Go, No Go?

It's been no easier to make a decision one way or the other whether to go for the DW. Despite 500 miles in the book I still can't see myself being any sort of a contender. Putting in that sort of mileage and such sessions geared to speed and endurance that I've done has resulted in an improvement of sorts, but not as much as I'd hoped. I had hoped that the decision to 'go for it' would be easy, and in fact I had already considered it a 'no brainer' but this last couple of weeks performance doesn't really fill me with confidence. 

On Thursday I put in a twenty mile paddle along the length of the Wey, and it didn't go well. I had done it before about a month ago and the time taken yesterday was only a couple of minutes faster whereas I had expected to cut anything between fifteen to thirty minutes off the time. I could put it down to having had a heavy cold the week before this last attempt that had stopped me from paddling for best part of the week, and the week before that I had only managed two trips out on the water and one session on the Ergo, but that would be too easy.

On the other hand, two days later I put in a best time for ten miles, cutting eight minutes off my previous best even though it was cold, windy and hissing down on the return leg. It was also a dreadful paddle where I seemed to be unable to co-ordinate anything. It also has to be said that most of the saving came from not stopping at the turn-around.

At any rate, the bottom line is that my time for twenty miles equates to 9.3hrs for a 34 mile stage. That's if I could keep going at the same rate for the another fourteen miles, which is unlikely. Then it's anyone's guess what would happen on the 36 and the 38 mile stretches on the following days. The fact of the matter is that I went through a bad patch at around ten miles and slowed badly as I just ran out of steam, and ended up completely pooped at the finish. I had hoped that my main time saving would have been during the portaging. I wasn't going to hang around and the intention was to keep moving and take no feeding stops. Although I didn't stop or rest as much as the last time the portaging was still abysmal on straightforward locks and I felt barely able to lift the boat from the water at times. So whatever I gained there I lost on the paddle speed.

At the moment I can only put it down to a loss of fitness from the partial lay-off and the cold. A year or so ago I was completely gung-ho about it, but when it came to the crunch common sense prevailed when I realised there just wasn't enough in the tank to make even the first couple of days a viable proposition. I've thought about it carefully, perhaps a little too carefully, weighed the pro's and con's, cogitated and digested, and come to the perhaps forgone conclusion that I'm in with a chance of completing the course, but only as long as I can get a lot of significant preparation in. 

Getting a fairly substantial mileage in this year and completing a number of extended paddles has been a good confidence booster but it's still going to take a lot of work to increase speed and endurance, portaging, and pretty much everything really, just to get to 'contender' status. The 10 hour cut off time on the 4 day race still hangs like the Sword of Damocles and my arithmetic tells me it would be a close run thing on the first two days, and a no-hoper if the 10 hour rule applied to the third, which luckily it doesn't.

Paddling during the summer months is easy enough, almost a pleasure in fact, but experience of the weather of the last two years tells me that if there's a repeat this year that closes the use of the river and canal for weeks at a time, then I'm not likely to be able to get enough practice in. Although I guess I can make contingency plans to cover all but the absolute worst weather it won't be any help. I'd have to say that the usual run up the Wey Navigation from New Haw is beginning to lose its attraction. But, we live in hope that the odds are on a third winter, after two exceptionally grotty ones, will be better.