I ducked out of last weekend's club trip even though it was again one I would have loved to do. It was a one-way downstream paddle on the Thames from Old Windsor to the clubhouse at Hampton. Once again the weather had turned foul and promised high winds gusting up to 35 mph. I kept an eye on the forecasts in the hope that they might settle down to something I might stand a chance of handling, but it wasn't to be. The yellow boards were still out on a part of the course as well, so I reluctantly gave it best... again.
As it turned out only a small group of the club's old hands and two of the more experienced paddlers turned out for this one and one or two of them still had a testing time of it. I hope that there might be a rerun of this particular trip later in the year as it sounds quite pleasant under the right conditions. Maybe I'm still being too cautious but I think I probably got it right on this occasion.
While I was waiting for the winds to drop I spent another happy hour or so on the club Ergo while putting the intervals up to 8 minutes. The Garmin shows that my speed on the water is now regularly topping over 5 mph, but the main gain is due to being able to keep the active paddling going for longer periods without breaking for rest or breath.
Anyway, the weather has turned out nice again and I've been able to up the mileage during the last few days, albeit on the Wey and turned in two 10 mile trips and yesterday one of over 12 miles. One of the trips up to Papercourt, almost exactly 10 miles, was especially pleasing as I cut something like 9 minutes off my usual time, which is effectively almost a minute a mile.
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