So you want to do the DW? part 3

 6. A Simple Training Plan
'Failing to plan is planning to fail.' So goes the simple maxim but how do you put together a training plan that will get you to the start of the DW in good enough shape to finish the event? Once again, I am writing this post from the perspective of a crew with little paddling experience. I am sure that knarly, more experienced racing paddlers will approach it in a very different way to what I might describe here, but I hope that you find the folowing post useful to give you a starting point. Before you start, it's worth considering the following points;

i. How much time you have until the race
There have been crews who have hopped into a kayak for the first time a few months before the DW and completed the event, however this is more than likely the exception and not the norm. It's worth considering the experience of Ben Hunt-Davis who jumped into a kayak for the first time some 8 weeks before this year's DW. A rowing gold medal winning Olympian, you would have thought that someone with his pedigree would be able to crash train his way to a DW finish. His blog on his failure to do so makes interesting reading for us mere MAMIL mortals.  Most people I have spoken to, and the information I have read state that to do the event justice you should give yourself a full year to train. Jamie and I did it in 9 months, it took Adam and I 2 years. This sounds about right. A full year of training will get you to the startline, 2 years will more than likely get you to the finish line.

ii. Your experience / ability / fitness level
It stands to reason, but the harder you find it to stay upright in a boat or the lower the fitness level that you are starting from, the longer it is probably going to take you to get race ready. Again, my own anecdotal evidence bears this out. Jamie and I were both playing different sports regularly and had higher than average fitness levels for people our age. We got to grips with a stable boat fairly quickly and therefore were just about able to complete the race in 9 months. Adam had a bigger hill to climb. At 17 stone and having done no sport to speak of since leaving school it was always going to take him longer, but 2 years later and 3 stone lighter he was paddling  under Westminster Bridge. You just need to be honest with yourself at the outset. Look at it as a long term goal if needs be.

iii. Your goal for the race
Do you intend to finish or are you racing for a time? I would argue that paddling to finish the event is easier than going for a specific time. (I'm not talking about trying to catch the tide at Teddington but actually racing to beat a finishing time that you have set) It may well be that you goals change as your training develops, which is fine, but if you are a novice kayaker I would think it best to initially set out on this journey with the intention of finishing. Time goals can come later. Anthony Murr mentioned it and it's worth repeating again that if doing the Senior Doubles, that you and your partner's goals are in-line. If one is going for sub 20 and the other just wants to finish, then probably it will end in tears way before you reach the startline at Devizes.

iv. How much time you have available to train
It's obviously really important to get your family and loved ones on board (metaphorically speaking; the kayak will be rather heavy otherwise). Whichever way you cut it, the race is a commitment. Like most of these things it's not the race so much but the hours of training beforehand that's the real endurance event. Again, be honest with yourself. There's not much point planning on doing 5 paddles per week if it's completely unrealistic and does not fit in with your other commitments and lifestyle.

Let's assume again that we're 1 year out from the DW. Our plan was to aim to paddle 3 times a week. If we achieved that, then that was a very good week. Our average was just under 2 paddles per week and often due to family stuff it became 1 paddle per week (exclusively training in a K2 therefore having to rely on each other to be there when we could have been in a K1 and paddling a lot more frequently). As I also stated in a previous post, making that first 5-6 months being technique focussed, maybe practising drills and getting coaching to make your technique as efficient as possible would be the way that I would now approach it. An hour's paddle maximum, 3 times per week would be ample and with the spring and long summer months it gives you the opportunity to capsize to your heart's content.

As we moved into the autumn we aimed to keep to 3 paddles per week that looked something like this;

Tuesday; Interval paddle 60-90 mins. Warm up followed by 4x5mins 3 mins rec / or 8x2mins 2mins rec / 3x10mins 5mins rec.

Thursday; 45min-60min tempo paddle. Faster than DW effort. We usually tacked on a run or core session afterwards.

weekend; long paddle 90-120mins DW effort.

This was an 'ideal' week and formed the bulk of Adam's and my training until January.

Once we got to January the focus was much more on ensuring that we got our long paddle in and if we could only fit a single paddle into any one week then it was the long paddle that was done. I have blogged before about what constitutes a long paddle but our weekly long paddle was usually 2-2.5 hours with the occasional 3 hour paddle. Once we got into January the aim was to get ourselves into the state where we would be able to complete a 6-8 hour paddle 2 to 3 weeks out from the DW. The long paddles were used to test food and drink, practice portaging and generally get us rehearsing DW techniques.

7. Interval training; a good idea?
I personally enjoyed the interval sessions as they provided a welcome change from bashing out the long miles and gave us more of an aerobic workout. I didn't use a heart rate monitor but I doubt very much that I went anaerobic more than a few times. If you look at the sessions written in Greenaway's book many of the weekly paddles are based around intervals and for a novice crew I am not sure that that's the best way to go. If you are a 24hr plus crew you are simply not going to be paddling at anywhere near that intensity and therefore paddling a lot like that, particularly if your technique is poor may do more harm than good. Energy efficient technique over raw speed everytime. I'm not saying don't do it; at the end of the day the training's also got to be fun or it will be very hard to stay motivated, but if in doubt, DW effort.

