Time trial and trying my new skirt

Chris had to work this morning so unfortunately that meant that I couldn't paddle (maybe in 10 years time I will be able to leave the boys on their own.....then again make that never). Anyway he was meant to be home by early afternoon, but he ended up having to work back (grrrr, the poor thing ended up working pretty much a full day) and got home pretty late. I called Anton and said that I'd be at the river around 4pm, but due to other circumstances he couldn't paddle then so I was on my own.

I thought...ok then I'll do a warm-up to the bridge and then try and do a time trial from the bridge back to the boat ramp. Remember that I fell in last time I tried this. I figured it would probably be best doing this on my own anyway, and the river conditions were perfect for it. Calm water with a bit of outflow (going with me). I was mentally up for it, and very keen to see how I would go.

The warm up went well. I felt good and my balance felt ok. In the meantime Anton had ridden down and met me at the bridge. I said to him..."Do you reckon you could beat me back to the boat ramp" figuring that he could definately ride there in under 8 minutes. I had my watch on me anyway, and at 4:13:40 pm I headed off from a rolling start. I started off at a moderate pace and fell into a nice rhythm. As usual, every time I tried to go harder I started to lose my balance, but I was going pretty hard anyway. About half way through I heard Anton call out from the road, and I lost my concentration and balance a bit, but managed to get back on track. The last 400m were a bit 'all over the place', but I finished the 1.5km at 4:21:27. As soon as I worked out that my time was 7:47 I was stoked! The fastest I'd previously done was 8:07 in the club K1 and I think 7:57 in the Van Dusen K1. So it confirmed my thoughts...I can paddle the Sladecraft quicker than the Van Dusen. Now I'm not saying that the Sladecraft IS quicker than the Van Dusen...just that I can paddle it quicker, and therefor it's a quicker kayak for me. I can't wait to see what I can do in it with some decent training and with better balance.

By now it was dusk, and I decided to spend the rest of the session trying out my new sprayskirt. I'd stumbled across it on ebay and geartrade. For only $45 I figured that I wasn't going to find a K1 sprayskirt for anywhere near that price and so the remainder of my spendable "Ruddy Money" went on that. It arrived a couple of days ago, and looked awesome so I was keen to try it out. My only concern was if I fell in, that I would be stuck dangling around upside down under the water trying to remove myself (and skirt) from the kayak. But as soon as I had it on, I could see that it would pop off easily (probably before my body hit the water). So I went for a short paddle and it was great. My legs were dry and 'toasty', and the water just beaded off it. I actually delberately threw heaps of water on it, and it still just beaded off. Cooooool!!! And I didn't fall in.

It was getting dark by now, so I called it quits (after Anton had taken some photos with his mobile phone). He reckons that I should say that the blurry one is because I was going so fast...yep, I'll go with that!
So eventhough it was a short session, it was very effective and productive.