Yukon Ho!

So it’s probably worth mentioning that Toons has taken it upon himself to wage a one-man class war. I don’t think there’s many kayakers who love rowers, but the do seem to be blissfully unaware of the rules of the river at times. It can even get to the point at which (like today) their coaches actually get vaguely embarrassed and start mentioning to the legion of 8s, scullers and pairs careering down both sides of the river that there’s a kayak, obeying the rules and hogging the bit of the river immediately next to the towpath which they really ought to look out for.

I don’t particularly see the point of installing a cox in a boat if they’re about half the size of the crew, and therefore can’t see past the halfwit, pondlife muscle-marys in front of them to steer in a sensible direction. Likewise, one would have thought that a sensible approach when this is clearly a constraint might be to have the coach in the accompanying boat look out ahead. This, however, isn’t the case, and in the concentration required in order for them to watch people pulling hard on pieces of wood, they lose all spatial awareness and regularly barge us out of the way and into the bank.

I put all this down to ignorance, and the fact that it’s a sport that attracts people looking for a pursuit with a very low intellectual content. Toons has another theory. For Dave, every rower is called either Tarquin or Sebastian and rows for Eton old boys. It’s not a class war, but Toon’s abuse at the passing rowers is taking on a socialist slant.

This may be simply because he’s a bit more eloquent than me. Usually when they pass all I can do is grunt, swear and look at the clock. However, I’d like to think that Toons will carry on in this vein all the way down the Yukon. I’m looking forwards to overthrowing the bourgois Grizzly bear regime, and freeing the benign otter proletariat. Hopefully a bolshevik vigour will keep Dave going once the lack of sleep and halucinations set in. I’m bringing a stereo and some Soviet marching songs.

A good friend of mine at work recently won a prize for writing a paper (and presenting it) around how to adapt some key principles developed in the book “The way of the cockroach” by Craig Hovey. Although I’ve not read the book itself, I’m trying to use a bit more method in my approach to training, so I thought I’d see if I can use some of these ideas to make our training more efficient. Over the next few weeks/months I think we’re going to try to use some of the project management methodology that Toons and I use at work to help continuously improve the gain from our training.

One of the great difficulties I find is being able to learn from my mistakes when training; methodology is a way round that. It should help us to deal with the real difficulties of doing a race like this i.e.:

* Keeping the goals small and achievable

* Managing the logistics

* Recognising what we’ve done well and is working for us, but also removing the work that we do which isn’t useful.

I’ll leave the detail around the methodology itself to Toons; he’s the expert. Hopefully the posts in the future will have a bit of structure to them, and this should help us to document our journey as well as focus on the most important things.

So; “the way of the roach”, interpreted for extreme kayak racing:

1) You have nothing to fear but yourself: The biggest obstacle to us, throughout our training and our race I feel will be our own mental state. Physically this is a huge challenge, but if we can remain positive and constructive throughout we’ll succeed. Morale in a bag (haribo) may be required…:-P

2) Don’t always listen to your heart: With such a long preparation schedule it’s really easy to feel guilty about not going to the gym. Toons and I are fairly motivated people, and I often find myself feeling physically exhausted but still pushing myself really hard in the gym. Sometimes you just have to listen to what your body is telling you; when it says it’s tired it usually is. So far we’ve avoided injury, but I’m going to make a really big effort to make sure I’m pragmatic about the risks I take around overtraining. It’s something I want to make doubly sure I avoid.

3) Always be the last bug standing: I’m concious at this point that we need to be ready for a marathon, not a sprint. This isn’t a 6 week training schedule, and if we cut ourselves off from the world then we won’t be human at the end of it. We’ve made fairly big sacrifices (teetotal toons, swigging a spinach smoothie every morning probably more so than myself…!), but I’m really looking forwards to the breaks we’ve put in the diary. Bring on the surf trip, when we’ll probably do extensive Keanu Reaves impersonations whilst bouncing over body-boarders in the white stuff.

4) Even the smallest opening can be a huge opportunity: We need to be sure we’re making the most of our time. Over such a long training schedule, small things might make all the difference. I’m really keen to get our turnaround times down; half an hour each training session will really reduce the overhead of training on our personal lives over the weekend.

5) Feast where others see only garbage: Yes, protein shakes may taste like a blend of flour and cocoa powder but they are a necessary evil. We may even get some muscles at some point.

6) Grow your eyes in the back of your head: There’s no point in us being the size of He-Man if we’re not in time, and paddling with good technique. It’s crucially important that we look out for each other, and spot technique flaws in our own paddling. Attention to the bits of the stroke we don’t normally consider is probably pretty important. For proof we haven’t been able to do this so far, please see attached picture… admittedly taken after a punishing 90 min run.

7) Move while your enemies mull: Yep, 9am Sunday morning starts.

Rest up to wreak havoc: The biggest thing that has helped me so far has been nice long periods of sleep, helping to get my head and my body in the right place. It helps that most days I’m eating constantly up until the moment I go to bed…

9) Don’t be there when the lights come on: We need to make sure we’re not seen by the club to be taking advantage of their facilities, even though (to be fair), we’re in and out of the boathouse constantly over the weekends. To that end we’ve been working on clearing up, drying and generally keeping the boathouse tidy over the period. Hopefully that’ll keep the guardians of all things BCC happy.

On a more serious note, the guy who wrote the white paper made a much better job of it than I’ve done this… It’s really awesome to be associated with people who are at the cutting edge, and writing stuff accepted by the global test community at the big corporate I work in. All credit to him for doing such sterling work and giving me something to nick an idea from!