Category: Revelation

Another week, another boring story about my time trial success or lack thereof. But this time there is something different at the end, so hang on.

The bay had a strong wind coming down it, but the waves were quite small for that amount of wind, so I suspect the wind started after the rain, which I’m told drenched the BayCreek Paddle Center a little while before the race. Unfortunately the upshot of that is that I got all the disadvantages of paddling into the wind on the way up the bay, but without much help from waves on the way back. The waves were only going about 5 mph, so I was plowing through them rather than surfing them. I heard my split on the way through, and it sucked. 9.67, which is one of the slowest ones I’ve done this year. Last week I was 9.55, 0.12 minutes faster.

The upstream part of the second half was slow too, with my speed kept below 6 mph most of the time. But once I turned, my speed went up over 6.5, and I started coming back. The recent rain must have put a good bit of current on the creek. My time for the second half was 9.45, which is the fastest I’ve ever done it, and so my overall time was 19.12, which is exactly the same as last week. Paul D was also slower than usual, at 19.05. So the downside was another non-record time, and getting beaten by Paul D again, but the upside was my fastest second half ever.

Here’s the interesting bit, though: I tried out an Epic V10 Sport surf ski. I have been putting off trying one, because I thought I needed to have a change of clothes in the car in case I dumped, but I have a cooler in my car and I stupidly left the tap open, so the car smells like a wet dog now so driving home in soaking wet clothes isn’t going to make anything worse. So today I tried one. I’ve seen a number of people try them and dump out immediately. I’ve seen other people who were so tentative that they could barely take two strokes before they had to brace. But I didn’t feel that way. Ok, the stupid venturi drain meant that the boat filled up with water every time I slowed down, so I ended up with a soaking wet ass almost immediately. But I felt almost “at home” in the boat right away. If not “at home”, at least I felt like this is a boat I could grow into very rapidly. I could get up to a very nice speed – Bill came along for most of it and said I was managing 6.7 mph or so on the down stream on the creek, which is faster than I was doing on my boat. Every now and then the boat would “go”, suddenly just tilt over to one side or the other, but because of the great base of technique I’ve put down this year, I was able to keep my body upright and let the boat go until its great final stability stopped it. One of the things I’ve been learning this year is to separate myself from the boat, and obviously the surf ski both enables that and makes it important to do.

I loved the foot straps – I definitely have to add them to my boat. I also found the cockpit very comfortable, especially after I got the rudder pedals adjusted correctly. The bucket seat really seemed to facilitate good hip rotation. It turned better than my own boat at the buoy turn. And the new graphics on the latest V10 Sport that Baycreek got in (which aren’t even on the Epic Kayaks web site yet, so I can’t link to them) are awesome. I think I’ve got a surf ski in my future – hopefully next spring we’ll have recovered from this extended unemployment, and I’ll be ready to make a major purchase like that again. I just wish Epic had put used a valve on the scupper like the ones on sail boats – I dislike the fact that the boat fills with water every time I slow down. Most people on the team put a strip of duct tape over theirs with a folded edge so they can rip it off if they get into a situation where they need it. I understand the new Epic V12 has a different type of scupper, so maybe they’ll bring it over the whole range.

Today I met up with Mike and Paul D to paddle around the bay. Last time I did this, on June 13th, I faded, had to ride wash for a mile, and then faded even more and had to just drag myself in the last half mile or so. This time, I started out riding wash, but got them to slow down to a more sustainable pace, and ended up paddling without assistance for the last half, and I actually got bored of waiting for the two of them and surged ahead for the last mile or so. Last time, I did 10.65 miles in 1:59. This time I did 10.92 miles in 2:02. Not a huge improvement, but an improvement none the less.

It should have been a good night. There was almost no wind and no waves on the Bay (except the inevitable boat wakes) and the creek was still fairly high. But as soon as I got in my boat I felt “off”. I don’t know if I ate too much before hand, didn’t eat enough, or just wasn’t recovered from Saturday, but I almost didn’t feel like racing. I did a good long warm up, mostly slow but with a couple of “pick ups” to raise my heart rate to see if it would make me feel right, but it still wasn’t good.

