Best hip forward

On Wednesday night I headed off to the Royal for a coached session on the kayak ergos. For some time, the Captain of the club, Bob, had been in contact to try to arrange a few sessions whereby he could look at Adam's and my technique, and finally I managed to get away in time for a session. Bob is one of those talented swines with broad shoulders and narrow hips who is just a natural and talented paddler (with a lot of hard work thrown in as well, I'm sure). he came second this year in the four day race in a stupidly fast time so I felt pretty confident that he'd be able to iron out a few bumps in my technique. Also in the session were a couple of relative newbies who are planning to do the DW next year and Stephen, the club President.

I had this idea that Bob would take one look at me on the ergo, give me a big thumbs up and congratulate me on the magnificent self-coached style that I had developed. Not for the first time do I find myself typing 'how wrong was I?'

I know about hip rotation and thought that I was pretty good with this; it turns out I'm not. The first thing that we sorted out was the angle of my legs in order to ensure that when pressing against the footbar my leg would almost straighten, but not quite. I had not realised how critical this is to the stroke and my hip rotation. What I was able to do was get one side of my hip back but I was really struggling to get the other side of my hip forwards. It was to frustrate me for the whole hour, with me instead rocking my torso to compensate.

We moved onto the catch and spearing the paddle at the correct angle by my feet. I have always known that my recovery arm has not been doing the right thing, but unfortunately I didn't really know what the right thing was, but it turns out my main wrong-doing is that I was bringing that arm through the stroke too quickly. So Bob got us doing a drill whereby we delayed at this point to get our hands in the correct position before we started the catch. For the whole session I tried to get my hips and recovery arm in the correct position and got increasingly frustrated at my ineptitude; everything felt out of synchronisation. Bob was very patient and was kind enough to say that he felt I had made progress but I am not sure that he believed it. I know I didn't. I went for a run afterwards. That requires very little thinking on my part. :-)

I have a LOT to work on.

Adam and I will be paddling in the Frank Luzmore race in January; a 12.5 mile paddle from Elmbridge down to the Royal at Teddington. I am quietly confident that we will be last.

In other news...
My triathlon season next year is in a state of disarray. My main race for next year was going to be the Outlaw but I did not get an entry in on time. With Christmas fast approaching I had to make the choice of presents for the kids or getting my entry paid. I quite like my family, so the thought of ending up being divorced because we had no money left because I had decided to spend in on 12 hours of fun was not appealling. But what now? To be honest, I have not got a clue. Challenge Henley falls on a bad weekend, and Ironman Wales, while being a race I would really enjoy seems too far away. I even found myself straying onto the Tritalk double Ironman thread for a few minutes (that's your fault Wilson; thankfully, I came to my senses). At the moment, all I want to do is run, paddle and ride my bike to work. When I want to do more, I'll think about it some more.