Category: Kayaking

If you look, you can see that the blade of my paddle doesn’t go all the way into the water. I need to work on my catch. I also think I need to get my paddle more vertical. I’m dropping my head too much. My right hand isn’t opening on the forward rotation. There’s always something to work on.

On the other hand, my rotation is definitely getting better.

Today was the second BayCreek Wednesday night time trial of the season. There was a bit of a wind on the bay, which kicked up a tiny bit of wave activity. Not much, but enough to slow things down a bit. Plus I was the first starter, so I didn’t have a rabbit or a wake to ride. Lots of people lost a few seconds, and I dropped from 19:08 last week to 19:12 this week. I lost 2 seconds on the first half in the bay, and 3 seconds on the second half in the creek, and my heart rate was about 3 bpm higher on both halves.

Paul D says that they recorded his time wrong last week, and was probably a lot faster than the 19.40 they recorded. This week, I barely edged him out as he was 19:14, so we’re still on a fairly even basis. It still astounds me how close I am to some of the other team members’ times – I still think of myself as being sort of a “B+ team” member, but really when you look at those times, I belong there.

It was great to see so many people there, including a couple of people who had never even paddled before, and I went out of my way to be friendly to all the new comers. I know the friendship of others is one of the reasons I kept coming back even when my kayak was broken.

Unofficial results are up here. Results are split between “MO” (Men Over 50), “MU” (Men Under 50), “WO” (Women over 50) and “WU” (Women under 50). It appears that Mike’s rival’s name is George Bellerose, not Bellarus as I wrote. Also, “Nelo Guy”‘s name is Peter Gaaserud. My time was 1:06:15. Paul D finished only 34 seconds behind me in 1:06:49.

Here’s a picture of me heading to the start line. The guy further from the camera in the white kayak that says “Razor” on it is Peter Gasserud, “Nelo Guy”. I don’t know if I’d recognize his face again, but I sure know what his back looks like. The guy closer to the camera is paddling a WSBS boat of some sort, and I think he’s the guy who ended up t-boned into “Mr. 45 Degrees”. (A lot of WSBS boats are the colour of bare kevlar/carbon with a diagonal stripe across the stern deck. Some others, like Mike’s EFT, are bright yellow. I’m not sure why that is.) I think the weird expression on my face is because Steve’s young son was using my camera, and he was twisting something on the lens unnecessarily.

This is a nice picture of Dan and Bill heading up to the start. Dan looks pretty relaxed. Maybe I’ll look that relaxed after doing the race for 30 odd years. Maybe I’ll look that relaxed when the person taking the picture isn’t a young kid using my expensive camera.

Today was the “Tupper Lake 9 Miler” canoe and kayak race. (The name is a bit of a misnomer – my GPS says it was only 7.21 miles, but evidently it used to finish in Tupper Lake rather than in Simon Pond.) I was really looking forward to this race, because it’s mostly on the Racquette River with very little lake travel so therefore not a lot of waves to deal with. My calm water speed is somewhere around 6.0-6.2 mph, so factoring in the stream speed and the extra effort you put in a race, I was hoping to do something around 6.2 to 6.4 mph. Dan figured that Paul D and I could work together and take turns pulling up front alternating with riding the other’s wash. Paul D had different ideas – he figured he was going to go all out at the beginning and see how long he could hang with Mike or Steve, and then probably fade, so I figured I wouldn’t kill myself to stay with him and maybe catch him after he faded and trade pulls.

The river is narrow at the start, so they started us off in waves, with the slowest types of boats going off first and then faster and faster. The first wave was guide boats and recreational kayaks (lots of Saranacs and plastic boats), then the C-1s (1 person canoes, both little black carbon fibre rockets and less extreme boats), then us in the touring kayaks, and in some order I didn’t really pay attention to, unlimited kayaks, C-2s and K-2s, and war canoes.

