Paddling, chatting, swimming, paddling

I was still feeling pretty down this morning. Still didn't really feel like paddling, but was hoping for a repeat of yesterday afternoon - that I would feel better for doing it.

It was a pleasant surprise to be joined by Mark and Graham as well as Anton (who I had arranged the paddle with). It was nice to paddle as a group. We headed off to the bridge, and I felt really good in the K1. Then up to the lake, around the second marker and back again, and I was feeling great in the K1. I was relaxed and felt the most balanced in it that I have ever felt. We were doing a decent pace, chatting and I was really enjoying myself. I was mostly paddling with Mark, with Anton and Graham just behind us. We got back to the boat ramp and Mark convinced us to go to the bridge again.


Because I had stopped for a drink (with Anton kindly retrieving it from the car so I didn't have to stuff around getting my skirt off and on again), Mark and Graham were a few minutes ahead of us (just within view), and I was paddling with Anton. We were just going around the last bend before the bridge, I was still feeling really good in the K1 and before I knew it...there was a wobble....a few attempted braces....and the point of no return...with a shout from me to Anton of "I'm in"...then splash.

Damn that water is cold. Unfortunately I was a little way from shore and it took a couple of minutes to swim there. I was commenting on the coldness of it, and how it was hard to swim with the skirt on, to which Anton replied "You might want to get a move on...You've got about 6 minutes before you get hypothermia". I found this funny and had a bit of a laugh.

Well, a quick empty out, re-entry, and paddle back to the boat ramp again. I have no idea why I fell in. The others came up with several explanations ranging from the odd current around the bend, wind gusts etc. But I would take none of these. My explanation was that I'm still crap at it. I was tired, and that's probably why I fell in.

I had a quick rest whilst Anton and Mark did a 50 metre sprint. I was keen to do another sprint with them...as I had already fallen in, what was it going to matter if I fell in again. So I headed up the river to the start. I honestly couldn't have cared less if I fell in again. I was 10 metres from shore, and already wet....so maybe that's why I didn't! I called the start, had a great start, Mark got ahead pretty quickly, but I paddled great and just held off Anton. When I was paddling, I didn't feel anything like falling in. I felt so good. This was great for my confidence.

So after washing down the kayaks, getting dry and dressed, my summary of the morning was that it was a great paddle. I thoroughly enjoyed it...swim and all. Funny how that can be.

I can fall in all on my own!

Nooooo, I don't need powerboats, wind, chop, or even Anton's wash to fall in....I can do it all on my own.

Everyone one else was doing something else this morning and I just felt like doing a nice easy paddle on my own anyway. After a week of feeling like crap, I just wanted a cruisy, no pressure, no timing, just enjoy paddling along session today.

The weather was magic. It was cold, but not terrible, mildly sunny, no wind, and not a ripple on the water in sight. It looked like glass. I wanted to do 1.5 laps today. I haven't done more than 1 lap (8km) in any 1 stretch in the new K1, so I thought I'd just try it today (since I was going easy).

I started off heading to the bridge, just cruising, feeling good. No worries. No sign of "my mate" (the guy in the yellow boat who seems magnetically to make me fall in). I continued up towards the lake, all good, feeling relaxed and trying a few technique things out. When I reached the lake it was flawless. Not a ripple in sight, it was glass. I've only ever seen it like that a couple of times. I headed out around the second marker and headed back towards the boat ramp. Still feeling good and playing around with steering and technique. Came across a couple of other paddlers, simply a nod of the head. All good still.

Only 1 km to go until the boat ramp...hmmm..I wonder what time I'll do it in, since it feels so easy....lets look down and check my watch, 45:30...split second later...$hit that water's cold, wow my skirt came off without a problem, damn it's hard swimming with it still on.

No-one to blame but me and my beginners balance, (and stupidity for looking down and twisting my arm to see my watch). Well a quick empty out, and relaunch and I was on my way. It was a useful lesson though...
1. My spray skirt comes off easily, without any dramas. This was something I was curious about and had hoped would happen (to avoid unpleasant upside-down time trying to get one off)
2. My thermals were really quite warm when wet - once paddling again, my legs actually felt warmer than when they were dry, and my upper body was fine until the wind picked up.
3. Don't try anything fancy like looking at my watch until my balance it better.

I continued past the ramp, down to the bridge and back without any further dramas, and was very happy to have done the extra distance. I wasn't upset with falling in, and overall it was a great paddle.

It also occured to me that since no-one saw me fall in, then I didn't have to tell anyone. But I'm not like that. I figure that the more people that hear about this stuff, the better they will feel about themselves and their learning curve. I hope there is a paddler out there somewhere who reads this and thinks..."Cool, I'm doing alright afterall". The more people I hear about that fall in , the less worried it makes me.

