.. 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.

My First Kayak Marathon was the HCC in 2010.

Nothing can quite prepare you for the moment the Starter’s Gun fires for your first race.

During my lead up, I did keep a bit of a record of some of my training and preparation on a facebook page.

You can see that my boat choice was certainly not what would normally be considered as suitable for a long-distance event. Boat choice was all about actually being able to fit as the first objective! Yes, I had a hard time actually finding any off the shelf boat that I could actually fit in (or on in this case).

During the lead-up, I was out paddling at least once a week for the 6 months leading up to the race, and in the last 3 months before the race I was out at least twice a week and paddling between 20 and 30km. The weeks that I could not get out, I went to the gym and was doing a 2-3 hour cardio session – rowing machine, treadmill, bike.

My longest single paddle before the event was only 29km, but my coaches assured me that marathon paddling is mostly mental (Yes, being a mental case helps!) in so much that if you can paddle 30km, you can paddle 100km.

As the HCC is an overnight event, in my lead-up I was also doing a few night paddles. The very first time, it was almost like starting over again – it takes a little bit of getting used to!

With an event that spans over (up to) 20 hours, food and nutrition are also very important and something that I will discuss in more detail later.

Kayak, my favourite Palindrome.

A Kayak Marathon is by definition a Kayak Race of a distance of at least 10km.

I don’t do things by half measures and take on 10km races,  my very first ever event that I committed to was a mere 111km! Yes, I took on the Hawkesbury Canoe Classic in 2010. Not only did I take on one of the “Big 3” in Australia for my first event, I did it in a Plastic SOT (Sit On Top) Rec Boat!

Why such an odd choice in boats?  Well the answer is simple – it was the only boat that I could find that Fit Me!.

2010 was a tough event and unfortunately, my race was cut short to 98.5km when the conditions changed and were too dangerous, with a 60kn headwind and around 1M breaking waves, all combined with an incoming tide, it was simply too dangerous to let anyone continue.

Within a month, I decided that the only way I would get a boat to fit me would be to build one, so that is exactly what I did.  I spent around 150 hours over 8 months building a Chesapeake 18 Sea Kayak and customised it to fit me.

The boat hit the Water on Aug 6th, 2011, just in time for me to put in a couple of month’s training for the 2011 HCC, which I had the pleasure of paddling and completing with my Father, who just so happened to build himself a boat over about the same time as me.  We finished the HCC at 10:11am with an elapsed time of 17H 26m.

Since I had put in the effort and was mostly ready, I jumped in and entered a nice “Saturday Afternoon Paddle” – or the Christmas Race which is run by the MCC SA – a 29km race from Blanchtown to Swan Reach on the Murray, completing the distance in just over 4 Hours.

After this event, I set myself a goal for 2012 – and that was going to be to complete 5 Marathon events.

• The Back to Back  (1st weekend in May)
• The RPM 100 (Queen’s Birthday Long weekend in June)
• The HCC (End of October)
• The Christmas Race (Last weekend in November)
• The 1 day event of the Murray Marathon (Between Christmas and New Year)

The Back to Back has come and gone.  It is around 20km (20.5km) on the Saturday Afternoon followed by a 20km (21km) Sunday morning paddle on the Murray River near Murray Bridge.  I set myself a target time of 2h 50m for each day and did it in 2:40:08 on Saturday and followed it up with a 2:38:26 on Sunday.

I heard about another event and that was on – the West Lakes Classic (6,12 or 18km) at the end of May, so jumped in and had a crack at the 18km.  Setting myself a target time of less than 2H 30m.  I never got the official time but it was around 2H 13m.

Just 2 weeks ago, I completed the RPM 100.  The RPM (200) is considered to be the toughest Kayak Marathon in Australia – as it is in the middle of winter on the Murray River.  For my first hit-out in this event I chose to enter the RPM 100.  The race was hard, cold and very challenging, but my time is now in the record books!  I will put together a Race report in the next few days.

Stay tuned, I will be looking at all sorts of things from equipment, training and sharing race reports.

* Big 3 – HCC, RPM, Murray Marathon