Category: Kayaking

Well, I paced myself a tiny bit better, and it wasn’t as windy and wavy out on the bay. So I managed to shave some time off. I’m not 100% sure exactly how much, because I think the time I was given last time was minutes and seconds because they were hand timing, but this time their computer worked and the times are in minutes and hundredths of seconds.

My friend Rob and two other members of the Huggers club showed up, and it was nice to have people in the same circumstance as me to talk to. Plus the real racers recognized me and were more friendly towards me this time.

I tried hard to pace myself, but as usual when I head into wind and waves I start paddling as fast as I can. I actually caught the guy who started ahead of me at the turn around, the older retired gentleman in the impossibly light open canoe I mentioned last week. But he pulled away steadily on the downwind leg and continued to pull away on the flat. He finished in 23.80. They didn’t get my split time, so I can’t tell exactly how much slower I was on the second half. That’s too bad because a split time would be good to show me how much better I’m getting at pacing.

Unfortunately this time I didn’t even win the “big heavy bald guy” category, because there was a real racer in a kevlar kayak who was about the same size as I’d be if I lost my beer gut, and somehow his 30 pound wisp of a kayak counted in the “touring kayak” class. He did it in 18.68. He even beat all but one of the people in the unlimited kayak class. But because he was a big heavy bald guy, I found it easy to find an excuse to strike up a conversation with him and that got me talking to more racers, and I could ask some technical questions.

Great fun. I just hope my elbow pain can stay at a low enough level that I can continue to race.

BayCreek Paddle Center has an “every Wednesday night” race series, which started for the season tonight. The race course was out into Irondequoit Bay, turn at a buoy, and come back and paddle up the Irondequoit Creek to another buoy, and turn back and paddle downstream to the start location.

I took my GPS along, but since it was on my lap it lost signal each time I bent forward and so it wasn’t very reliable when it says I paddled 1.4 nautical miles in 27:11. Next time I’m going to put the GPS inside the cockpit, and run the external antenna wire up to the bow.

Just about everybody else milling around the start area had these tiny little carbon fibre and/or kevlar wisps of boats that were slightly wider than their incredibly skinny hips. Most of them were wearing t-shirts from other races, or fancy racing wet suits. I felt terribly outclassed before anybody had even started paddling.

I never paddle on the bay, and today I discovered why – there was a fairly strong breeze, and the bow of my boat was slicing through waves that were about a foot and a half or two feet high, washing off my racing numbers and soaking my t-shirt and shorts. It was pretty hard going, and by the time I reached the turn I was sure I’d used up all my energy. The turn was a bit hard, as I tried to avoid broaching in these waves. Then the downwind leg was my first attempt to surf waves, and it wasn’t entirely successful – my bow ended up totally submerged in the wave ahead of me for much of the time, and I paddled quite hard to try to stay there. I wasn’t sure if I should slack off a tiny bit and see if I could actually just stay on the wave without effort, but every now and then I’d start turning sideways. I would sweep repeatedly on one side to try to point myself back down wind, but it wasn’t working, so I’d have to stop paddling and rudder like hell. (After the race, I talked to one of the experienced looking guys and he said “too bad you don’t have a skeg”, and I admitted that I had one, but I didn’t know how to use it in that situation. Next time, guys.)

Once back in the creek, it was just tiring. My arms and shoulders were aching, and every time I stopped paddling to rest a bit or take a drink of water, one of the fast guys coming in the other direction would yell encouragement at me.

I finished in 27:11. Most of the other people seemed to be clustered in the 16:15 to 17:30 range. But I figure if you measured it by minutes divided by pounds (either boat weight or total weight of boat + paddler), I won by a long shot.