My own K1

Oh yeh! As soon as I hopped into the K1 today it felt 'right'. It was a tight fit, but no tighter than the club K1, and it felt very comfortable.

I met Carole down at the boat ramp at 7am and had managed to fit both the Mirage and the K1 on the roof racks. After some fiddling around moving the Mirage foot rest back into Carole's position, we were soon off heading up towards the lake. Damn that K1 is fast. I just had to put my paddle in the water and it was effortlessly gliding through the water. I was just doing some balance drills and poor Carole was doing 3 strokes to my 1 just to keep up. So we paddled up to the lake doing a fast speed for her, and a very slow speed for me. Great balance practice and it let me get a good feel for the K1.

I was nervous turning around at the point because it was quite windy and a bit choppy by then, but managed it unscathed. We paddled back and saw Greg outside his house to which I called out "I'll have her, she's beautiful". We headed down towards the bridge and I felt nice and relaxed paddling...then I heard a boat coming up behind us. Silly me started feeling nervous, turned around to look and "man that water's cold!" In I went, and after a quick swim to shore, empty out, we were on our way again.

We did the rest of the paddle without any dramas and I just LOVED the feel of the K1. At one point I said to Carole..."This looks much better than a ring sitting in a drawer" (because I have sold my 1st marriage's engagment ring to buy it). She agreed and said "Definately, but the ring wouldn't have made you wet!" Indeed.

Well, I am excited and relieved to now have my very own K1. I went over to Greg's house this afternoon and paid him the money, so the Sladecraft "Stealth" K1 is officially mine. Yipee!!!!!

Swimming with the Van Dusan and getting chased by a man with a fish

Jack and Jen joined me for an early morning paddle on Sunday morning. They were trying out a Sladecraft Supersonic and this was my first session back in the Van Dusan after paddling the Struer for a few weeks and at State. Wow...how quickly you lose the feel for a tippy K1. I was all over the place. I think the problem was that I was trying to do the same good technique that I used in the Struer (more rotation, straighter arms, more length at the catch, higher top hand), and in the Van Dusan my balance wasn't quite good enough to do it.

It was all quite funny really, with Jack calling out every km or so "Ahhh, Jen...what are you doing?" as they were trying to get used to the tippier double, and me calling out Aaaarrrghhhh, and $hit etc every couple of hundred metres as I had to do a brace stroke or lost my technique. Anyway, up near the lake a boat came past us (same direction) and the tiny ripples were enough to land me in the drink. De-ja-vue from State. So it looks like I'm back to swimming in the Van Dusan again. I guess it'll take me a few weeks to get back to the level I was at before I switched to the Struer. But it will be worth it...if I can master the Van Dusan by World Masters I will fly in it!

After the usual re-entry (which I'm getting rather good at now), I felt slow and asked Jack what speed he thought we were doing. With his reply of 10.5-11km/hr I felt much better. Seems I'm paddling better than I thought after all.

We headed back to the boat ramp and Greg Slade paddled from his house and met us there. I had to leave to go to another children's Birthday Party, and Anton and Greg were joining Jack and Jen to head back out into the lake. As Greg and I were standing knee deep at the waters edge he noticed a large fish "doing a handstand" in the water near us. It didn't look too well, and with a huge bite already out of it Greg set about catching it. What a sight...with Greg running through the water holding and using his paddle like a spear taking occasional whacks and scoops at the fish. After a while and with a shout of "I've got it" he brought it over on his paddle to show us. My comment was "eeeuuuuwwwww,yuk" and so for the next minute he chased after me with the fish on the paddle. I ran to grab my paddle and used it to defend myself with Greg pretending to throw the fish at me. Sooooo funny.

The fish was then returned to the water and Jack and Jen, Anton and Greg headed off towards the lake.

The club race and swim

Well here's my eagerly awaited race report. All went well with the morning preperations (ie. getting myself, 2 children, and husband to the race on time). We were running a bit late, but not so late that I was stressing out too much. We got the K1 off the car roof, Connor paid the money and chose my race number, and I had about 15 minutes to prepare before I had to be on the water.

