.. What the weather is doing, with only 12 weeks to go, I just have to pick which ever day the weather report tells me is going to be the best.

This weekend the reports were not the best, but Saturday looked better than Sunday, so a quick check of the tides, along with the predicted and observed windspeed/direction and I choose a time and course to paddle.  The predicted wind of 20-25km/h was not quite right, it got up to around 30-35km/h.

The best of the bad conditions.

With the wind from the North-West, and having about 15 minutes of outgoing tide, I made the choice to head out of Angus Inlet, around into Barker Inlet towards the Port River. As soon as I rounded into Barker Inlet the wind started!  Not too bad – going with the last of the outflow, I was protected somewhat and the wind was a gentle 10-15km. From here, things started to get worse, a lot worse!

As I went under the bridge I was suddenly copping the lot of the wind right in my face. As I rounded into the Port River I was hit with he full force of 30+km/h wind, and it is clear to see the effect on the graph below (around the 4km mark). It was a hard slog down the river, as not only did I have the wind in my face, but the tide had turned and was flowing in as well.  It got worse, much worse!  I had no choice but to stay out of the channel of the river and in the shallows as the river was very busy – with the Port River Sailing Club out racing in the river.  Then, just to make things harder again, the tug boats started moving on the river.

So, here I am, with a 30+ km/h wind in my face, incoming tide, paddling in less than 2M of water, with a nice wind chop of up to 0.5M when a tug boat comes up the river.  Yep, a “nice” 1M+ wake on top of it all was pretty messy, look at the plot, you can see where my speed dropped right off – I was trying to stay upright as the tug boat went past, the wake was almost washing me backwards!

I had to wait a little while to pick a break in the river traffic to scoot across to the other side for my trip back up the river – look at the plot around the 8km mark when I turned.  Now with the wind and the tide at my back.  The wind was not as much assistance on this side of the river as it is a little bit more protected.

As I passed the entrance to Barker Inlet, I hit the start/finish line of the sailing, and continued down past all of the yachts before I turned in front of the Rowing Club back across the river and a short, final hard workout into the wind.

Once I got back out of the Port River (around the 15km mark), I had another bit of reprieve, shelter from the wind (well a slight tail wind)  and the incoming tide assisting me.  Now, out of the chop and boat traffic I had a pretty good run until I copped the wind in the face for the last 800m back across Angus Inlet to the boat ramp.

Speed Plot – It really was tough into the wind and against the tide

• Distance: 18.5km
• Time: 2:36:42
• Avg Moving Speed: 7.1km/h
• Tide: 0.6 Low / 2.6 High
• NW Wind up to 35km/h

This is by far the worst conditions I have been out in for a long time, and even though I only averaged 7.1km/h I was pretty pleased!

I was paddling with my new lighter paddle and in such conditions, I didn’t really notice if it was any easier.  What I did notice is that the shaft of my new paddle is about 1 or 2mm thinner than my other paddle – so it feels a bit different in my hands.

PS – I was glad I picked Saturday, as Sunday was even worse – much more wind and a fair bit of rain as well.

It might not sound like much, but let me put this all together.

My Current paddle comes in at about 1.25kg.  Over the 112km, I will be putting that paddle into the water around 45,000 times.

Today, My new paddle arrived and it weighs just 1.03kg or a whole 230g less.  When you do the sums, 0.23kg x45,000 = 10,350kg less weight I will have to lift, so yeah, 230g is a significant difference.  I will have to wait a few days to try it out and see what sort of difference it really is.

When I got my last paddle, I did make a sacrifice on the weight – as I bought a split shaft paddle.  I really had no choice as I wanted to spend time getting the length and offset right, and once I sorted that out, I simply got one made to suit me in my boat.

How fast?

Last weekend I did a few counts of my stroke rate and both times, (over 6 minutes) it came in at around 60 strokes/minute.  Now I am going to be swinging a paddle that is 20% lighter, i wonder if this might just increase a little -and give me a bit of a boost in my speed.

Other exercises

I used to have a real problem with getting pain in my arms after the first 5km and it usually took the next 5-6 before it settled down.  So, what I did was grab a couple of 1.5Kg dumbbell’s and when sitting on the lounge watching TV, just grab them and just do a tiny bit of work.  Over the course of about 2 months, I found that i was no longer getting the pains in the arms.

The idea was not to go too heavy and “bulk-up” the arms, but more about picking a weight that is just a bit heavier than my paddle (well, just over double if you add them both together), and put together a range of exercises to just work the specific muscle groups a bit.  While I would have liked to find something around the length of my grip on a paddle that weighed in at around the 3-4kg mark, to keep the arms in a paddling position, I just couldn’t find something, so the dumbbell’s did the trick.

The main way that I use the weights to work my arms is to hold my arms out to each side, bend the elbows so that my hands are straight up.  From here, I do slow movements one at a time by bringing my hands down to horizontal both out to the sides and down to the front, over about a 2-3 second period for each movement.

How much? well that is easy!  Each commercial break on an hour long TV show is about the right time!  Whenever an ad break starts, pick up the weights and work the arms then rest while the program is on.  Doing this most week nights for  as long as you are sitting, watching the TV will go a long way to getting you paddle-ready when you cannot get out and actually paddle.

