, but of course it was exactly 90 degrees to the swell, which is the worst. I was determined to give it a chance, hoping my nervousness would abate. I told several people how nervous I was and Mike and Paul kept fairly close to reassure me.

Dennis, a paddler I know through Facebook whom I’ve never met in person before, showed up. He was test paddling a new v10 sport to see if the cockpit was easier on his back than his old v10 sport. He, like everybody else except me, was showing every sign of enjoying the swells.

After half an hour of slow paddling, I realized that I wasn’t getting any less nervous, and the fear was making me more tired than hard paddling would. I was thirsty as hell, but couldnt grab a drink because i didnt dare take a hand off my paddle I knew I was never going to survive another hour of this. So I told Dan I needed to turn back and I needed somebody to go with me. He turned the whole group around. He paddled with me and said he’d stay with me. I was grateful because I’d already dumped once, in shore, and now we were hundreds of metres off shore and a long way from where we’d started. I knew that a dump out here would require a long, cold swim to shore, abandoning my boat and paddle since I am unable to remount this boat, and then a several mile walk back to the parking lot.

So it was with more than a little consternation that not more than five minutes later I realized that Dan wasn’t anywhere around. Mike was still with me, so that wasn’t too bad. He stayed with me until we were about a mile and a half from the start, but then he disappeared as well. Not sure where he went, but he’s not the one who promised that he’d never abandon me. Dennis came up beside me and talked to me. I was getting more and more tired, and the fear and the tiredness was making me less and less in control of the boat.

Dennis disappeared for some reason, and I just about freaked out. I was shaking, and on the verge of tears. I was sure my only hope was to swim for it. I screamed for help, and Dennis showed up – I think he’d just dropped behind. I was even less able to think straight or paddle straight. I was barely moving at all, and doing more bracing than anything else.

As I got parallel to the beach where I’d launched, I was able to turn down swell and pick up the pace. I didn’t quite get a ride from the waves, but at least I wasn’t fighting them. But as I was getting out of the boat, a wave hit me and I fell on my paddle shaft, snapping it in two. What a perfectly horrible way to end a perfectly horrible day.

At this point, I’m not even sure I want to replace the paddle. This was supposed to be fun. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow, but right now I don’t want to paddle and I definitely don’t want to see or talk to Dan.

‘Round The Mountain 2010

The day dawned cool, damp and fairly breezy. Not optimal, but better than last year’s legendary strong winds and waves, which thankfully I missed. Much of the discussion around breakfast and after we got to the start area was around what to wear – you don’t want to get chilled in the wind on the lakes, but you also don’t want to get too hot on the sheltered bits. Well, that and scoping out the competition. As well as the four of us from Baycreek (Doug, Mike, Frank and I), there was Lars, the guy who sold a couple of us our Brasca paddles, in a v-12, two guys in Nelo Vipers, Mike Littlejohn in his shorter cedarstrip, and we somehow missed seeing George Belarose, Mike F’s rival and nemesis from Tupper Lake last year although we saw him at the finish. Other than the v-12, I figured I had it made in unlimited class until Kent Olmholt-Jensen told me that he’d entered his Viper in unlimited class. If the other Viper was in unlimited as well, I was out of contention. But that’s ok, I figured that once I’d started paddling the Thunderbolt, I had said goodbye to wooden plaques and ribbons.

One aside about Kent O-J: He lives in Chelsea Quebec, not too far from where I used to live, and for some reason I keep wanting to call him Karl. I wonder if I met a Karl O-J through orienteering or cross country skiing when I lived there. (I’ve looked it up – Jarl O-J was a member of the Canadian Olympic cross country ski team at the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo. I wonder if he’s a relative?)

We lined up at the start, with Frank, Mike and I between two C-2s. I’m not sure where Doug ended up. The two C-2s kept squeezing in, and eventually about 15 seconds before the start the one on my left went ahead of me and further right until he ended up to my right between Mike and I.


(If you look carefully, you can see George Belarose paddling around watching the race leave – I guess he didn’t hear the pre-race meeting where they announced that Touring kayak would leave in the second wave rather than the third. I bet he felt lonely being the only kayak in the third wave.)

