Category: Revelation

So today at breakfast in the hotel, Jasper Mocke was sitting at the next table with somebody who I later found out was Carter Johnson. They were looking at a laptop and discussing details of this weekend’s race course. I couldn’t see the screen, but I was trying to subtly eavesdrop and figure out their tips for the race. But as they’re leaving, Jasper comes over to my table and says “Hey, Paul, we’re going out to Britannia Beach to do a downwind on the second half of the course, do you want to join us?” Well, you don’t have to ask me twice.

So at the appointed time (well, actually a few minutes late because I got slightly lost on the way there) I met up with them and loaded my boat on Carter’s trailer. Carter has a bunch of boats on his trailer – evidently he’s bringing boats for people doing the triple from Squamish to the Oregon Paddle Festival to San Francisco. There was an woman in the truck who I think had come up with Carter – I thought she was Australian, but I heard from somebody else that she might be from New Zealand. Just as we were ready to leave, a guy named Ryan from Australia met us almost by accident, and he jumped in the truck – his boat was already on the trailer.

On the drive up to Britannia, Jasper and Ryan were comparing notes on this years Molokai versus last years and whether it or Mauritius was a better race. Evidently Ryan is as well travelled as Jasper and paddles many of the same races. HIs boat had stickers from Clint Robinson Racing and other sponsors.

When we arrived, Jasper said that they were going to wait half an hour for the tide to get closer to what it will be at race time on Saturday. I decided half an hour head start is probably appropriate for me, so I set off. The waves were coming at a bit of an angle rather than straight down the sound, so I paddled out a ways so that I could avoid being pushed directly into the shore at the point. In retrospect I probably should have gone a bit further because I had to take the waves from behind at an angle.

But it was amazing. I’ve never paddled anything like it before – the waves were huge and powerful and going just enough faster than me that with some work I could hop on. I got some great linked runs, although I was working harder than I’d ever worked in my life. I was averaging about 11-11.5 km/hr, but according to Garmin Connect I hit a peak of 17.1 km/hr on one wave.

Around the point, the Sound curves nearly 90 degrees and at first I was in relatively calm water. This is more like what I’m good at – enough of a tail wind and small waves pushing you along, but nothing you have to sprint on to ride. I managed a nice steady 11 km/hr through that without working too hard and with no real highs or lows.

But I was gradually allowing myself to get out into the bigger waves, and that’s when I got into trouble. There is a section on Lake Ontario that some of our local paddlers refer to as “The Potato Patch”, an area around the mouth of the Genesee River where you have waves and wakes hitting you from every direction at once. Well, imagine that except all the waves are bigger than 4 feet high and there is a 20+ km/hr wind behind you. It was like that about 2km from the entrance to the river. It was really rough, and I was barely hanging on. I was making very little progress, and I was seriously concerned that if this were the conditions on Saturday I’d have to scrub the race, provided I managed to make it to shore alive today. I was also sure that if I dumped I was a goner because there would be no way to remount in this wind and these waves, and the water was as cold as you’d expect from glacial meltwater. So of course, 2 minutes later I dumped. I did it fully by the book, going under the boat to get upwind of it, elbow in the bucket, pause for a rest once I had my body up on the boat, and pivot. Somehow my paddle ended up wrong way round, but it didn’t matter. I paddled a bit with my feet in the water and gradually got up some speed and put my feet back in the boat. At this point I headed straight to the nearest land, even though it wasn’t in the direction I should have been doing because I just wanted to get out of this stuff and call for help. But almost immediately I found myself out of the worst of the waves and still with the wind behind me, so I paddled on. I even started to enjoy it again.

I wasn’t 100% sure where I was supposed to go at the end of the sound because there are three major branches of the river delta emptying out into the bay, but I used logical reasoning: the cars were parked on Loggers Lane, so I took the branch that had a big logging operation and log booms nearly completely blocking it. Turns out I was right – except I stopped at the first boat ramp I saw instead of paddling on a few hundred meters or so to a non-descript little beach that was right opposite the park where “Race Central” will be on Saturday.

I actually got my boat on my car and tied down before the woman whose name I didn’t catch showed up, followed a few minutes later by Jasper and Ryan. I tried to make myself useful by helping to carry boats and hold them down while people got a strap or two on them. It was still pretty windy.

I guess if the conditions are the same on Saturday, after the point I will make an effort to stay in closer to shore where it is slower, but it fits my abilities better. It’s not racing if you’re not making forward progress.

