Category: Kayaking

Today I went out with a couple of guys from the team for a paddle around Irondequoit Bay. I think they do this paddle every Saturday, but it was a very long trip for me. We ended up going 10.85 miles. My longest work out to date was 10 miles, and that time I purposely set out very slowly. This time I was trying to keep up with one of our faster paddlers, Mike, and Paul D who eats miles and never stops. Looking at my GPS info, it appears that I went a pretty steady 5.8 – 6 mph for the first 4.5 miles or so, but after that we were constantly pausing and restarting. Part of that was that around that time we were going into this “side bay” with a lot of weeds and we had to keep clearing each other’s rudders. Plus I was having some sort of problem with my rudder – I was constantly putting on full right rudder just to keep in a straight line. I wonder if one of my cables has slipped? I’m not sure how to fix that, but I suspect I can’t do it alone.

There were a lot of wakes out on the bay, and we were often getting hit by two or three at once. That added a bit of challenge, especially when my rudder was acting funny. I’m really glad I was in a group and not out there alone. None of us dumped, but if we had, there were two other kayakers near by to help. You sure wouldn’t want to count on the power boaters for help – if anything, some of them seem to be trying to swamp you.

As we crossed under the bridge, I realized we only had 2.5 miles left, but I was really fatigued. Up until this point, I’d been avoiding riding the other guy’s wakes because I wanted a full work out, but now I was just trying to get home without slowing everybody down. Paul D offered me his wake, and I took him up on it. At least until we started getting a wake from behind and we both started surfing it. After it passed, he was 10 metres off to my left, and so I tried to grab Mike’s. He’s in a surf ski, which doesn’t have much wake, and he’s a much faster paddler than me, but I tried gamely to stay on it for a while. With about half a mile to go, I just let them both go and struggled in at my own speed.

I’d like to do this again, but maybe I won’t be so shy about riding wakes, and that way I might actually have some energy left at the end.

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.