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/

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..

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…

The weather is pretty key - it’s wonderfully warm even when raining. I know this isn’t what we’re going to find in the Yukon, but it has made getting in and out of wet clothes about 90% less depressing. Paddling is now only 4.6% pants; a marked improvement.

We’ve also worked out how to paddle in time, and we spend a lot less time struggling with the boat. I even got a surf from a passing motor boat the other day - jolly kind of him to give me a bit of a morale-booster :-).

Most important, however, is the fact that our bodies have got used to the training, and as we’re cutting back from the long endurance runs I’ve been feeling energetic. Bunny is back…

http://www.nswseakayaker.asn.au/mag/44/foodforthought.html

Not sure whether that’ll mean more or less flow for the actual race. More pictures can be found here

Just as I was picking up pace, I caught a cold.  It’s on the wane now but it’s been interesting following the advice from trainharder.  I’ve been carrying on training.  Been interesting, my cold has definitely not been as bad, though I’m not plagued at the moment by a cough so made running easier.  The thames training run on Wednesday was fun, a dose of day nurse, I worked at about 80-90% of my heart rate for over an hour and half, which under usual circumstances would mean vomiting but I felt fine.  Not sure if this is bad or good, just felt rather ‘trippy’

In the absence of any other interesting things to say, I thought I’d give an overview of what we’ve been up to over the last few weeks. Although we took a weekend off from training (surf kayaking) to try and stay in touch with friends, we’ve completed several milestones in our schedule. We’ve entered the phase of our training in which we try to work up some endurance, and we’ve completed our first real long-distance paddle; a 6 hr slog down to Greenwich against the current and back again.

I’ll let Toons tell the tales of horror that ensued on the trip down to Greenwich (I’m only going to mention “Soggy Sandwiches”…), and I thought I’d give some further idea of the scale of the challenge we’re up against.

So far we’ve been training for almost 6 months (at various intensities). We’ve got about 2 months to go, and our speed has really improved; on the water we’ve got our teamwork really together. However, it’s important not to underestimate the people we’ll be paddling with; the team bios contain lists of ex-olympians, competitive adventure racers and other such athletes. A telling story is the fact that the Royal Marines and British Army entered a total of 4 teams from the very best of their athletes and managed a best place of 5th with a frankly astonishing time of 49hrs. The slowest of these elite teams, however, came in 20th. If even they can only achieve 20th I think we’re aiming for a finish rather than a time (or ranking).

So if last would be disappointing, but anything above that is a bonus, I think it’s worth thinking about several key points we’re likely to hit during the race. Looking through the times published for previous years you can see some of the things that are likely to happen from the times (and points) at which we’ll have to get through certain challenges on the way.

* We’ll start at about 12:30 on the 24th of June. We’ll run the half mile to our boats and begin the first leg. Temperatures for that time of the year look to top out at around 23 degrees celcius; we may well be sweltering as we paddle through the first afternoon. Assuming we run about a 60 hour race, that will get us to the first key milestone at around about 5pm on the first day.

* We’ll start on to the Lake. Lake Laberge is a significant milestone in the race, as the water won’t have any current to keep us going. We’ll also likely need to content with significant waves and wind (waves can reach up to 5 ft), which may make efficient paddling difficult. By the time we get off the lake it will be late on in the evening, although it will seem like daytime is just continuing. As we paddle through the midnight sun, I’m expecting cold to set in and tiredness to begin to impact us. Even in the middle of summer the temperature is likely to dip down to around 5 degrees celcius. As we’ll be very tired we will definitely need to force ourselves to stop and change into some more sensible clothes for the nighttime paddle.

* We’ll paddle through the next morning and reach Carmacks at some stage on the afternoon after starting. We’ll have been paddling for over 24hours continuously, and will have a short 7 hour break in which to:

- Repack the boat for the next leg

- Refill the fuel tanks with as much carb and protein as possible

- Sleep if possible

- Stretch off muscles to prevent cramps

- Shower to prevent rubbing

* We’ll leave Carmacks after the regulation 7 hours in the late evening of the 25th of June. From here we’ll have a brutal paddle through to the next stop at Kirkman the next day. With only one checkpoint in between, and with 24 hours to paddle, this will be a really tough leg. Other blogs talk about halucinations, particularly during the night of the second day.

* Kirkman, the next stop, is a really short and unsupported. We’ll have to be proactive in fixing ourselves up at this stop, getting the boat unpacked and getting ourselves ready for the next leg of the journey. In just 3 hours we will need to make sure we’re ready for another (fairly epic) 12+ hour journey before we reach Dawson City.

I’ve spent a while looking over the issues we’re going to have. We can prepare ourselves for the physical demands (and to an extent the mental) of the trip, but on such a mamoth task we’ve also got to think about the logistical checks necessary for us to remain paddling effectively. We’ll need to develop a means of keeping ourselves fully functioning when absolutely chinstrapped; I think checklists will need to play a large part in this.

So I hope this gives an idea of what my expectations are around the race. If you feel this is a good challenge for a couple of IT geeks, please don’t be shy. I’ve set up a JustGiving site; it’s near enough to the race that I really need to declare my intentions to the world. After all the training, I think the site should help me to get back for the community some of the hard work we’ve put in…

So if you feel like helping us along through each mile please feel free to pledge some cash at www.justgiving.com/peterbudden

On the upside, I now own a very effective headtorch.

It’s good to know you’re winning…