There were a *lot* of touring kayaks in a tiny little stream. I got to the start immediately after the previous wave left, so I got a good position, but then a bunch of people pushed up to the front line. With a few seconds to go, one guy was poised to go with the upper blade of his paddle about 2 inches from my face. Another guy was lined up at about a 45 degree angle to the rest of us in a WSBS boat of some sort. As you might expect, the start was total chaos. After a few seconds, I was about two boat lengths behind this guy in a yellow Epic touring kayak and trying to catch his wake when Mr. 45 Degrees came up on my left, and immediately started veering towards me. I thought he was trying to squeeze me out of that wake, but instead he continued to cross in front of me. Because it was my first race and I didn’t want to be a total douchebag, I slacked off a bit to try and not hit him, but with my weight it didn’t work and momentum carried me forward. My bow hit his stern and pushed him almost 90 degrees to the current, causing somebody else in a WSBS boat to T-bone him, losing the innocent WSBS guy a bunch of time. I felt bad about that, but it really wasn’t my fault. Mr. 45 Degrees might not feel that way, but he should not have been cutting across from my left to my right without making sure he had room.

Just then Paul D showed up on my left and said “grab my wash”. I did, and when I said I was on he started hammering. My speed immediately started shooting up over 7 mph, with bursts up to 8 mph, and my heart rate went way to high. Paul D got onto Steve’s wake, and that was even worse – Steve is a *much* faster paddler than me. He is a minute faster than me in the 2 mile time trial, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him going 30 seconds per mile faster on longer distances as well. So I dropped off them and decided to try to do my own race, slowing down to about 6.3 mph. But less than a minute later, this guy in a Nelo touring boat started coming up on my left. I decided to try to grab his wash and see how long I could hang on. I got within about 2 inches of his stern and held it there, and was amazed to see that we were actually catching Steve and Paul D. We weren’t catching them quickly, but we were definitely catching them. The guy I was following was taking a line that took him into slow shallow water (or “suck water” as we’re apt to call it), and his speed was varying up and down, but we were going *way* faster than I could have on my own. Most of the time, we were going about 6.6 to 6.8 mph with “gusts” over 7. He didn’t seem the slightest bit tactical – Dan taught us lots of strategy to scrape off somebody who is riding your wash, and how to avoid being scraped off, but the guy I was following never seemed to do any of those things.

After about 2 or 2.5 miles, Nelo Guy and me caught and were passing Steve and Paul D, and Paul D was leaving Steve’s wash to get on ours when suddenly Steve dumped. Sorry, it’s a race, I’m not stopping to help you. I’d now been on Nelo Guy’s wash for 2 miles, which is about 1.5 miles more than I’d expected to hold it, and wondering how long this would last. Then something happened that I was sure was going to knock me out of this train – I went to take a drink and my Camelbak must have kinked or something because I couldn’t get any water, even though I knew I had plenty left. Oh oh.

I knew Paul D was on my wash because he yelled a warning about a tree in the water on one side – I think he was expecting Nelo Guy to try to scrape me off on it. But Nelo Guy wasn’t even trying. A few times I left his wash to try to take a corner further out in the deep fast water instead of following him into the suck water in the inside of the corner, but I soon got back on his wash – there was still no way I could maintain that speed without his help. I could see Mike and his big rival (“Belarus”, I think he calls him) up ahead, but we weren’t gaining on them. I didn’t expect to gain on them, as I’d expected to lose sight of them several miles back. But even more surprising, I looked back and saw that Paul D wasn’t with us any more.

At about the 5 mile mark, there was a very low bridge. Just like the bridge that you go under when leaving Baycreek to go into the bay, I adjusted my stroke into a low sweep on both sides. But Nelo Guy kind of stopped paddling, and while I tried to match his slowdown, my momentum carried me forward and I tapped his stern with my bow. Twice. He half turned in his seat to glare at me and I yelled an apology. After all, I hadn’t meant to do it, and up until this point I’d been 2 inches from his stern for 4.5 miles without tapping him once, so I thought I was doing a pretty good job, and I really didn’t want to lose my meal ticket. A while later, with some other boat wakes throwing us around, I tapped him once more, and once again he turned to glare at me.

Around that same time, the guy who’d beaten Dan at Long Lake came trucking on through. I expected Nelo Guy to try to catch his wash, but he didn’t even try. Then Dan came through. I saw him and called out a “hello”, and he yelled back “AVAST” (he’s on a pirate kick recently.) Dan told me afterwards that he didn’t want to say too much because he didn’t want Nelo Guy to know too much about me and what I was doing behind him. Not long behind Dan was a guy in a really nice looking bright red sprint boat.

