Apalachee River to Causeway 2005 XXXVI
Thursday, June 2, 2005 brint.adams@us.army.mil
This paddle turned out to be different in several aspects. When I arrived at the Riverdocs parking lot, both Roland and Tony were there unloading Tony's boat. It turned out he was letting Roland try his fiberglass kayak, to see it Roland could get a bit more speed out of it, in preparation for the Dog Paddle races. So, Tony left and came back an hour later to pick up his boat. In addition, my new paddle came in, so I was anxious to see how much speed I could gain using a wing paddle.
When we got in the water, I knew I was already in trouble with the first stroke. I had no idea using the wing was so radically different. Roland tried to give me some pointers as we headed off down Pass Picada. He was having problems himself keeping the new boat tracking straight. So, instead of hammering the course, we concentrated on maintaining good paddle stroke form.
It was overcast again, with rain threatening off in the northwest, 85 degrees, a slight southern breeze, falling tide and fairly low water level. This night there were gators everywhere as we must have seen 8-10 all along Pass Picada and along the southern shore of Chacaloochee Bay.
Our split times did not mean as much tonight, but we made the Apalachee River turn in 7:44, back past the parking lot in 17:00, to the Interstate bridge turn in 35:48 and back to the take-out in a total of 54:24. It was a little disappointing for me, as I was pumped up for an immediate time improvement. Roland reminded me it may take up to a month of training to get to the point where I would learn the new stroke sufficiently well enough to get overall time improvement. But, it will eventually come.
This paddle turned out to be different in several aspects. When I arrived at the Riverdocs parking lot, both Roland and Tony were there unloading Tony's boat. It turned out he was letting Roland try his fiberglass kayak, to see it Roland could get a bit more speed out of it, in preparation for the Dog Paddle races. So, Tony left and came back an hour later to pick up his boat. In addition, my new paddle came in, so I was anxious to see how much speed I could gain using a wing paddle.
When we got in the water, I knew I was already in trouble with the first stroke. I had no idea using the wing was so radically different. Roland tried to give me some pointers as we headed off down Pass Picada. He was having problems himself keeping the new boat tracking straight. So, instead of hammering the course, we concentrated on maintaining good paddle stroke form.
It was overcast again, with rain threatening off in the northwest, 85 degrees, a slight southern breeze, falling tide and fairly low water level. This night there were gators everywhere as we must have seen 8-10 all along Pass Picada and along the southern shore of Chacaloochee Bay.
Our split times did not mean as much tonight, but we made the Apalachee River turn in 7:44, back past the parking lot in 17:00, to the Interstate bridge turn in 35:48 and back to the take-out in a total of 54:24. It was a little disappointing for me, as I was pumped up for an immediate time improvement. Roland reminded me it may take up to a month of training to get to the point where I would learn the new stroke sufficiently well enough to get overall time improvement. But, it will eventually come.
posted by brint @ 10:22 PM
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