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, watchin...

 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 consist...

 After spotting this event on the CRNZ website I knew I had to add it to the calendar. While paddlers (especially multisporters) seem to avoid any form of flatwater racing, they are a brilliant way to track your performance over time as there is typically less external factors that can impact results such as flow rate or different line choices like on a river. While the Avon isn’t exactly the best example of this due to being tidal, timed efforts can still be performed reasonably consistently on an out and back course. Adding in tactical elements and the lost art of wash riding, and flatwater racing is actually quite fun and provides an interesting challenge compared to river racing. I’m always disappointed to see paddlers pull out or not enter events because it’s a flatwater race or the B course is on flatwater. You were going to be racing that day anyway, get out there and race! While talking about things that are disappointing, it’s pretty disappointing that a national series ...

Funnily enough I started off the last post on here with the following passage; “As most of you will have noticed, I’ve been rather quiet on the race/blog front recently. In typical me fashion, I got injured. Again! But this update is going to be a wee bit different to anything I have done in the past. It is going to be a review of the last year, relating to work, racing, life, and rediscovering my passions. I apologise in advance if any of you fall asleep while reading this, I have discovered that putting my thoughts on paper (or in this case online document) is a valuable tool to remind myself of lessons learnt through either success or failure, and ensure I keep moving forward. As someone far wiser than me once said, “don’t bury your failures, let them inspire you!” Annnnnnnd guess what… I did get injured… again. And just like the last post, I started a new job a year ago as well. This time though I finally followed my heart and took a step towards my dream of working on a rescue...