Thursday night
group paddle session - Sandy Bay
Thurs 19 July 2012
A big group turned up for the session with lots of new faces. I took my time bandit as my 'more-stable' option in the gusty n/w wind. I the warm-up Ian spotted a dolphin cruising past the casino. A few seconds later 4 dolphins surfaced, following the shore towards the DSS. We haven't had much rain in the last week so the water was less dirty than normal. A couple of weeks ago a seal was loitering near the DSS appearing to catch a few fish near the boat ramp.
We headed up to the docks for what we thought was some 2 minute efforts. This turned out to be 6-7 minute endurance efforts. At least the days are getting longer and we had half the session in light and partial light.
We started out at the end of the docks near CSIRO and headed into the marina, under the foot bridge that goes out to the marina (near Mures) then back out to CSIRO.
I worked on my starts because that is where I have been losing out to the faster paddlers. It was good to have Seb, Bucks & Marty to paddle with. It is a fine balance to work out how many really hard strokes to do before you settle down into your steady endurance rating. I definitely depends on your training.
At the start of the year my endurance was gone & after one sprint I had nothing left - because I had a year off kayak training - initially due to injuries but then due to apathy & laziness. But with these group sessions and regular races it keeps you motivated to train in between to improve against the other paddlers.