At the start siren, it was the usual chaotic mess as everyone was searching for the line they wanted or a wake to ride. I had my usual slow start, but to quote bicycle commentator Paul Sherwin, once my ‘big diesel engine’ winds up, I do ok. I was coming up behind Mike, who was just on the left wake of a C-2 sterned by a guy with a Mohawk with a pony tail in the back (in reference to the way a mullet is sometimes referred to in Canada as ‘hockey hair’, I thought that hairstyle should be called ‘lacrosse hair’), when the C-2 suddenly veered sharply to the left, cutting Mike off badly. I decided to swing right to get out of the mess of canoe wakes, but as we left the relative shelter of Ampersand Bay the waves got really bad. They were definitely the worst I’ve handled in the Thunderbolt. I kept telling myself that if this wasn’t a race I would have wimped out. I was now near Doug, and we passed one of the Vipers, this one paddled by a guy in a florescent green high visibility jacket. He was evidently enjoying the waves as much as I was. Doug was heading off towards the wind shadow of an island which looked like a great idea to me so I went with him. He told me I was doing a great job, but he couldn’t see my heart rate monitor – fear and excitement had pushed my heart rate up into the mid to high 170s, which is higher than I’d ever seen it.

Once we got into the wind shadow, I could start paddling for distance instead of survival. I was now ahead of all the kayaks except for the v-12 and the two vipers (the guy with the green jacket passed us almost as soon as we got into the wind shadow). I think Doug was right behind me and Mike wasn’t far behind, although I wasn’t going to pause to look back. We were passing some of the recreation boats that had started in the wave ahead of us, and I tried to say something encouraging as I passed them. There was a buoy at the turn into the river, and I was catching this rec kayaker who was all arms and no torso, and I was about to give some advice on that when he yelled ‘Right of way’ at me. I said ‘seriously dude, you’re going to challenge me for the buoy?’ I went inside the buoy, and then he called ‘sorry’.

The river was narrow and winding, and even the lakes had serpentine courses marked out in buoys to avoid the rocks and shallows. I saw a c-2 sneak through a narrow bit between the shore and an island, but Kent O-J went around. I saw the guy in the green jacket go through the ‘sneak’, but suddenly jam his paddle in a braking maneuver, so I decided to go around. Doug and Mike went through the sneak and I had to paddle like hell to get back on terms with them. Doug has a very small rudder and Mike has a kick-up rudder, so they could risk it more than me. As I pulled back ahead of Doug, he suggested I try to catch the C-2 that was a few lengths ahead, but I tried like hell and I couldn’t get them. Ironically, it was the same boat that had crowded me at the start.

Not long after that, we went under the bridge where our wonderful support crew (wives) were going to meet us to cheer us on. We could see a guy standing on the bridge taking pictures and a guy under the bridge with a dog, but we could hear women cheering. It wasn’t until we got under the bridge that we saw them on a fishing access dock. It lifted my spirits to see them there.

About a mile after that was the carry, a few hundred meter portage, up and down a steep ridge. The C-2 hit just ahead of me, but they just each grabbed an end and ran. I started to get out and got a terrible leg cramp. Doug got out and just danced up the hill as I slowly trudged after. Although he did manage to hit his boat on a tree, which was amusing. By the time he got down to the dock and away, and I got to the dock, he was a couple of hundred metres ahead. Mike arrived at the dock right behind me, but rather than use the other side of the dock he waited for me to clear my side. He assumed I was going to be faster than I was, so I kind of partially responsible for his delay. He said he’ll try to catch me so we can work together to catch Doug, so I pulled away from the dock and then paused to adjust my seat and drink hose and have a drink. I started paddling and I felt quite a bit slower than before.

Mike eventually caught me, but we were both spent, and neither of us wanted to up the pace. We could see Doug up ahead but he wasn’t getting any closer or further away. He was looking back every now and then. I wondered if he had slowed down for us and was wondering what was taking us and why weren’t we catching up, but he tells me afterwards that he was going hard too and was worrying about us catching up.

There were a couple more places where you had to decide to take the sneak or go around an island, and I was so tired that I risked it every time. I bumped my rudder a few times and jammed my paddle once, but I think most of them were net gains.

The last bit into Lake Flower was into a strong head wind, which was not appreciated since we were heading almost 180 degrees differently than when we’d been leaving Ampersand Bay, also into a head wind. I sort of thought that since we’d had a head wind on the way out, it wouldn’t be too much to expect a tail wind on the way back, but that’s racing, I guess.

Mike and I were still side by side, but he was a ways off to the right and I thought I was going more direct, so we weren’t supporting each other. So I decided this time I wasn’t going to get out sprinted at the end like at Long Lake, so I dug deep and put on some extra speed and managed to beat him by a second or two.

The aftermath:

  • It turned out that while Kent O-J had registered his Nelo Viper in Unlimited, the guy in the green jacket had registered his in Touring, so I ended up third in Unlimited
  • Doug won Touring in the under 50 category.
  • Mike came second in Touring in the over 50 category.
  • Frank was only 7 minutes behind Mike and I, and only 3 minutes slower than George Belarose. That’s pretty incredible, considering he’s probably 20 years older than any of us.
  • No word yet on how many NYMCRA points each of us got.
  • I think we surprised a few people by upping our game this year.

