Achieving the bounce

A frozen BA; always a good sign of a DW training session.

We had a long K2 paddle scheduled for last Sunday but we only ended up doing one hour. We were going to meet early in the morning and head upstream from Teddington to Walton and back but neither of us were on it at all. I had been out in Chinatown until late so I was feeling pretty delicate, while Adam decided that he was no longer able to paddle the mystere. After having such a great paddle a few days before this one was in every way, the complete opposite despite the conditions being perfect. We splashed about along the Kingston straight, just about staying upright and then turned round and came home. We put it down to being out early and having not warmed up properly. I did remark that at some point in the DW we would be paddling pretty early and cold so we might need to sort that out. :-0

Anyway, we were out again on Wednesday night and the conditions were a lot more sketchy than they had been on Sunday with very gusty wind and a high wind chill so it didn't look good for a confidence inducing session.  But we had a brilliant paddle. I am really working on getting my paddle as vertical in the water as possible and we are more often getting 'the bounce', a point when the boat seems to be pulsing through the water and we've got that simple harmonic motion with the boat rocking gently underneath us, instead of it being flat and lifeless. We don't achieve that state all the time but we are gradually getting there more and more often, which I am hoping is a sign that our technique work is starting to pay dividends.

Both Adam and I went out individually in K1's as well this week. I was out on Friday night and it was very cold. I spent an hour paddling the Kingston straight again, doing some technique work and drills and 4 x 2 minute hard efforts. I just tried to ensure that I was not dawdling at any point and had a solid paddle for an hour. I was the only person on the river and it was beautiful. :-)

Our DW plan has come together and we've got 2 support crews this time. We've got my Dad and my father-in-law John and then we've also got Phil and Alex D. Dad and John have a combined age of 138 and Phil and Alex are ginger. Success is assured!! it's going to be great having them help us as they are all top blokes and having more than one support means that no one crew has to go through the entire event supporting us.

We've pencilled in our long paddles although in the next 60 days we are probably going to be doing a lot more K1 work than last year as both Adam and I have family and friend commitments that will need to come first and actually means we cannot do any of the Waterside events. So we'll be doing Devizes to Newbury on our own and also Dreadnaught to Marlow and Marlow to Old Windsor will be our other longer paddles. We've purchase a Garmin etrex GPS so we'll accurately know our speed on the water but we'll use it in the race for accurate pacing to ensure that we stay on schedule. Having said that we've worked out our provisional start times and are confident in our plan and confident that we'll finish if our pace is not what we expect or if it drops.

60 days to go. Keep paddling. Keep the faith.