Category: Kayaking

On Sunday I went over to Stephen’s to erg. Last time I was there the battery on the computer died and Stephen warned me not to rely on it, so I brought my gps to act as a timer and heart rate monitor. I also brought my video camera to bore everybody on YouTube again, but unfortunately the battery died after just a minute or two.

Without the erg computer, I was relying on other cues to know how well I was doing – I listened to the sound of the turbine and tried to notice what muscles were tiring. What I wanted to hear from the turbine was a ‘VOOgah’ sound that meant I was getting some pause and glide. If I wasn’t paying attention I would get a much steadier ‘vrrrmmvrrrmmm’ sound that meant I wasn’t pausing. (later on I tried the computer for a while and discovered that when that happened, my stroke rate went up from the mid 60s to the low 70s, but with no increase in speed.). I also tried to remember to get good twist and rotation – the more I concentrate on it now the sooner it will become natural.

I paddled steady for 15 mins, took a sip of water, paddled another steady 15 mins, then I tried the erg computer. With the computer to help me see if my stroke rate was increasing, I paddled for nine minutes steady, increased my speed for one minute without increasing my stroke rate, grabbed a quick sip of water and repeated two more times. The last set I finished off with two minutes of high speed (still at 65 strokes per minute) and some slow cool down. Over an hour of paddling all told.

[youtube D3_qAcF8n4Q]This is why I don’t mind paying Dan for some coaching, even when I don’t have a lot of spare cash. I can watch videos of myself alone until I’m blue in the face, but it takes a coach to point out the things I was missing. In this video I’m getting a *lot* more torso rotation that I do when I erg alone. And if there’s one thing that last year taught me, it’s that doing good technique on the erg translates to having good technique be natural on the water. If there’s one thing I heard over and over again from my teammates in 2009, it was how good my technique was and how naturally it seemed to come to me. Stephen referred to me as “a technique savant”. But it wasn’t natural, it was a result of hours spent at Dan’s house erging and listening to his advice, as well as listening to the advice of other experienced paddlers.

Today I was doing 800 metre (half mile) intervals, working on technique while maintaining a fast pace. I did 6 intervals, all around 4:11-4:13. This video is from the last one, where I was my tiredest.

[youtube F8HlKZJiboI]I did a long work-out at Stephen’s today. I think my technique is coming along nicely, except I drop my head down and to the side too much when I get tired. Jim says I look like I’m leaning back, but I think that’s because my gut gets in the way. The front-view video is from about 40 or 50 minutes into the work-out, and the side view is from the first ten minutes. One thing I worked on was trying to get more rotation – when I thought about it and worked on it, my stroke rate dropped from around 72-74 down to about 64-66, but my speed stayed the same. I didn’t see much change in my pulse, but my heart rate monitor was cutting in and out all the time. I guess I should find out from Dan whether he thinks the longer slower stroke will lead to good results in the water as well.

I went over to Stephen’s house to erg tonight. The past two Wednesdays I’ve gone to Doug’s, but he was busy tonight. Stephen’s house is a bit of a haul, but gas is cheaper than buying my own erg. Plus it’s fun to hang out with different paddlers and talk about stuff.

We did 5 minute intervals, alternating. Stephen hasn’t calibrated his erg, so I think the speed it was showing was a bit fast. I would do a set with the resistance set to about 5-7, then he’d do a set at about the speed with the resistance set to 7-9. My heart rate was in the middle 150s. After we both did 6 sets, Stephen had had enough, because he’d done a hard workout yesterday, so I did a steady 15 minute piece at about the same speed. The last couple of minutes of my piece, I sped up and raised my heart rate into the 160s.

It was a great work-out. Plus I got to inflict my CD of “Kilted Generation” on Stephen.

This morning, Doug, Mike and I agreed to meet at BayCreek for a paddle. I’d scouted it out on Thursday when it was about 42 degrees out, and it was remarkably free of ice. But as I got in the car to go, I noticed that the temperature this morning was only 25 degrees. Not quite as pleasant. I won’t be paddling without pogies today.

I arrived at the parking lot to see that Mike was already there, but he’d gotten his car stuck in the snow. I helped push him out, which is not exactly the sort of warm up I wanted. Doug arrived almost as soon as we’d gotten Mike out, and we didn’t waste any time getting ready. As I’ve done so many times before, I realized that I’d left my GPS on the table where I was getting ready. Oh well.

The creek had a bit more ice around the edges, and the water was cold and dense. The shallowness of the water and the swiftness of the flow meant that we didn’t make very good speed, and we had to constantly hunt from side to side to find water deep enough to paddle in, even if it meant being in the main brunt of the current. Often we ended up in single file because it the only deep water was too narrow for side by side paddling.

After 15 or 20 minutes, I was finally warmed up enough to take off my paddling jacket. There was a very narrow fast bit just downstream from where the weir used to be, and Doug and Mike waited for me just above that. As we warmed up, we started really enjoying it. I have to say, in spite of the ice forming on my jacket, in my beard, and on the top of the boat, I was warmer paddling this morning than I am sitting in my office right now.

In spite of the cold, we saw geese, ducks, swans and one kingfisher. We also saw lots of people walking their dogs in Ellison dog park. A few of the people looked at us like we were crazy. They were probably right.

By the time we were ready to turn around, I was dragging behind the other two guys a bit. After we turned around, I enjoyed the feeling of actually making some headway so much that I went out hard and lead them through a line that went from deep fast part to deep fast part. I think I managed to keep the lead for about half a mile before first Mike and then Doug pulled past me.

After we “finished”, we decided to paddle out into the bay to look around. We could see some motorcycles running around a pylon course on part of the ice, and the ubiquitous ice fishermen, and there were were out nearly half a mile from shore. We hit ice a few dozen feet short of where the time trial turn-around was, so I said “to hell with it” and paddled out into the ice. My Looksha does an ok job of breaking thin ice, but when I went to turn I got about 90 degrees around before I hit thicker ice that I couldn’t break through easily and turn at the same time. That’s when it hit me how silly this little stunt was. I had to paddle backwards a bit, breaking ice with my paddle for every stroke, and then once I got into thinner ice, turn for home and paddle back, still breaking ice. Not the smartest thing I ever did, but not dangerous. At the worst, I would have had to paddle backwards around the curve that I’d already cut in the ice, and I didn’t have to do that.

It was a great day out, and I’m hoping there will be more thaw days.