This blog is all to do with our attempt to do the Yukon River Quest 2009, but probably the first question most people will have is why?
I think mostly this has to do with a particularly effective blend of real ale served in a pub on the cornish coast during the August bank holiday 2008. I mentioned to Dave that I was really keen to do something really exciting in a kayak, and was thinking primarily (at the time) of a surf trip around Europe. We were out in Cornwall catching surf, and my idea was primarily to go and do something that would challenge my sense of adventure.
Dave then mentioned that the hardest thing he’d ever done was the Devises to Westminster race. I’d done a couple of marathons before, and decided that the only thing to do was to trump this by announcing that I’d seen a documentary on the BBC about a seemingly impossible kayak expedition/race/kamikase run in the Yukon. We had a few more beers and decided that we should definitely start training…
In November we had our first planning meeting in a pub in Tooting, although we didn’t really understand at that stage the magnitude of our undertaking; when the Yukon opened it’s doors to entrants I put an entry in. Financially committed, it wasn’t until January that we really began to realise what we were trying to do. I’d been trying to work out an analogy for the distance using UK landmarks, and has guesstimated that London to Glasgow was probably a fair bet. Below is an email I sent to Dave in January as it all began to sink in:
Dave,
Photos of the rapids:
http://www.yukonriverquest.com/photos/displayimage.php?album=15&pos=26
It doesn’t look too hectic…
Also in these photos it shows that all of the leading kayak teams are using wings…
http://www.yukonriverquest.com/photos/displayimage.php?album=15&pos=34
Looking at how much time we have left to prepare I think it’s worth putting together a summary of how much we still need to achieve (and what that means for our training plan):
Race dates: 24th-28th June
Today is the 11th of Jan
Given that we won’t be doing any training next week we will have a total of 21 possible weekends (of which I will need to attend a wedding on one of these weekends).
We need to schedule in weekends apart from each other so I think we’ve probably got a maximum of 15 effective weekends – we should have a target somewhere between the two. Is a target of 17 effective weekends training realistic?
If we target 17 weekends then that would give us a total of 34days training; 17 days endurance and 17 days speed work. That’s not actually all that many – especially when you consider that we will want a month of tapering our training down near the race.
I checked on Google and London-Glasgow isn’t really a good way of thinking about it; it’s too short. We’re actually preparing to paddle from London to Frankfurt or Dundee!
See attached waypoint xls from the official site; it shows the main rapids as being a day in. We should def. get some ww experience before going!
See you in a couple of weeks m8,
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