Boats on the Water

With the mostly wonderful weather we've been having the last couple weeks my training hours are going back up, mostly on account of it being too darn nice to be inside. I've been out paddling a fair amount in the last week, including some kayaking. I paddled with Erik for the first week of the Hoigaards paddle derby.

It was an ideal day for being out on the water. Not too hot, very little wind, and the occasional cloud drifting by to provide some shade. Consequently there were a lot of boats out, making for a choppy start. We held our own though, and started to move up through the pack heading for the first buoy on Lake Calhoun. I don't have the best feeling for pace in canoe races yet, and probably took it out a bit hard. Elspeth and Emily were teaming up, and after our close race at Chippewa last year Erik and I knew we would have our work cut out for us to beat them.
We watched the fast pro boats get away pretty quickly and just missed getting on the wake of a derby boat with a couple decent paddlers in it. We did not have the cleanest buoy turn at the North end of Lake of the Isles, and the E&E boat was pretty close behind us. They caught us going through the channel to Cedar, and passed us after the buoy on Cedar. We were only marginally successful at riding their wake back onto Isles, and it seemed like we might get dropped, but we fought our way back up to them a few different times.
Isles was weedy everywhere, so we picked a straighter line through the weeds vs. trying to follow the cleanest channel and we got back ahead of the girls' boat. When we got back onto Calhoun I really tried to push the pace, and I could hear Erik gasping behind me trying to keep up. There was a solo canoe who caught on with us and it was a good challenge for us to fight him off, which we managed to do. I feel like my technique is coming along, and there were some points in time where I could really feel like I was putting good power in the water, and other times where I still felt like I was mostly flailing. We finished in 1 hour 9 minutes, beating the solo canoe by only 7 seconds, and beating Elspeth and Emily by 15 seconds.

Chippeawa Triathlon Start - Photo: John Arenz

We had a paddling rematch a week later at the Chippewa Triathlon. It was another gorgeous day for paddling, and Erik and I got off to a decent start. I have done this race for the last few years and it is one of my favorites. It is long (usually 4-5 hours) and involves many natural obstacles, paddling lakes large and small, finding and navigating portages, biking on everything from singletrack campground trails to logging roads to paved bike paths, and finishing with a run that tests just how well you managed your energy in the first two legs.

Erik and I on the canoe leg - Photo: John Arenz

We settled in maybe the 15th boat or so and tucked in a pack heading through the channel shortly after the start. The race directions had said to use the East side of the lake because of the prevailing wind direction, but the lead boats headed out along the West shore, so we followed suit. I was kind of curious how this would work, since the buoys were set up on the East shore, but by the time we got a ways around the lake the sheriffs boat had relocated the buoys to the side all the racers were going on. After the first portage Erik and I didn't hear Emily and Elspeth behind us anymore, so we figured we had a gap on them and started pushing to catch some boats ahead of us. We were holding our own on the water, but we were running boats down on the portages. The final portage on the canoe leg is a long one, and we passed a couple boats early on and had open trail ahead of us. We were cruising on this logging road. The trail markers for this part of the race were pink ribbons with black stripes, and I noticed that the ribbons where we were running all of a sudden were just pink. They were in the correct place for trail markers however, so I didn't worry about it too much. Then we hit an intersection with no markers at all, and after a few seconds of deliberation decided to take the most straight path. Soon after that the trail spit us out into someone's yard, this was definitely not the correct trail! Erik set up his watch to backtrack our path, and we started back. Erik wanted to try another trail to see if we could cut directly to the lake, but I wasn't confident enough in our direction and didn't want to get lost further, so we continued back along our trail. We finally got back to the trail and instead of the racing canoes we had been running with there were now people walking with plastic kayaks along the portage route. There were two big orange arrows and the correct marker on the trail, I must have been watching my feet and not the trail when we went through this intersection the first time. I apologized to Erik and we got back on track, 4km and 30 minutes of time lost.

By the time we got to the canoe-bike exchange Emily had already loaded up her boat and left, and Elspeth was long gone on the bike leg. Erik had a faster exchange than me, and it was 15 minutes into the bike leg before I caught him. I caught Elspeth about an hour into the bike leg, just as we got to a section of trail with some crazy water/mud pits. I had fun looking for the best line around them, or when there was no line bashing through and spraying water everywhere. The run was pretty uneventful, and I crossed the finish line 5th in my race category, about 31 minutes behind the winners. I had the fastest bike and run legs of the day (except relay teams) and if it weren't for getting lost my canoe time would have been good enough to put me on the podium, but that is the fun of these races, it is more than fitness that determines the winner. There is a lot of strategy, navigation, and other factors that come into play.

Next weekend is the Grandma's half, where fitness will determine the winner, and that will not be me, not by a long shot. I'm feeling mostly better after the rough marathon double this spring though, and am interested to see where my running fitness really is. Plus I'll be excited to see how Jeff's fitness gains pay off on race day, and to be out cheering for my sister who is running her first ever marathon!