Getting ready…

I’m trying to recover from the damage to my elbows and shoulders from the hard workout I did last Tuesday with the other paddle. On Thursday, I did a very easy paddle – the team were doing intervals, but I just went slowly and recovered. I did a few short bits of faster paddling, but when I did my elbows were very sore.

Because of that, I took a couple of days off. Then on Monday, I went erging after work. I figured that I could adjust the resistance and make sure I didn’t hurt my elbows any more. I did 1000 m warm up with very low resistance, 2000 m fast with moderate resistance, 2000 m fast with heavy resistance, then 1000 m warm down. Didn’t hurt much at all, which made me hopeful, but I videoed and my technique looked ok, but not great.

Today, I went out on the boat. Since this weekend’s race has a portage, one thing I was practicing was coming in hard, jumping out the boat, carrying it, jumping back in, and paddling off hard. Good practice for doing the dock, but the water was too cold to practice beach launching. It also makes for some strange looking video as I pick up the boat with the camera attached and sling it on my shoulder. I’ll spend the rest of the week doing some easy paddling and fixing up some things on my boat. Because of the set backs of the last couple of weeks I haven’t exactly prepared for this race the way I wanted to, but I have a lot more base than I did for my first race last year.

Can’t win, shouldn’t even try.

Early on in my attempts to become a kayak racer, I encountered some elbow pain and got very discouraged. But after a while it settled down to a level that I could manage by taking way more Alieve (Naproxen Sodium) than any doctor would recommend. (Yeah, my kidneys will probably explode some year, but unlike chronic joint pain, doctors know how to treat that.)

I’ve been paddling a hell of a lot, and so far I’ve had no increase in elbow pain over last year – if anything I’m taking less Alieve than before.

But I’ve been paddling the same paddle, a Basca VIII-max, since I first learned how to paddle a wing paddle. It’s a good paddle, but very large. I’ve lately been wondering if there might be some advantages to a smaller blade. One thing about the VIII-max is that it’s so long it doesn’t get “buried” entirely in the water at the catch, but gets progressively more blade in the water as the stroke progresses. I consider that’s probably a good thing for my joints, but experienced paddlers like Dan and Jim keep nagging me about it. So I borrowed a Basca IV clone (I think it’s a Danny Broadhurst, but it doesn’t have any identifying marks on it) from Dan, and I paddled it yesterday for about 15 km. Jim kept telling me my catch looked very strong.

Today my elbows are sorer than they’ve ever been, and my shoulders are in agony. I’ve never had shoulder problems before. This is not a good thing – so far in my life, every time I’ve developed a new joint pain it has not gone away or even abated, ever. Starting with knee pain 35 fucking years ago. Every pain only gets worse. So I view a new joint pain with some alarm.

Needless to say, I won’t be paddling the IV again. I just hope that my shoulders forgive me when I go back to my nice gentle catch with the VIII-max. Mean time, I’m taking an unplanned day off of paddling, and gobbling the Alieve and Tylenol.

The first cut is the deepest

That’s not how I expected or hoped for my first kayak race of the season to go.

Dan and Jim told me about this little race in Canandaigua this weekend. It wasn’t on the NYMCRA calendar and it was very loosely organized. The web site barely mentioned the flat water part of the race, and I was getting contradictory information on where it was supposed to start. But heck, it was only 10k and I’d been itching to see how all the work I’d done this spring was preparing me.

On race day, Dan and Paul D decided not to race for various reasons. Dan still went with me, but he was going to do a downriver paddle on the part of the river below the slalom course where the flat water course ended. So basically that left Jim, me, and Julia as the class of the race. There were a couple of C2s and a C1 that looked like they knew what they were doing, but I knew we were going to be faster than canoes. So my goal was to stay with Jim as long as I could, and not blow up and keep ahead of Julia.

The start was pretty dicey – about 20 metres after the start there was a two tunnel bridge, and a couple of idiots in a raft were blocking one of the two tunnels, so we had to sprint for it. Julia, being much lighter than me, actually got there ahead of me, but afterwards I buried myself to try to pass her and catch Jim. Also there was a submerged log very early on that my rudder hit for fortunately it didn’t twist it like logs sometimes do.

Things went according to plan. For the bit where I’d worked hard to catch Jim and for about a kilometer afterwards, my heart rate was up around 171, which is the highest I’ve ever seen it. But after I caught his wake and he slowed down a bit, I recovered to the mid 150s with occasional trips up to the mid 160s when obstacles in the river made me lose his wake and I’d have to fight my way back to it. Julia and everybody else were out of sight behind us and I was able to concentrate on keeping on Jim’s wake and going hard but not too hard, averaging just a bit faster than 5 minutes per kilometer. And that took us to about the 7 kilometer mark.