After the bridge, the river widened out hugely and there were a lot of boats ahead. We were threading our way between C-1s and rec kayaks and guide boats. The wind was also pretty horrible in our face. Nelo Guy slowed down so much in the wind I wondered if he was losing it, so I pulled out beside him and we paddled side by side for a few minutes before I decided that I’d had enough of that and got in behind him.

Now, again I was thinking about how much of a douche I wanted to be on my first race, so I had already decided that I wasn’t going try to out-sprint Nelo Guy at the end. That’s Dan’s standard advice, that after you ride somebody’s wash for the entire race and make him do all the hard work, you sprint past him the last 200 metres and beat him. Maybe in the future, but not on my first real race.

As we got to Simon Pond, a couple of motor boats came up between the middle of the boats making a huge wake that was throwing us around a bit. And then we turned towards the finish and the wind should have been at our backs but it didn’t seem to help at all. If anything, it was slower. And Nelo Guy was pulling away from me. Even if I’d wanted to sprint him, I couldn’t have. I was beat. I had no sprint left in me.

I started my GPS clock at the “30 seconds to go” call, and I forgot to hit the stop button at the finish, so I don’t know my real time, but I think it was about 1:09. I ended up 3rd in the under 50 class. Paul D finished less than a minute behind me, and he ended up 3rd in the over 50 class. Dan won the over 50 unlimited class, and Mike was second in the over 50 touring class. I know Mike was disappointed at not beating Belarus, and Steve was mad about dumping (and finishing behind me), but I am ecstatic. It was my first real race, and I held that guy’s wash perfectly and got pulled well beyond what I could have done on my own.

And “Nelo Guy”, if you’re out there, I’m sorry I didn’t come and thank you after the race. After the way you’d glared at me those two times, I wasn’t sure you’d be friendly so I avoided you. But I never could have done it without you.

Tonight was the first BayCreek time trial. Last year, I went to a bunch of them, and was turning in times around 24.5-26 minutes all year until the first time I got to borrow Frank’s Necky Looksha II, on the very last one of the season, when I set my personal best of 22.87 (they time in minutes and hundredths). The Looksha now belongs to me, and I’ve been paddling the hell out if it all last fall and this spring, so I expected to do a bit better. My goal for the year was to beat 20 minutes, since last year I watched Paul D try like hell to break 20 minutes and come up short time after time. I figure over short distances, I can probably compare myself to him, although he’s got a lot more endurance than me and will pull away after a couple of miles.

I started out about a minute behind a guy in a C-1 who last year I’d started behind and nearly kept up with him for the first half mile into the bay, only to watch him disappear into the distance on the way back. This time I was pretty sure I was catching up to him, and still catching him on the way back. I was trying hard to keep my speed over 6 mph, because obviously a 6m mph average time equals 20 minutes for 2 miles, and the bay is deeper and therefore a bit faster than the creek. It was a struggle on the way out, because although the bay was pretty still, there was a tiny bit of a breeze in my face and it was slowing me down. After the turn, a boat wake hit from the side and it was throwing me off a bit, but my speed was still pretty good.

I hit the split time at 9.40! Hey, I thought, as long as I don’t slow down too much, I might get pretty close to 20 minutes. I wanted to believe I could beat it, but I didn’t want to count on it. Soon after the split time, there was a swan in the middle of the creek. I yelled at it, and swerved a little bit left. Unfortunately, he swerved in the same direction, and I hit him. It slowed me down, and he tried to attack me, but I poured on the speed and got out of there before he could reach me.

I got to the last buoy turn and I was almost on the C-1. He had an interesting way of making the turn – he put his foot in the water and dragged it while he did a sweep on the other side. It gave him a small turning radius, but it slowed him down terribly. Now I was well and truly on his wash. I rode it for a while, and tried to make my move and pass him, but as soon as I got out of his wash it was much harder to paddle. So I tucked back in and tried not to hit his stern too often. I tried again, same result. Finally, with about 300 metres to go, I decided it was time to give it everything I could and pass him. It was a real maximum effort, but I was going just a hair under 7 mph as I crossed the line.

The final time? 19.08!!! OMGWTFBBQ!! That’s a 3.79 minute (3 minutes and 47 seconds) improvement over my previous best. Not only did I beat Paul D, but I was within a few seconds of Bill on his surf ski!

Now Dan says I have to set my sights on breaking 18 minutes. Yeah, right. I believe that as much as I believed him when he said I was going to break 19 minutes tonight. Oh wait.