Wiki Factory Racing

 With my K2 partner heading to South Africa to see family and do some racing (lucky bastard), I finally lined up at a major race as a solo competitor. With hand surgery in a couple of weeks potentially wiping out the next few months of races, I wasn't sure whether I'd even bother to enter this race but the racing bug bit hard!  While it was a warm morning, the wind was blowing hard! It was enough to make me slightly concerned about parts of the course, so I felt pretty bad for the novices, they were certainly in for a wake up call on what the Waimak can be like on race day! In the wind storm that was the 2011 Coast to Coast, I had managed to get to Woodstock dry, before swimming many many times in this final 15km due to the wind. There's really only two strategies for wind, paddle at the speed of it (or faster) so it doesn't impact you, or be at the heavier end of the scale so it doesn't affect you as badly. Unfortunately most of the time both of these strategies ar

While my long term goal in the boat is definitely at the endurance end of the scale, a wise Brazilian by the name of Flavio once told me the only way to be fast in a marathon, is to be fast in a 10km, and the only way to be fast in a 10km, is to be fast in a 1km.  And so here I found myself, at the tail end of a big block of paddling, definitely noticing some fatigue after 3 hours of paddling the day before, and lining up against the future of sprint paddling in Canterbury and Otago. My expectations were pretty low, I was very much just there for the experience so I was pleasantly surprised to come away with 4th A final in the K1 200m. With my training being focused towards endurance, I had expected this to be my worst event of the day since it is aimed at explosive power and high speed. Surprisingly (or perhaps not with my level of fatigue), the shortest race of the day was also my best. In all of the following events I would reach the 250m mark and reach my limit in pace, watching th

 I was never intending on doing this event but with a gentle push of encouragement by Stu, we found ourselves back entered in a race in the K2. The format was simple, 50 minutes, do as many laps as you can within the time.  Our plan was simple, start fast, keep pushing hard, see how much time we could gain on a quality field. I think our last race together in the Topsport Pro-Am series had boosted our confidence a little too much, and despite a fast start, Paul Massie and Matt Mustchin were a little too close for comfort by the first turn.  Each lap was roughly 1.1km long with two tight 180 degree turns. While we could hold a good pace on the straights, the K2 isn't the most agile when it comes to turning. At each turn we were definitely feeling the pressure of Paul and Matt who could flick around far quicker than what we were. It was only after lap 4 where we seemed to be starting to build a gap on the chasers. By that stage the focus was then just on maintaining consistent lap ti