Saturday's Club Paddle

Saturday's club trip was one of those times that you can only wish all the outings would go as well as this one did. Travelling down to meet up with the five others at the start point on the Wey near Guildford, the weather cleared to blue sky and warm temperatures that lasted for the rest of the day. We set off paddling upstream towards Godalming against a fairly light but steady flow and made it through the two locks in the Guildford suburbs in about an hour.

From there the traffic of various types of boats thinned out until above St Catherines lock we pretty much had the river to ourselves. We were going quite steadily and for a change I wasn't getting the usual hip and back fatigue that signals the finish of any significant performance I was likely to make. Keeping up with the others and even leading them at times was going well as I settled into much longer periods of continuous paddling than I've ever done.

Really this was providing proof positive of a theory that I've long held, which is that the training effect is much greater if you're doing it in a pack. Back in the day when I did a bit of running one of the most effective sessions was that of the club 'pack' run. Usually this involved a longish run with anything up to 20 others which usually settled into groups with the slower ones trying to keep the group ahead in sight. It worked well and this paddle was going the same way as I was pushing hard to keep up or keep ahead.

Eventually we reached our goal and settled in for a break with tea and buns, then set off on the return. On most of the other runs I've been struggling with the return journey, just keeping going, but again it felt easy and I was ahead much of the way and feeling hyped. So, something was going right for a change even to the extent that I was sorry when we reached the end.

The upshot of all this was that I had managed 11 miles with several longish stretches where I'd sustained a goodish speed and topped 5mph for some of them. Some of that was down to the river's flow and it still needs a lot more work, but that trip felt good!