Two months from now--if the good Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise, of course--I'll be in the South Africa town of Fish Hoek for some instruction in the ways of downwind paddling from a couple of legends in the sport, the Mocke brothers.
Downwind paddling requires a unique skill set and an intimate knowledge of the behavior of ocean swells, and I hope I can make some gains in these areas during my eight-day seminar with the Mockes.
Meanwhile, downwinding is perhaps the most physically demanding paddling discipline I've ever pursued. Catching a run requires a short but very hard sprint, and you can expect to do a lot of such sprints over a downwind session. I've always been a generally fit, strong person, but "downwind" fitness is different from anything I've ever really needed before. This became clear to me as I was training and racing out in the Columbia River Gorge last summer: often, when a good run presented itself, I just wasn't quite ready to throw in another hard sprint yet and I had to let the opportunity go and wait for the next one.
Of course, the more skilled you are at riding the swells and linking one run to the next, the longer your recovery period between sprints will be. But opportunities to practice such skills aren't so frequent here in the Mid South. What I can do is train hard, and I hope to spend these next two months fine-tuning my engine so it'll be the least of my worries on the South African waters.
I began the day yesterday with a round of the strength routine while the rain poured down outside. By the time I was headed down to the river, the rain had moved out at least for a while. There was a steady south breeze blowing, creating small but tricky chop out on the Mississippi. I went out there and did a lot of short surges while trying to keep the boat gliding over that stuff.
When I returned to the river this morning the temperature had dropped some 15 degrees, and the wind was stronger and gusting in such a way that it was hard to determine its direction. West-southwest was my best guess. I stayed in the harbor and began December with some harder, faster paddling than I've done in a while. First I did a power-building drill: I backpaddled for a few strokes and then did some hard forward strokes. I did this three times. It had been a long time since I'd done this drill; a couple of winters ago I started shying away from it because it almost always gets me wet, and that's not fun in the wintertime. But power is what I need, so I'm going to do it at least when it's warmer than 40 degrees Fahrenheit or so.
I followed this work with a set of twelve 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals. The last four or five of these sprints were tough: I was feeling it in my biceps and my stroke form started to break down a little. I lowered the stroke rate and focused on taking the cleanest, most precise strokes I could. The encouraging thing was that even late in the workout, my breathing and heart rate were recovering quickly from each sprint.
So here we go. Serious training for the South Africa trip has begun.
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