The club races use a handicap system with the aim of everyone getting to the finish line around 10:30am. So for the usual summer distance of 11.35km people start anywhere between 9:00am and 9:35am. My start was at 9:16 with another club paddler Max who was racing his newly aquired K1 for the first time. Instead of his race number he had an 'L' plate (Learner Plate) in his number mount. I loved the idea! After a bit of a shaky start (lots of bracing), I was off and quickly moved ahead of Max. About 200m into the race a motor boat came in the opposite direction, so I just turned into the wash head on. No real worries. I was feeling strong and confident, when about 400m into the race another motor boat came by. This time unfortunately it was heading in the same direction as us and since Max and I were on different sides of the river, it had to pass between us. Even more unfortunately, the #$*# idiots decided to pass about 7 metres away from me. I didn't know which way to turn, to make the wash more K1 friendly, but I really didn't have a hope. In I went with a "bugger" (didn't even swear), popped my paddle in the kayak and swam for shore. Thank goodness it happened in a spot where I could easily get back in. So after emptying it out, I was soon back into it and paddling again. No idea how much time I lost, but it took me all the way up to the turn-around point to catch Max again...so I'm guessing about 3-5 minutes. Anyway, I was still feeling strong and managed to cope with several other boats going past without any dramas. I was going hard, but not full race-pace. After successfully making the turn around out at the river/lake junction, I headed back with a bit more effort. I managed to drop the paddlers that were paddling with me and was soon passing some more people that had either started before me, or passed me whilst I was swimming. I gradually increased the effort as I got closer to the finish and was feeling tired but good, when lo and behold a voice calls out from behind me. Now Mark if you're reading this, you can correct me on the exact words, but it was something along the lines of "C'mon Cassie, pick it up". Damn, now I had to go harder. I did my best but Mark passed me just before the finish line and beat me by 3 seconds. I had nothing left in me - I was stuffed. I crossed the line 4th in a time of 1:11:47. So just over the time I had hoped to achieve. Now I reckon, with a swim that's a pretty good effort. I definately would have gone under 1:10 if I hadn't gone in. So all in all I was pretty happy with my result.

One interesting point about the race, was the fact that I was not so tired fitness-wise, but balance-wise. At one point I felt myself "losing the plot" a little bit, and feeling a bit zoned-out. I was finding it hard to keep my focus, and kept losing concentration, having to correct my balance and technique too often. This is definately something I have to work on, and I guess race practice is probably one of the best ways.

The other interesting point was how poorly I coped with boat wash when the boat was travelling in the same direction as me. I'm going well with wash that I can turn into head on (or at least on some angle), but I have a lot of trouble (obviously) with wash that comes from behind, travelling in the same direction as me. I have to definately practice this more. I'm not quite sure of the best way to deal with this kind of wash, so any tips from others would be greatly appreciated!

A Crappy Run and A Windy Paddle

A Crappy Run
This morning I thought I'd attempt to do a modified run (shuffle). My 3.5yr old wanted to ride his bike, so I pushed my 2yr old in the pram. I thought I'd just do a short one and surely be able to keep pace with Connor on the bike. Well it pretty much ended up being a 5 min walk, 5 min shuffle, 1 min walk, 5 min shuffle, 2 min walk, 4 min shuffle, 5min walk and long sit down whilst the children played in the park. I guess it was probably too soon to start back running. It's so annoying though, just when I get my fitness back and start to feel ok running again, then I get sick and go backwards again. I might leave the running now until the weekend and make sure I'm fully well before I try again.

A Windy Paddle
Chris was kind enough to 'let' me go for a paddle again today. 2 weekdays is really a treat for me. When I say 'let' I mean that he looks after the boys, which really is quite a job. He has to cook dinner, feed them, bath them, and get them ready for bed, all the while I get to go paddle and come back to 2 clean, fed, and ready for bed boys, with a nice dinner ready for me too. It's a pretty good deal I've got going I reckon. And I'm just lucky I've got such a supportive husband.

Anyway, when Anton and I met down the river, the wind was getting interesting. Mark and Mick had just finished their paddle and said how windy it was up the point (where the river meets the lake). Now Anton and I had planned an interval paddle and he was going to paddle his Mirage with me in the K1, but he decided to bring his K1 instead. He's gamer than me I tell you. You wouldn't catch me paddling such a tippy kayak up to the point in such windy conditions. Really, it took me at least a year of paddling K1's before I would have paddled a tippy one in those conditions at all. Yet, off he goes, less than 10 sessions in a K1 and he's paddling a very tippy one up the river in windy conditions. Now, the chop on the water wasn't too bad considering the amount of wind. I expected it to be wavier (is that a word?). But it was the wind gusts that gave us such trouble. It would grab the paddle and put you off balance in a split second. I gave up on the idea of intervals, it just wasn't feasible in those conditions (well maybe for a better paddler than me, but not when I'm only just back into K1's). But we made it up to the point ok,had a quick rest and stretch and started heading back. Now we thought this would be easier considering we were heading with the wind (with it on our backs), but alas, we now had the sun in our eyes and it was glaring off the water right where we had to look. It makes you realise how important your vision is to your balance. And now the wind was throwing gusts from the side too. Without being able to see properly, it threw us both off (and Anton took a swim). Wow - he is human. I think I'm only 100 or so swims up on him now! Somehow I don't think he'll ever swim as much as I've done. Anyway, we did about 6km, which feels like nothing now. I can't wait to get some more distance under my belt. We're hoping to do a longer paddle in our Mirages on Saturday. But somehow, 8km in the K1 feels the same as 16 in the Mirage. I guess it's all that stabilising that wears me out.