Brownsea

I didn’t blog last week for a few reasons, one of which was because I didn’t really get up to much. After posting about my last few events, and the potential to do the channel crossing by kayak, it didn’t seem worth it for a single post about a single parkrun (which wasn’t particularly fast either).

Saying that I did visit a physio for my ongoing rotator cuff injury. She identified so many bits of me which are tight, misaligned, or injured. With everything that is apparently wrong with me, I’m surprised that I am able to physically function at all. After a few tests and exploratory prods she pummelled my back and shoulder until bone and sinew had been suitably loosened up. It was quite uncomfortable at the time but did do a lot to improve the injury… And then this weekend happened and I now need to go and see her again.

This weekend was a trip to Brownsea Island organised by a group of watersports coaches who are closely associated with the Scouts. Brownsea (as I’m sure you already know), was where Baden Powel chose to hold the first ever Scout camp, and this trip is an annual pilgrimage by canoe. The diamond channel crossing team saw this as a good training opportunity and were generously allowed to take kayaks rather than canoes this year. Four of us took two double sea kayaks.

As a camping trip we had to take everything we would need for an overnight stop, including our food, tent, clothes, and other must have essentials for surviving a night in the wild (mainly wine, and insect repellent). Which meant the boat was loaded with probably an additional 20 or 30 kilos of equipment, added to an already weighty plastic K2 I would guess we were trying to shift upward of 60 kilos. Over recent months I’ve got used to glass K1 boats weighing less than a quarter of that.



Brownsea by Kayak, Day 1

We set off from a campsite near Wareham putting in onto a tidal section of a river (I think the Frome but like normal, I wasn’t really paying attention). We then paddled down through the tidal mud flats keenly sticking to the channel (I did this trip a few years ago in canoe and got stranded on a sand bar as the tide went out) and then we headed out across a wider expanse of sea to the island. The conditions were beautiful, the weather was with us and there was not much in the way of wind which meant the water was so calm.

On the first day we covered the twelve kilometres in about two hours which was not bad considering the weight of the boats. While under power the weight wasn't much more noticeable as momentum just punched the boat through the water, but getting them going in the first place was really hard, even the loss of one of the paddlers effort made shifting the boat a huge strain and the steering was so vague.

We were ashore and setting up camp by midday but my shoulder was giving me some warning signs, and despite an impromptu deep tissue massage I decided that I shouldn’t go back out for a bit more kayaking as planned. Instead we roved around the island looking for Geocaches and Pokémon. (Yes, I too, like pretty much everyone else in the world, am playing Pokémon Go!).

Brownsea by Kayak, Day 2

Day two we broke camp, loaded the boats again and put to sea. The second day was a much shorter trip back to mainland for the canoes, but as our kayaks were much quicker and we needed to get training mileage in we did a circuit of Brownsea before heading to the get out. Day two was about ten kilometres and another hour and a half of paddling strain on my shoulder.

So here I am, Monday, tired and sunburned, with a shoulder that is worse than it was two weeks ago. I was told by my physio that I had to rest it and I know now that I am going to have to do just that if I am going to be available for the crossing in August.

 

Excuses

I’m not sure if I should start this week by whinging about how bad the weather has been, claiming that I was recovering from the Giants Head Marathon, or admitting to myself that I went into a bit of a lazy slump last week… I’m going to go with… Weather. It has been a rotten week weather wise so I have been forced to stay dry inside, to recover from the marathon and in no way was I being a lazy turnip.

I do have a new thing in my diary which I very much must train for now though. I have one of those friends that has a way of making crazy things happen; almost always involving a kayak. She is half the reason I ended up doing DW a couple of years ago, she involved me with the Abbotsbury Swan Drive a few years back as well, and now I am on a team of four to kayak across the channel for the Diamond DofE challenge.

I have been drafted in as a replacement for someone who has been forced to drop out. All of the preparation seems to have either been done or is in hand and I think I am just going to be the stoker for one of the K2s. If I’m honest I feel like a bit of a fraud, swooping in after the work has been done to simply claim the glory.

Anyway,  I am going to be paddling a K2 and I’m going to have to get used to working as a team so I joined one of their training sessions this weekend. It made me realised that this challenge was going to be a bit greater than turning up and paddling for a few hours. The boats we will be using are very heavy, not particularly fast and I found the seat really uncomfortable. The idea of having to drive one for 8+ hours at sea is losing its appeal. I should be able to sort out the seating position to make it a bit more comfortable, but it is still going to be a hard slog: We were out for two and a half hours on Saturday and only managed 14kms. By comparison, in the racing K1 I would have doubled that distance.

At some point during the session, I’m not sure if it was while paddling or lifting the cumbersome boat, I aggravated a shoulder injury I have been carrying for a little while. It was an annoying niggle last week but I think it’s fair to say it’s a full blown injury now. I might need to seek professional help to get it fixed before the crossing attempt.

The next medal event for me though is the Ride London 100 in not very many weeks time so I also went out for a training ride with a couple of friends on Sunday. In total I covered about 60kms with quite a lot of climbing which was good to throw at the legs, I did struggle a bit but I think I can still blame the marathon a bit for my lack of peak performance.

I don’t usually talk too much about my times and speeds and other metrics on this blog as I think it can get a bit boring but this number is a concern. In total on this weekend’s ride, my average speed was 20.2km/h. The Ride 100 has a cut off time of eight and a half hours, and is 100 miles long. Assuming that my average speed will be similar on the day, I will finish the event in 8 hours. That only leaves thirty minutes for feed station stops, toilet breaks and potentially any mechanical issues. Having completed a few sportives I know that a lot of time can be lost at feed stations. I’m either going to have to ride faster… Or miss some of the feed stations.

The weather looks to be on the turn for the better so I am down one excuse for not doing any training this coming week…