Slow Hard Work.

After last week's disappointing performance, I wasn't really looking forward to the coming Sunday's appointment. In fact, during the week I dropped the jogging and limited myself to some rather half-hearted exercises around the stomach area. Mr Buddah still lives. As the week dragged on and the weather held reasonably dry and calm, I began to consider that the river flow must have reduced to manageable proportions and by the end of the week was in a more optimistic frame of mind for another go.

This week's expedition was slated an hour earlier at 5pm. Duly arriving before five we had the boats out and ready to launch on time. However, my expectations of a calm, balmy evening, paddling my canoe, in tune with nature, was to be sadly thwarted. The run on the river, was if anything, even faster than the previous week. It turns out that the lock sluice gates were opened up to get rid of the excess water. On top of that a bit of wind was winding itself up along the river in the same direction as the flow.

In this session there was just me and one other tyro , along with two instructors. One-to-one tuition in fact. The instructions this time were for shorter paddle strokes and just to keep making headway upstream. It was hard work, but we kept searching out the edges of the river where the flow was less and could keep making some headway. Put bluntly ‘paddle up the middle if you want a work-out‘.

Steering the bloody thing was better too, This boat, the third one I’ve had, didn’t seem to have quite such a mind of it’s own and I was at least, managing at times a somewhat straighter course., mainly by leaving the bloody rudder alone. Until that is, my right knee started to play up and went into some sort of spasm as I shifted its angle in the boat. It appears that I’m bracing my knees against the outer edges of the cockpit which gives a better feeling of balance as I paddle, and when I tried to straighten it and bring my knees together, it hurt, God how it hurt. It didn’t do anything for the style or my street cred either when I was left clinging onto a landing stage post while I sorted my dead-leg out.

So, once more I was trailing well behind the others and eventually had to pull up short without finishing the course. Although this time I had managed something over two miles with Sunbury lock’s white water in sight, and I'd stayed upright in both the cockpit and the boat. The return trip with the flow and wind, was again quicker, but the landing at the stage was carp with the instructor having to nudge me into place with the prow of his boat like a tugboat attending to a beached liner. Anyway, by the finish of the session I did feel as if I’d got somewhere for a change, but I don‘t know what I‘m going to do about the knees.


J:2  K:11