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