At about the 7 km mark the water got rougher. Not actually white water, but lots of standing waves and twists and turns and narrow parts of the river. I lost Jim’s wake because I was spending too much time bracing instead of paddling, while his boat that was made for those types of conditions just powered on through.

At about the 7.5 or 8 km mark, there was a narrow bit where my rudder hit a submerged log and I dumped. Fortunately there was a flat part of the bank there and I was able to very quickly get out, get the water out of the boat, and get paddling again. But the water was really cold and I was shivering by the time I got in.

And not 10 metres later I got a sweeper branch in the gut, and I dumped again. This time I was using a gigantic log, about 3 times the length of my boat, to try to get out when it suddenly came lose and started heading downstream. So I had to let it go by and then get onto shore. The shore wasn’t quite as conducive to getting back in, and I’d spent a bit longer in the water, so I was pretty cold. And Julia came by as I was finally sorted out and getting back in again.

This time I resolved not to rush it, but I started paddling and realized my rudder was way off straight. It wasn’t easy to tell, because my feet had gone completely numb and I wasn’t sure if I was even pushing the tiller bar. I had to crash into shore again, get out with my feet in the cold water, and straighten the rudder. As I was doing so, the first of the C2s, a couple of women that Jim and I had met paddling on Red Creek a week or so ago, came by.

I set off again, and I’m not sure how much further I got. This time another submerged log got me, but after the log was very deep water. This time the current was so strong it ripped off my aqua shoes and took my camelback. I had to swim hard to make the shore, and when I got there the bank was so steep and so overgrown I couldn’t get my boat out to get the water out. I ever tried to break out the rear bulkhead to make it easier to dump the water, but to no avail. After a while, while the other C2 and the C1 came by, I realized I was going to have to go back into the water to dump out the boat. I wasn’t relishing that. I actually sat down on the bank for a while to warm up. When I stopped shivering, I went in and dumped most of the water out of the boat. During that time a guy came by in a squirt boat, so I realized that not only had I lost, but there was no way I was going to even finish in the top 3 kayaks. But then I had the problem of how to get back into the boat. I pushed and pulled the boat to get it into a position where I could stand up to my waist in water, and then sort of put one leg in, brace with the paddle and get the other leg in. It worked, after a fashion, but two guys in a fat, wide fishing kayak who were yelling at each other came by while I was doing so. At least I was able to pass them.

The finish didn’t come fast enough to me, but when the water wasn’t too wavy I managed to put on a bit of speed. At the finish, Dan and Jim and Julia took charge of my boat and paddle, and one of the volunteers gave me a t-shirt so I had something dry to change into. As I mentioned I didn’t have any foot protection at this point, so I kind of limped back to my car, and Jim and Julia brought me a hot dog and a bottle of water while I warmed up.

Jim and Dan went off on another down-river paddle, and I was supposed to pick them up in half an hour or so. So I was sitting there, taking pictures of all my scratches for my Facebook page when I suddenly realized that while all I could see where superficial scratches, there was an actual “puddle” (or a conglomeration of drops, if you want to be less melodramatic, and I don’t) of blood sitting there on the sill of the car door where I’d had my feet. I look at my left foot, no problems, look at my right and just about pass out from the sight of this huge flap of flesh there. I hobbled over to the first aid ambulance, and they say “you need stitches and a tetanus shot”. Before I could say “but my car is unlocked, my wallet is in it, and somebody has to pick up Dan and Jim”, they had me in the gurney and on my way to the hospital. So now I’m trying to figure out how to contact Julia to lock up my car, secure my kayak, and go pick up Jim and Dan, and also let Vicki know what’s happening. So I’m texting Vicki like mad, but I don’t have Julia’s cell phone number. I texted Stephen, since he works with her and probably knows her number, but he’s out of town and he never got back to me. I asked Vicki to post something on Julia’s husband’s facebook wall, because that’s the only way I know to get in touch with them.

As I was being admitted into the hospital, Dan phones me up to ask where the hell I was. I explained the situation, and he and Jim said they’d take care of things for me. And sure enough, while I was getting stitched up Jim and Julia come into my room and Julia starts taking pictures. Jim suggested that Julia send one of the more gruesome pictures to Vicki. But not only had they come to visit me, they’d also brought my car and my kayak and picked up all my stuff.

Obviously I’m home now. I’ve got 5 stitches in my foot, and I’m cautioned not to wear shoes very much for the next week or so. I’m sore and tired, and the numbness is starting to wear off on the cut. And I’ve got to figure out how to get Julia to send me copies of those pictures. But I did have 7/10ths of a great first race.