I’m in British Columbia to participate in the Canadian Surfski Championships. On Tuesday, I picked up my rented V10 Sport Ultra (just like the boat I have at home) at Deep Cove Outdoors. Bob Putnam, the owner of the shop didn’t like the look of my jury rigged pool noodle “rack” and convinced me to buy an inflatable kayak rack (mostly by telling me that the cost of getting it wrong would be “you break it, you bought it”). I got the boat tied down and then headed to Deep Cove’s kayak center on the water for the Tuesday Night Race, billed as the “Paddle With the Stars” because several of the pros who are coming to the champs were going to be there.

While warming up before the race, I introduced myself to Sean Rice, and he suggested I move my foot plate forward a notch – I’d been experimenting with different distances and I thought I’d found the right position, but evidently not. I’m looking forward to my clinic with him on Sunday. I also introduced myself to Jasper Mocke – I’d signed up for a clinic with him on Wednesday, but it got cancelled because I was the only person to sign up.

The race was a mass start, and there were a ton of boats there. They started amateur surfskis in the first wave, then the SUPs, then the pros. I’ve never seen such a tight group of skis at the start of a race – at Adirondack races there is usually a wider start line and at Lighthouse to Lighthouse Mike and I deliberately lined up outside of the main pack to take advantage of a better line. But here it was such a narrow line that just before the start I actually pushed another guy’s boat forward so I’d have some place to put my paddle for the first stroke.

In the first mad rush, the wakes from the other skis as well as the various boat wakes and waves in the cove were challenging, but I think I did a good job of using what I could and not getting thrown off by the ones I couldn’t. Better than some of the locals, I think. After a bit, I was trying to get on this guy’s side wake, but couldn’t quite get up to it so I tried for his stern wake, but there was a woman there already. She and I paddled side by side for a while, both of us not quite locked into this guy’s wake but getting some benefit from it. After a wave from the rear quarter shoved us all to one side, I found myself on this other guy’s stern wake just as the first pack of pros came through. A minute later, another big wave hit us from the same quarter just as another one of the pros came through, and I was handling it better than the guy whose wake I was on so I passed him. I then tried to chase back to the guy whose stern wake I’d been trying for earlier, but I lost him in the big knot of people rounding the first island. It was nice back there, shady and sheltered from most of the waves, but there were also big rocks lurking just below the surface, and a couple of people hit them with their paddles and disrupted their strokes. And I was here to race, not enjoy the scenery so I pushed on.

Out from behind the island, it was into the wind and I used my size and power to grind my way back up. I found what I thought was the guy from before, paddling beside the woman from before. It’s only reviewing the video afterwards that I realized that it was a different guy. But I’m 90% sure it was the same woman. Anyway, I paddled beside and behind and beside this guy under a bridge, around the island, across the little strait, and along a shoreline. As we rounded behind the island, the woman who was still neck and neck with me hit a submerged rock and dropped behind me. We passed a pack of paddlers, some of whom I had to wonder how they got ahead of me in the first place – there was one woman in a green top with big numbers on the back who was holding her paddle with her hands way too close together, but somehow getting decent speed out of it, for instance. I think the guy was trying to scrape me off, because twice he passed a SUP very close on the side that I was on, forcing me to go all the way around the SUP. But we had a tiny bit of swell from behind and I was using it, which is why I had managed to get up beside him in the first place. Somebody, I don’t know who, was on my stern wake and tapped my stern three times in quick succession. Possibly the yellow Think ski which shows up in the video. With about a kilometer to go, I don’t know if he sped up or I slowed down but he dropped me in the finish “sprint”.

I’m not sure who the guy I was chasing is because there are a couple who finished a few seconds ahead of me. However I did identify the woman I’ve referenced several times here as Cynthia Wonham because she has a distinctive boat and I got introduced to her in the pub afterwards. Oh, did I mention that after the race, everybody went to The Raven pub to drink, eat and watch a video of the race? Also, did I mention that one of the large boat wakes that was interfering with us all the way around the course was Bob Putnam on a power boat attempting to film us? He referred to his boat as the “unsafety boat”. Unfortunately he hasn’t published much of the video he shot online, I suspect because what I saw at the pub was pretty shaky.

At the pub, I was sitting pretty close to Jasper Mocke and I repeated the joke that Joe Glickman had put on my Facebook page about how after Joe’s show about the 2012 US Champs had aired, Jasper had had a bunch of contracts with major record companies offering him big bucks if he’d just promise never to sing in public again. Jasper said that Joe had goaded him into singing. And then he turned to his other side and talked to Sean Rice and a woman who came in with Sean for the rest of the evening. I hope I didn’t annoy him.

