Category: Revelation

Good workout

Tonight the kayak team met to do interval training. We were doing 5 sets of 0.5 mile interval with 10 minutes recovery between. The 10 minutes gives you plenty of time to paddle upstream to the start of the 0.5 mile section, drink some sports drink, and let your heart rate recover a bit. The GPS is awesome for this, since it will automatically stop the timer when you hit 0.5 miles, and then count down the 10 minute recovery.

One of my goals tonight was to keep my interval times consistent, and having constant feedback on distance travelled and time helped a lot. My times were 3:57, 3:58, 3:57, 3:58 and 3:56. It doesn’t get much more consistent than that. Sure, my times were about 40 seconds slower than the other guys on the team, but being heavier puts me at a huge disadvantage, especially in shallow water. And besides, I’m not really “A team” material, I just like hanging around with them.

It wasn’t until afterwards that it struck me that between the half mile paddle up, the half mile interval down, and the warm up and warm down, I paddled 6 fairly fast miles. Last year, even at the end of the season, a fast 6 mile work out was pretty long. So I’m making progress. My two goals for this season were to beat 20 minutes in the Baycreek 2 time time trail, and to finish the 9 miler at the Long Lake Long Boat Regatta. I’m not sure about that 20 minute goal – I have a feeling I’ll be striving for that one all year. But at this point I’m feeling like I could probably enter one of the early season 7-10 mile races and have a hope of a not too shabby finish. Maybe I should look at the “Round the Mountain” or “Tupper Lake 9 miler”?

I don’t need this.

Last night was the third Sunday in four where my UPS has woken me up with beeping. Each time, it seems to suddenly decide that while the load is unchanged, and the charge percentage is unchanged, the projected lifetime in the event of a power loss has suddenly changed from 100 minutes to 0 minutes. This is more than likely an indication that the batteries are failing, and it’s time to replace them. The UPS does some sort of self test once a week, and evidently this one does these tests at 1:30am on Sundays. There doesn’t seem to be any way to turn off these tests or reschedule them.

I spent a hell of a lot on this UPS, wanting one with a lot of capacity and which had replaceable batteries, because my previous one hadn’t let me know that the batteries were getting old until our power went out one day and the charge hadn’t lasted long enough to get down to the computer room to shut down my servers. I can’t remember what I paid for it, but the current equivalent model retails for around $600, so it was probably up in that range. Replacement batteries seem to be around $50 with $20 shipping, and plus then I’d have three small lead acid batteries to dispose of somehow.

On the other hand, I’ve migrated a lot of the things I wanted a Linux server for from my home to my colo box. I’m starting to question if I even need a 24×7 server in the home. Maybe rather than spending all that money on a UPS, I should just move the last remaining things (the mail server and the personal web pages) to the colo box and shut down my home server. It’s a shame to trash a $600 UPS for want for $60 in batteries, but maybe I can eBay it.

That was relatively painless

I did the taxes today. It was a lot easier than I expected. Mostly because TurboTax did a good job of importing stuff from the previous year, and I took the tack that if I didn’t get a deduction for it last year, it’s probably not worth going through the form this year. Got a nice refund coming too.

Now that the most important time-sensitive use for this laptop is done, I can contemplate sending it in to get this heat-related Airport cut-out problem fixed. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but the fix I got at the Apple Store last weekend was only a temporary fix and it’s happening still, mostly when it gets really hot.

Last night’s paddle

Last night I went out for the first time with the bulk of the team. As well as myself and Dan, we also had Ken A, Doug R, Stephen B, Paul D. Mike was missing because he’s taking some sort of training class. As well as having a big group, I also tried out the new camera mount for the first time. Except for the fact that it was pointed a little too far up, it worked out great.

The gathering storm

Here I am at the beginning, just warming up and milling around while the rest of the team gets ready. I’m really concentrating on my technique, and I think it’s paying off. (Note: this part hasn’t finished uploading while I’m posting this, so it might not be here when you look.)

The gathering storm

Here’s a bit at the beginning leading up the creek. You can see most of the team in the background – yes, I was in the lead most of the time. At first I thought we were just waiting for people to catch up, but it turns out that the team was comfortable with the pace I was setting. I got some good sustained paddling and my shoulder wasn’t bothering me at all at this point.

See if you can catch a glimpse of Ken in the bright orange top. He’s got the most amazing style – almost no movement in his shoulders at all, just totally in the torso. I asked him if next time I could put the camera on his boat so I can study it, and he said that would probably be ok.

The gathering storm

This is on the way back. We’d gotten into a really shallow bit and had a strong head wind, and I’d fallen behind, so I yelled up again that I was turning back. Rather than just letting me go, the whole team turned around and paddled part of the way back with me. This part is towards the end of that, until the camera ran out of storage. I was really tired and my shoulder was starting to hurt, but to me at least it seems like my technique isn’t falling apart that badly. I’m proud of that.

Soon after this, the rest of the team stopped to practice buoy turns or something and I continued back. I made it a goal to paddle all the way back to the dock without stopping or even pausing, and I did it.