8.Waterside and Thameside Series; a good idea?
These series of races take place in the winter and early spring before the DW and are generally regarded as an excellent warm up before taking on the DW, mainly because they take place on parts of the DW course. This will give you the opportunity to practice portaging and familiarise yourself with a part of the course. In particular, the Waterside D, which takes place over the first 35 miles of the DW from Devizes to Newbury is generally regarded as the best one to do. Most crews use this as their last long training paddle and gauge their DW pace from it. But a slight word of caution. These are very competitive and busy events. The portages can get stupidly busy as is the canal at times. This is nothing like the Senior Doubles DW which sees crews leaving individually, spaced out over a much grreater length of time. Therefore, it might be better for you to paddle the D route or do something similar to what we did this year, on your own or with your clubmates rather than entering these races.

9. Other training
I have already mentioned core work which is time very well spent. There are 2 other things that might be worth doing;

i. Running for weight loss.  Use running (or cycling, swimming, line dancing, whatever floats your boat) to promote weight loss. The more kilos you can lose the easier it will be to move the boat through the water and the easier you will find it to get in and out of the boat. You will also be running or walking with the boat 70 times during the DW ( I think somebody worked out that you will be carrying the boat for around 5 miles), therefore getting used to running and walking is a good idea.

ii. Gym work. This can supplement the core work and will be useful for helping you get in and out of the boat, particularly if the water levels are low and the portages are high. However, I would ALWAYS go for a paddle if I had a choice.

From flab to fab

Waterside D. Before it all went wrong.

No post for a while as we have been on holiday this week for a much needed break. Work had been very stressy for a month or so and it got worse as we progressed towards starting the Waterside D. Ah yes, the D. So what happened there? Well, to be honest we're still not sure. Like most crews it was going to be our last long training paddle before the DW and to that extent it was a success, but that's where the success story ends. The first pound went really well; we were one of the first crews on the water so it felt very DW like for the first 45 minutes with very few crews overtaking us, or with us overtaking anyone else. We settled quickly and really enjoyed it and got stuck into our DW effort not worrying about the faster crews who came barelling past us. Our support (Dave) met us at Honey Street with fresh bottles and we continued on, enjoying the experience and the luke warm sunshine that meant I didn't have to be togged up in a cag. When we got to Wotton we ditched the spraydecks and began focussing on keeping our nutrition going and portaging as efficiently as possible. We were comfortably on DW pace. It was perfect.

Then it turned to worms.

In the next hour we capsized four times. On the fourth one, Adam and I just stood at the ends of the boat looking at one another saying to each other, "What is going on?" We genuinely just didn't get it and were completely bemused. We were not feeling unstable, twichy or nervous at all. We did the hard stuff without any problems; Savernake was negotiated well, despite the end of the tunnel being completely blotted out by the narrowboat in front of us which also produced a shed load of chop for us to deal with. The Crofton flight was fine; uncomfortable, but fine. But paddling on a flat canal? That seemed beyond us. As we approached Froxfield we decided to quit. We'd been paddling for 5 hours and I had started to shake and quite frankly, we used that as an excuse to bail, along with the other tried and tested one that we were not going to make the cutoff.(despite a load of other competitors finishing well after 7 hours.) There's no two ways about it, we quit when we didn't need to and that's left a bad taste in our mouths.

A few days later Adam text me and said that it was strange that we seemed to have problems as soon as we started portaging and that got me thinking that we still have not sorted out our seats moving about (every roll was to the right). I hope that he's right otherwise it's going to be a very long canal section.

Hopefully, we can draw on this for next weekend. Quitting was wrong and it's given us new resolve. We were not cocky but speaking for myself I was beginning to think that Westminster was going to be comfortably in the bag, whereas the D has reconfirmed that we are going to have to really work for it. I have started dreaming at night about the event but there are no mental images of passing under Westminster Bridge; all my dreams currently revolve around getting to Newbury. Let's just get off that sodding canal and then take it from there.

I'm not going to blog again before the event as the next week is going to be very busy, but I feel it only fitting that my last bit of a post is about Adam. He has been frickin' amazing. While I've been wittering on about our training on here, really this DW attempt has been about him. By his own admission he's been a couch potato for the last 25 years with a  predeliction for fine lagers and when he asked me 9 months ago if I'd have a go at this race with him, while a readily accepted I always knew that it was going to be a very big ask. It has been very hard for both of us times and often it hasn't been very enjoyable. Not because of Ad's rubbish sense of humour (I'm used to that, ;-) but the seemingly constant problems that we have faced and in the main, overcome.

Not only has Adam stuck at the paddling, which on its own is a big technical hurdle to overcome but more than that he's put the running miles in, cycled to work, cut out the crap food and all but given up beer (he's even developed a taste for non-acoholic lager!!) and as a result he's now the best part of 3 stone lighter than he was in June. That's the real success story here irrespective of what happens next weekend and because of that we shouldn't fear what happens. He's done his very best and more, he's going to give it a really good go and that's all that anyone can ask. I have been in the fortunate position that I was able to do the DW with my brother last year and this year I'm going to do it with my best mate, two of the best blokes I know, and that for me is enough.

Good luck to all DW competitiors.