Today I got a pleasant surprise in the mail – my Certificate with the results from the RPM.

RPM_2012 Just had to scan it in!

.. To complete an event like the HCC?

As I only have 17 weeks until the event, there is no time to waste with my preparation.  It is not like last year when I literally only had 13 weeks of preparation after building my boat.

There is a fair bit of effort in a lot of areas that go into preparing for, competing in and completing an Ultra Marathon like the HCC.  Well, since that I put my entry in last week, it is time to start following all aspects of my preparation for the 2012 HCC.

Since I have had a break from padding for the last few weeks since completing the RPM 100, today was the start of my training (well yesterday was, but I’ll get to that in a minute). Today was a beautiful winters day with a pleasant 14deg day with almost no wind (5-10km/h). So a quick look at the tide chart and I decided on the time and where to paddle to.  The tide today was going to low at around 13:00 so I picked a start time and course so that I would get a bit of a mix if incoming and outgoing flow.

The boat ramp is located in such a place that no matter what the tide is doing, you are going to have to have it against you for at least some of the time.

Now, what I like to do is to paddle at least 15km, and up to 30km. Today, I chose to do a paddle of just 18km.

When I paddle, I have 2 “best Friends” My Garmin GPSMap 78 GPS and my Tiny Trak GPS tracker that uses Amateur Radio to plot my position Real-time to the Internet.

My Garmin GPS is what I use real-time to see what I am doing and choose to monitor my Av Speed, Distance and Moving Time while I am out paddling.

As I paddle alone, I like the Idea of having my position being sent real-time back to the Internet, so at least someone can see where I am and the reason I always paddle with a GPS Tracker.

Screenshot taken from BaseCamp Software

My paddle today took me from the boat ramp in Angus Inlet, out into Barker Inlet (where the tide hit the low and turned) where I headed around to the Port River.  Here I turned right and headed down Lipson Reach to the old quarantine station, where I turned around and came back up the Port River to the Port River Rowing Club, turning around again and then back into Barker Inlet and Angus Inlet to the boat ramp.

When I get home, I can download from my GPS a lot of info about each outing – as It stores my track, by taking a reading around every 20 seconds.  The image above is a screenshot taken from the BaseCamp software that I use to query the GPS.

Today’s Paddle was:

• Distance: 18.0km
• Moving time:  2:15:53
• Avg Speed:  8.0km/h
• Tide:  0.7 Low / 2.1 High

There was a little bit of excitement today, I stopped several times just to watch the dolphins swimming past and to rescue a dog that came out of another boat!  Let me tell you it is no fun to have a 15kg dog standing on your lap on a kayak!

The conditions were near perfect – with mostly outgoing tide, in Barker Inlet, against the tide and into the light wind down to the quarantine station, with the flow back up up the Port River, and finally with the tide back up Barker and Angus Inlets.  The tidal flow in Barker Inlet is very strong and with a big tide, it can be in excess of 5km/h, so I always like to try and go with the flow at the end!  The flow out in the Port River is not as strong, but it is a close representation of what the upper Parts of the Hawksbury River are like.

These stats are very important to me, as over the next 15 Weeks, with this data, I will put together my Race plan.

APRS GPS tracking Map taken from http://aprs.fi

Paddling Speed

Monitoring of my paddling speed and recording details about the tide are very important as they are the indicators from my training that help me with my Race Plan.

Over the last 12 months, my paddling speed has improved quite a lot. When I was paddling my plastic boat, my target was to maintain at least a 6km/h average over 20km. With the move to my current boat, that immediately jumped up to 7km/hr.  My training over the last 4-5 months which included the 3 events that I have done this year has seen my average speed slowly increase and today was quite quick as far as thing have been going.

About 2 months ago, my average speed jumped from about 7.2 to 7.6km/h – and what I attribute that to was my paddling.  For the last year, since just after I built my boat, I went from an asymmetric paddle with a “standard” 60 deg offset to a medium wing paddle.  In the last couple of months, I have also decreased the offset from about 52 degrees to 45 degrees, which I found takes some of the stress and strain off the wrists when paddling for long periods, but still has enough angle so as not to act like a sail when out of the water.

Everything I read about the transition from a “standard” paddle to a wing paddle said that it can take up to a couple of years to “get it” and the only thing that I can put my jump in speed down to is that I have noticed that paddling is easier, I go faster with less effort, so maybe I have finally “got it” with the Wing paddle.

Training Targets

This year, I have been training for each of the events I have done and all strung together represent about 40% of what I need to do to prepare for the HCC.  Last year, I did it in a boat that I had only paddled about 160km, using a paddle that I had only done about 120km with and yes, I was well under-done.

This year, I have not really been recording my exact training distances, but I have only missed 4 weekends since the end of February, and on each outing I have paddled between 16 and 25km (not counting the events). training wise, I already have about 200km  in training and 160km over the 3 events I have done.  With the last 16 or so week I have, I should be able to get in at least 250km of paddle training.

I will be paddling once a week, and when it warms up a bit, do an extra 10-15km night paddle in the lake.

What I found was that adding some extra training to the mix helped a lot (in 2010), so I will also jump on the bike and do at least a 10km ride every other week as well.

Enough for now, I’ll add some extra details with my next training report.