To try to spur myself to try harder, I lined up behind Paul D. I started 30 seconds or a minute behind him, and I made an ok but not great start. Half way to the first buoy, though, my speed was dropping under the magic 6.0 mph, in spite of the low wind. I could see Paul pulling away from me even by then. After the turn, my speed increased a tiny bit, but it still wasn’t great, and Paul D was pulling away all the time. My spilt was horrible, 9.55 (compared to 9.50 last week and 9.43 the week before), and once we got into the twisty bit I mercifully lost sight of Paul D disappearing into the distance. I also noticed that I was ducking my head down more and more to try to look over the tops of my sun glasses, so I had to stop and take them off, which cost me a few seconds. At the turn, it was obvious just how much I’d lost to him, but the last half mile felt the worst. My speed felt horrible, and I wasn’t able to put on any speed for the finishing straight, and I couldn’t even see Paul D up ahead he was so far beyond me.

At the finish, my time was 19.12, which isn’t the worst I’ve done, but it’s the worst I’ve done in a month, which is a disappointment, especially since it should have been a PR kind of day. My disappointment was both lessened and increased because it turns out that Paul D was having a blistering time, and knocked about 20 seconds off his personal best. I don’t know what he was doing for that week and a half he wasn’t coming to team events, but whatever it was it sure worked for him. So I guess I’m going to have to improve a lot before I can start thinking of him as a rival again.

“It could be worse – it could be raining”
– Marty Feldman, Young Frankenstein

One of my top goals this year was to finish a 10 mile kayak race, and today I did it. The Armond Bassett race takes place here in town at the Genesee Waterways Center, a place I’ve paddled a lot in the last year. Maybe I’m not being fair to the organizers, but in some ways the AB seems like a canoe race that reluctantly allows kayaks to participate. I can’t really explain why I feel that way, but I do. Maybe it’s because on the second day (tomorrow), they have canoe races that *don’t* allow kayaks to participate.
Continue reading “5th Annual Armond Bassett Canoe/Kayak Race”

Last night’s time trial didn’t look like it was going to be a good night personal bests. There was a very strong breeze coming from the north, and there were 2-3 foot waves on the bay. With no hope of setting a new personal best, Tom Murn and I decided to race head to head.

In the excitement, I forgot to hit the start button on my GPS, so no graphs this time. Tom is lighter and in a fast sprint boat, so he came off the start line ahead of me, and lead under the bridge. After the bridge, I was starting to pull ahead of him, so I cut over in front of him and relaxed for a couple of strokes yelling for him to get on my wake. I can’t really turn around and see behind me comfortably, so when I thought I saw him coming up on my stern in my peripheral vision, I started hammering again. My speed going up into the wind and waves kept dropping and dropping, and was hovering around 5.4 by the time I started to turn. At the turn, I got my first look back and saw that Tom was now 20 or 30 yards behind me. Oh well, too late to worry about that. Turning around, I expected the wind to push my speed up, but it seems that I could really only go the speed the waves wanted me to go, so I was barely going 6.2 mph on the way back in. 6.2 is pretty much my normal no-wind speed, so it was almost as if I was getting no benefit at all. My split at the half was 9.50, which is 0.12 minutes slower than my previous fastest split, or 0.07 minutes slower than last week when I set a personal best overall.

Coming up the creek, the tail wind without the waves helped and so my speed was up. I was passing people, and felt good. I didn’t make the turn all that well in spite of having practiced it before hand, but I was soon accelerating out of it. I saw Tom again, and he looked like he was fading a bit. On the way down, it was all a matter of trying to find maximum advantage from the current while minimizing the disadvantage from the head wind.

My final time was 18.97, which is only 0.02 minutes slower than my personal best. Now I know *exactly* how Lance Armstrong feels being 0.22 seconds out of the yellow jersey. 🙂

More significantly, it means that my second half was actually faster than the first half. Either my fitness level is getting better, or the surfing downwind on the bay helped me rest a bit.