Monday 12 June 2017

Kayak of doom.

Hi everybody, what is going on? I'm Roger Sabbatical and welcome to my irregular blog about building things, chilling out so damn hard, and trying to survive the work free zone of my own mind.

Week one ended well, with enough ground clearance so that the construction can begin so its time to talk kayak. In July, I'll be taking a trip down the Yukon River, along with two other guys so took the chance to get out on the river of my hometown. Find my water legs, find my limit and exercise the right sort of muscles.

All kayak'd up and ready to go, Emma, my guide, glides off upriver. Powerful, quiet, strokes making easy headway. And duckling that I was, splashed up behind her in a mass of effort just trying to keep pace. She is confident and calm on the water. I am ying to her yang, so I like to think that together we maintained balance in the universe. I'm going to say that I'm propelling more weight by a good few stone, which I offer as an explanation of the exhaustion that followed.
Unable to maintain a steady pace, I did what I could to catch up and then dropped back as I recovered. Basically, I was doing kayak interval training. That's the positive spin on it.

Our ninety minute trip took about only sixty to seventy minutes, as I managed to blister up good and proper so headed back. Ultimately, the pain of skinning my thumbs - and fear of subsequent infection from the dreaded cam water - was as much a motivation as the promise of bacon and coffee to get us turned around and back downriver.

On the plus side, I know know where my kayak-limit is. On the bad side, my kayak limit isn't very high, my stamina is bad and my technique could be improved... I've skinned my thumbs so aren't likely to get much more on-river practice in over the next couple of weeks. Yay me.

So I leave you with the life lesson from the experience, if a jobs worth doing, it's worth doing until it hurts and then having bacon and coffee.

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