Category: Kayaking

Many are cold, few are frozen

At 10:00 o’clock this morning, I was sitting at my computer watching it snow. It was supposed to get up to 37°F today, but it was hovering around 30 and snowing pretty hard. I hunted down my cell phone and discovered that Dan had left a message on it – the canal by his house was frozen, so instead of meeting at his place at the usual 12:30, he was going to paddle at the Genesee Waterway Center (GWC) at 1pm, and he wanted to know if I was coming. Of course I’m coming. I quickly phoned him back.

When I showed up at GWC, the others weren’t there yet. It was bitter cold and the wind was blowing straight down the river. I added a t-shirt and windbreaker to my polartherm and wore my PFD, which I haven’t been wearing on the canal. The river is deep and wide, and if I went in there I couldn’t be out in seconds like I could in the canal. Unfortunately I haven’t worn the PFD over all that clothing in a while, and while it felt fine on land when I tried paddling it restricted my ability to breathe. It’s amazing how tired you feel when you can’t breathe.

Second to arrive was Jim Mallory, and then Dan. While Jim and I were getting in our kayaks, Steve showed up. So far I think Steve is the only other person as crazy as me about showing up no matter what the weather. While Dan and Steve were getting ready is when I discovered the problem with the PFD, and took steps to loosen it up. Once that was taken care of, it wasn’t so bad – both in terms of being able to paddle well, and also being comfortable with the temperature.

Having the four of us was great. Dan stayed with me and worked on my technique, while Steve couldn’t possibly outrun former Olympian Jim Mallory. Jim’s technique is every bit as good as Dan’s, if not better, and he’s a professor at NTID, so he can teach as well.

I had a very satisfying work out. The only problem is that once I finished, the sweat condensed and cooled down, my hands were no longer protected by my pogies, and it was *cold*. Colder than I’ve been since last winter. I got my kayak up on my roof rack as quickly as I could and headed home. But I’m sure glad I went.

Dan’s dock: 5, Me: 1

I went kayaking at Dan’s again. We were joined by Paul D, Doug, and Dan. We were briefly joined by Jim Mallory, a former Olympic kayaker and a colleague of Vicki’s – but he had to leave when the kayak he was paddling filled up with water up to … the top of his seat, and it got too uncomfortable to continue. The kayak he was paddling looked ratty and was patched with tape in multiple places, so it was no wonder it leaked. I think he said he bought it used for a few hundred bucks. Cheap at half the price.

It was 39°F and breezy. I debated wearing a windbreaker, but I’d worn one last week and was too warm. So I decided to suffer until I warmed up a bit. We found a nice stretch of the canal without much wind and paddled up and down that 1000-1500 metres. The first time up, the four of us cut through a bit of ice, but we didn’t see it again so it must have broken up and drifted aside.

It was an exhausting work-out. I think I’m getting better at keeping up with the rest of them, but it’s still extremely tiring. I pooped out before the other guys, so I headed back to the dock alone. And that’s when my troubles started.

You see, since getting my Looksha, last Sunday was the first and so far only time I’ve managed to get out of it alone at Dan’s dock. Dan’s dock is too high up for me to do the standard paddle across the back of the cockpit brace. Every other time I’ve either had somebody else to help stabilize the boat, or I’ve given up and gone to the rocky shore to brace with the paddle. Because last time I managed to actually get out alone, I thought I’d be ok. But I don’t know if it’s because I was tired, or because there was a strong wind blowing that caused me to drift away from the dock as soon as I tried to put both hands on the back of the cockpit. But after a lot of struggle, I gave up and went over to the rocks again. That works, but of course I end up putting my feet down in the water. Woo, that was cold.

More madness

This morning I went flying. First time since I got back from Oshkosh. I had to take the club’s Dakota out to Batavia for its annual. It reminded me what I loved and everything I hated about flying. It took an hour to scrape the snow and ice off the wings, and then it took most of the way to Batavia to get my toes to stop freezing. I made a couple of rookie mistakes on the departure, including making a wrong turn on the taxiway and actually forgetting to push the push-to-talk at one point. But by the time I got to Batavia things were going pretty good, and I made three perfect landings. I definitely need to squeeze in some time to do this more often.

This afternoon I went paddling. It was even colder than last week, but it wasn’t windy at all and it wasn’t snowing and blowing like last week. I wore an anorak over the wet suit and polytherm I wore last week, and it was too much – I actually ended up taking off my toque for much of the time. As well as Dan and Steven, we also had Doug along. He hasn’t been out for a while, and his boat still has his race number for the Long Lake race on it. Steven was trying a different boat, the KayakPro Marlin that I kept asking Ken to try all year but the rudder wasn’t working. And sure enough, half way through it the rudder broke again. Doug and I paddled on ahead while Dan and Steven worked on the boat, and next time we saw them Dan was in the KayakPro Marlin and Steven was in the Epic 18X that he’d been trying last week.

There was a ice on parts of the canal – for much of it there was ice up against one bank or the other coming out a few feet. It was thin enough that if you got into it you could paddle through it and it would break. But far more fun was to paddle along beside it, because as your wake flexed the ice sheet it made a sound very much like electrical wires twanging in the breeze. It was erie and cool.

Dan was in top form today, taking time to call out encouragement and advice to everybody about their strokes. He was really riding Stephen’s ass too – it seemed almost mean, but Stephen gives as good as he gets and still has that desire to start paddling like crazy when he should be slowing down and thinking. I was doing an ok job of hanging on to Doug when he was paddling at a moderate pace, which I thought was a sign how far I’d progressed. I still need to work on not letting my technique fall apart when I’m tired or when I’m thinking of other things.