I’m happy with my results, coming 29th out of 77. Considering how much more experience these people have in these exact conditions than I do, I think that’s respectable. Only time will tell if I do as respectably this weekend.

Today was the Round the Mountain race. There are two reasons it’s a big milestone each year – it’s usually my first race of the year, and it’s usually the last time I paddle my Thunderbolt for the year. After this, it’s all surfski all the time.

We arrived at the start at Ampersand Bay, and found the first disaster of the day: the bungee that holds my rudder down had broken on the drive up here. I managed to beg a small bungee from Todd and borrow a knife to cut the ends off, but it was thicker than the one I’d had so I had to arrange a different route for the cord. It worked, so disaster averted.

I had two video cameras on the boat, one just in front of the GPS pointing forward, and one just behind my PFD pointing backwards.

The weather was warmer than last year, and the wind was lighter. I almost wish I’d dressed lighter. I might even have been able to manage the V12 in these conditions. But it was just about perfect. There were a bunch of guys in sprint boats here, including a large guy in a beautiful top of the top Nelo and a young guy in a red Plastex boat. I think we got a lot of Canadians because it’s Victoria Day weekend.

I’d been worried before the race that in my training all spring I hadn’t had my heart rate up over 152, and even then for less than 8 minutes at a time but I knew that I normally raced with my heart rate over 160. So I wasn’t sure I could even get my heart rate that high. But as I was warming up, I was so nervous my heart rate was up over 150 even when I wasn’t doing anything.

At the start, as expected, Jim and Todd took off with some guy in a V14. The Plastex guy and the Nelo guy weren’t too far behind them, then I was behind Roger Gocking. But that didn’t last for long – I passed Roger almost immediately, but he glommed onto my side wake. It looked to me like I was catching the Nelo guy and the Nelo guy was catching the Plastex guy. I put in some speed to come up behind the Nelo guy and just latched onto his stern wake and was able to rest a bit. Roger didn’t follow me when I moved right to catch this wake, so he was still hanging out alone beside us. As we were catching the Plastex guy, Roger came steaming up alone. I blasted past the Nelo guy (although for some reason I went the wrong way around him instead of swing off in the direction of Roger) and latched onto Roger’s stern wake just as he was coming up to the Plastex guy. Plastex guy got onto Roger’s side wake and we made a nice little group. I risked a glance back and Nelo guy hadn’t managed to hold onto any wake and was well behind.

As we got near the gap between the island and the shore, the Plastex guy was starting to fall back off Roger’s wake and he tried to catch my right side wake. I didn’t want to let him catch it, so I pulled up on Roger’s left side and blasted past them both. I ended up leading both of them up the river. If you look at the rear camera, it appears Roger was about a boat length or two behind me rather than right on my stern wake, and Plastex guy was well behind. I lead them through every narrow and shallow little sneak I could find and I hit my paddle a few times, and felt my rudder hit at least once, but I could hear them hitting things as well. Having an overstern rudder and polarized sunglasses was a real plus.

At the portage, I had trouble getting out of the boat, and Roger was up and trotting before I got out. Then I picked up my boat and started trotting, but the PFD fell out of the bungees so I had to put the boat down and go back and pick it up. By then Plastex guy was up and running – in bare feet no less. By the time I hit the water and got mounted up, both of them had about two minutes on me.

It did not look like I was catching Roger at all, but I was definitely catching Plastex guy. Every time he passed a landmark, I’d check the time he passed against the time I passed and I could see I was making up time all the time. And then he followed Roger through a sneak but ran aground, and had to come to a full stop. I figure I made up nearly a minute of the two minute gap for that. As I came through that same sneak without trouble, I knew I was going to catch him.

After a few more minutes, I caught his stern wake. I contemplated staying on his stern wake all the way to the finish and trying to outsprint him, but he looked like a sprinter. So I pulled around him and swung out far enough that he couldn’t catch my wake. He sped up and stayed with me. We were neck and neck for the last three kilometers. I put in more speed and he sped up. I put in some more and he sped up some more. I had nothing left, but we were a kilometer from the finish and Jim was out warming down and he yelled at me to drop the hammer, and I barely gasped out “I don’t have a hammer”. I didn’t hear him say it, but he said afterwards that he was telling me to try to scrape the guy off on the buoy. I actually managed to increase my speed again with about 500 meters to go, but the guy had more in the gas tank than me, and he managed to beat me by a boat length or so.

