Yukon Ho!

It’s probably worth mentioning that as well as doing the event for my own personal satisfaction I’m also raising money for the Kent Air Ambulance. The reasons why I’m doing this are below - it’s a very worthy cause and close to my heart. If you know me (or if I’ve been able to get your email from someone…) I’ve probably asked you whether you’d be willing to sponsor me to do the YRQ ‘09. In any case, if this isn’t the case then I’ve included below my message that’s also in my justgiving site (www.justgiving.com/peterbudden); any help is really appreciated and I would very much like to reach the £1000 mark that would signify that we’d managed to fund one of the Kent Air Ambulance’s life-saving missions.

Hi,

A couple of reasons to donate to the Kent Air Ambulance:

1) They do really excellent work saving lives by providing emergency medical care that otherwise wouldn’t be available

2) I’m asking for sponsorship in memory of my uncle, Graham Budden, who flew the Kent Air Ambulance. He was a great inspiration to me and everyone else who knew him. I’ve never met anyone else who had such an appetite for adventure.

3) I’m doing a long, and likely very arduous, kayaking event in the far North of Canada. I’m doing this because I want the challenge, but supporting a great charity will spur me and my teammate Dave on to complete the 70hour race.

Clearly the race is going to be a bit of a “suffer-fest”; I won’t be necessarily expecting the usual marathon “per-mile” donations as the event is 460 miles long…

For information about the crazy event we’ve been silly enough to enter ourselves into, see www.yukonriverquest.com

For more information about the Kent Air Ambulance, please see http://www.kentairambulance.co.uk/

The biggest obstacle of the last few days has been getting through the vast ammount of to-do points on our checklist. The logistics of doing an event like this have really taken me by suprise, and I thought I should share the pain…

Have a look at the gear we’re taking laid out in my room prior to packing (in the photo below).

The contents of the boat prior to setting off from the UK

As we’ve cut down the ammount of stuff to the bear essentials each piece of the puzzle is absolutely crucial; I’ve become paranoid. I’ve checked, counted, re-checked and re-counted each item as it’s gone into my swallow-all duffel bag.

Even with all the gear we’ll be taking out with us significant elements still remain to be picked up in Calgary (thanks Dad!) or in Whitehorse, such as purification tablets and energy drinks (for which read food for the entire race…).

I mentioned yesterday that we’ve had a really awesome response from friends, family and colleagues. If you’ve wished us well then thank you; it’s great to have so many people rooting for us.

If I said I had a thing about bubble wrap, would you believe me?

Whilst packing I’ve picked up the task of sorting out the paddles so that they don’t get damaged by the luggage handling in the UK or Canada. I’m making no assumptions, but I’ve labeled it fairly clearly as FRAGILE..

So we’ve neglected the blog (it was probably inevitable as the training heated up), but I thought it would be good to write down my thoughts immediately preceding the race itself.

I’m in a really wierd mood; the relaxation of the training routine since Sunday has left me not only with bags of time on my hands, but with an abundance of energy. Our final training runs were great fun - see the pictures - but I shouldn’t really be doing a huge ammount now this close to the event. This has become really frustrating - if I go and burn it all off in the gym I’m not sure that I’ll be doing anything other than burning energy I will need during the race itself. So I have to wait, and rest.

In order to keep myself occupied I’ve been getting stuck into the minutiae of the preparations. Packing this ammount of boating and first aid gear has been a real pain, especially when GPS companies (no names mentioned) supply connecting leads that only work if your laptop happens to have a serial port. But despite a few setbacks I think we’re on track, and all the documentation is ready.

To keep my body from siezing up entirely I’ve been for a massage, and received massage lessons from our helpful club members. I think it could be a really important part of the rest stop at Carmacks; I’m keen to make sure we get as much muscle rest at that point as possible. Thanks to Jax for her input!

So we’re off to Canada. I can’t describe how increadibly daunting this is. I’ve never done anything even remotely on this scale before; the wait beforehand is like an extended version of preparing to parachute jump! I’ve really enjoyed the process of training - it’s been an increadibly positive focus, and I think I’ve learnt a lot from it. However, I’ve been training for so long now I really want to make this happen, and make the result reflect all the work we’ve put in.

I know we’re physically in great condition after 8 months of training, but the race is long in a way that means physical preparation only gets you so far; teamwork and psychological factors will play a really big part in this. I’m really greatful to the support of the charity team I’ve been working with (I’ll blog about this seperately - it probably deserves a bit more coverage on these pages). The idea that this is more than just a pointless charge into immense physical discomfort is really heartening. I hope that the support will be one of the things I remember and draw on when we’re working hard over the three day event.

It’s been 8 months of training, and at about 1.5 hours a day 6 days a week that’s a lot of time to dedicate when you think of it collectively. The challenge still feels as big as it did when we started, but what’s really important is that I still feel as keen as when we started. Dave and I still get on really well, and banter still gets thrown around the boat. Casting off at Whitehorse there won’t really be any opportunity to look backwards; the question will be not whether we quit but whether we feel at the end we made the best use of the skills and physical gains that we’ve put in place through our training. All that’s left for me to do, therefore, is to pack up my troubles in my old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile all the way to Dawson City…