Oh, and just to top a perfect day, I was able to get out of my kayak at Dan’s dock without help for the first time. Now if only I could get the spray skirt on without help.

This is madness! This is KAYAKING!

It’s 12:55. I’m dressed in a farmer-john wet suit, toque, and polar-therm long underwear. It’s 39°F and there is a hint of snow in the air. My hands are freezing and my feet are cold. And I’m putting my kayak on my roof rack in preparation for going paddling with Dan and some of the others.

It’s now 1:20. I’ve arrived at Dan’s house to find out that I’d gotten the time wrong, and I was supposed to be there at 12:30. But Ginny says that they only left a little while ago. If anything, it’s colder than it was at home, and it’s certainly windier. I have a perfect excuse to quit if I want. But instead I quickly load up. Ginny doesn’t know which way they went, but I assume they went upwind so they’d have the wind at their back on the way back.

It’s about 1:45. My shoulders are aching, and I’m spending more time resting than paddling. I’ve been weaving around the canal, trying to stay on the upwind side to stay out of the wind, which is bitter at times. It’s cutting through me – the wet suit certainly protects me, but the parts of my torso not covered by it are cold. At least my eyes have stopped streaming. I figure I’m not going to catch up to Dan’s group, but I’ll go to the “2 mile bridge” (a bridge which is, coincidentally enough, 2 miles from Dan’s dock) and back. 4 miles is a pretty decent work-out, even if I’m struggling as I am.

It’s about 1:50. I turn the last corner where I should be able to see the “2 mile bridge”, and there is Dan and Steve. Steve is paddling cross-ways across the canal, and Dan is watching them. I’m tucked in to the shore, between two docks, and I don’t think they can see me. I speed up to see if I can get closer without them seeing me. But Dan spots me. They’ve found a semi-sheltered part of the canal, and Steve has been trying to get used to a new boat he’s considering buying, an Epic 18X like Frank and Paul D paddle. Dan points out why my shoulders have been hurting – in my rush to catch up I’ve let my technique fall apart and I haven’t been pushing with my feet and getting good torso rotation. It’s like I have to learn that lesson over and over again. Frustrating. It starts to snow a bit. A man walking along the canal looks at us and shakes his head sadly.

It’s about 2:00. We’ve been heading home, and Dan has been trying to help Steve with his technique while I try to ride either Dan’s or Steve’s wake. I’m not having to stop to rest anywhere near as much as I had on the way up, as I’m using my legs and torso much better. Plus the tail wind is helping. When I’m trying to ride his wake, it’s obvious that Steve is having trouble with his rudder and he’s weaving around. It’s much easier to stay in Dan’s wake because he doesn’t weave from side to side. He brings the speed up and down, and I follow. And the snow stops, but we’ve in and out of the wind as the canal changes direction.

It’s about 2:15, and Steve has, as he so often does, gotten frustrated with himself and stopped listening to Dan and just plunged on ahead. Even I can see that his technique has fallen apart. On the other hand, Dan wants me to finish up on a high note so we slow down and work on getting a good catch, good rotation, and a good glide. With the technique still good, we brought the pace up slowly, and finished up with 10 good hard strokes. I’m tired, but proud of myself. I really did it.

Very good paddle yesterday

Yesterday I went out with Coach Dan on the canal at his home. It was a beautiful crisp fall day, brilliantly sunny and about 50 degrees F. I was thankful for my farmer john wetsuit and thermal shirt, even if Dan mocked them when I first showed up.

To give you an idea of how far I’ve progressed this year, we paddled a mile just for the warm up. We did a number of technique drills, adding one more element to my technique each time. Meanwhile, since all my paddling in this boat before has been in races, group work-outs, and leisurely paddles with my family, I was getting more confident in allowing the boat to move around me. I’ve read, and Dan has mentioned, that one major difference between a sea kayaker and a racer is that a sea kayaker locks into his foot pegs and thigh braces and uses his hips to rock the boat, while a racer tries to stay disconnected from the boat and lets it rock on its own. So one thing Dan encourages is to put a plastic bag on your seat so that when you push on the foot pegs on the power side of the stroke, your whole body rotates freely. It actually made a big difference – afterwards my legs were more tired than they’ve ever been in a work out.

So anyway, we were paddling along, adding new items to my technique at each drill, going slow to emphasize the item, then doing a “pick up” – paddling about 200 metres increasing the speed every 10 paddle strokes until I got up to past race pace. Dan watches and every time I mess up and forget the new item, we stop and recover and try again. It was very effective, and by the end of it I felt like my stoke was really starting to look and feel like some of the really best racers I’ve seen. I’m sure that just means that the things I need to fix are increasingly small and subtle, but I can really feel the difference, even over the course of one workout.

At the end, we practiced a bouy turn around a large piling. I was going to approach it about 2 boat lengths away, which would put the center of the turn right on the piling itself. But Dan pointed out that the water on the other side of the piling was shallow and the shore was near, so he showed me how to take it further out, so instead of turning around the piling, you come out of the turn just a metre or two away from it in the deepest possible water. So I was doing my turn, and as I started to straighten out Dan yelled “now accelerate out of the turn”. I put on a bit of speed, and suddenly I felt the most amazing thing ever, as my technique was good, I was getting a good recovery, and the boat was absolutely flying. It was like a “Rode Super Blue” day in cross country skiing. I love that feeling.