As far as I can tell, the Unlimited Kayak class results were Jim, then the guy in the V14, then Todd, then me. So no wood plaque for me. Touring class was won by Roger and Unlimited under 50 was won by Plastex guy. I think somebody else ended up ahead of the Nelo guy.

Results:

Racer	Class	Time	Diff from Last Year
Jim Mallory	Unlimited +50	1:22:57
Steve Rankinen (V14)	Unlimited +50	1:23:42
Todd Furstoss	Unlimited +50	1:23:44	-3:25
Roger Gocking	Touring +50	1:32:51	-2:48
Mike Archembault (Plastex guy)	Unlimited -50	1:33:48
Paul Tomblin	Unlimited +50	1:33:50	-3:09
Pete Gugel	Unlimited -50	1:36:01	-3:00
Rich and Angela	Guide Boat	1:50:27

I recently remarked to @GarminFitness that I wish they’d stop shrinking the displays of their Forerunners with each generation. Kayak racers are different from their main target audiences of runners, bikers and swimmers in that we don’t put the device on our wrists, we mount it on the boat. And therefore, smallness is a negative rather than a positive, especially for surf-skiers who usually stick it on our footstrap. A tiny display over a meter away from your face is really hard to read, especially for us older racers.

Garmin invited me to use their feedback form to suggest improvements. But before I do that, I want to figure out exactly what I want. And basically, it comes down to something the size of my old Forerunner 301, but with most of the guts of my Forerunner 310XT/910XT, and maybe some features borrowed from the 920XT.

In no particular order:

• As big a display as feasible. When you configure the 310XT to display 3 data fields, the top one is just about the size I’d like everything to be. Ideally I’d like to have 4 data fields that size on the screen at a time. Some of the Edge GPSes are that size, but they appear to be only for cycling and I don’t know if they’re waterproof to IPX7 standards.
• Make sure it’s compatible with polarized sunglasses! My iPhone is not. Neither are half the displays in my car. Is there something about making color displays that requires them to have a polarizing sheet? If so, I don’t want color!
• When it flips between displays, don’t scroll the fields that aren’t changing. I currently have my 910XT set to have two 3-field displays, and my heart rate is the big top one in both. It would be nice if it stayed on the screen while the other two fields are flipping to the next.
• Add support for multiple profiles that are tied to the activity list on Garmin Connect. I use the “Other” profile on my 910XT, but when I upload to Garmin Connect I need to change that to “Paddling”. Why can’t I make a “Paddling” profile on my Forerunner that will be “Paddling” when it uploads to Garmin Connect? Even better, allow a “Paddling Training” and “Paddling Racing” profile so I can get rid of the screens I don’t need during a race (like lap times and previous lap average speed).
• The best feature of the 310XT/910XT over the 301 is that it charges and uploads without making a hole in the case. My second 301 succumbed to salt water when the USB port oxidized like crazy. So we definitely don’t want holes in the case.
• Continue to support industry standard ANT+ heart rate monitors, even 3rd party ones. Perhaps add Bluetooth Low Energy support as well – my current heart rate monitor is a Wahoo TIKR, which does both.
• And if you’re going to add Bluetooth Low Energy, tie it to my phone so it can upload live tracking the way the 920XT does. And then we don’t need that little dongle thingy tying up a USB port on our computers.
• Keep the great battery life. I’ve tried using my iPhone instead of the Forerunner for workout tracking, and it sucks the battery down to nothing in a few hours. The Forerunner is still reporting 80% charged after that same amount of time. Because my Forerunner is mounted rather than on my wrist, I don’t care if you have to make it fat to give it better battery life.
• If I load a course up, I’d like to have the course map added to the automatic cycling between screens. As a paddler, I can’t use my hands to do that the way a runner or cyclist can.
• If I load a course up, I’d like to do a virtual “race” against the previous best time I’ve done that course. I suspect that’s there, but I’ve never figured out how to make it happen.
• Can the current one be set up to start the timer as soon as you move without also making it stop timing if I stop for any reason? I don’t want to be pressing the start button when I should be paddling for all my worth, but there are legitimate reasons to stop moving in a paddling race that still count towards your time, like transitioning to portages or turning around a buoy. I’ve only found a feature to stop the timer whenever you stop, and that’s not what I want. If that’s not a feature yet, I’d like it.
• Make the countdown beeps louder! I can barely hear the 5 second count downs at the end of a interval when doing a workout. That might be due to the foam block I mount it on, but it would be nice if it were louder.