I went for another tryout on Tuesday morning. This time I took my own kayak and the wing paddle. The last paddle, using the fi-glass asymmetric Robson, turned into a thoroughly unpleasant event. My stroke was all over the place and erratic and I couldn't get a clean entry with sufficiently high upper hand to make the stroke effective. The Robson Is difficult to use which I think is probably because it's too long for me. Its right on the borderline of the fingertip test where I can only just get the tips of my fingers around the end of the upright blade and it has a large cutaway to the tip end. It wobbles as I apply pressure at the start of the stroke, possibly due to the large cutaway. It's also extremely flexible and does seem to flex like a rubber band, especially at the end of the stroke, and particularly if I'm pulling the blade past my waist as I'm won't to do. That's another thing that needs correction to get my stroke right.
I think it might pay to try cutting a section out of the centre of the paddle shaft to get the entry angle a bit more upright. Before that though I thought I'd give the the wing another try. It's adjustable and I shortened it by 2 cm to see if that encouraged a steeper angle of entry to the water. Once again it was bitterly cold with ice on the lake yet again. I set off behind two others, one in a sea kayak who broke through the worst of the ice creating a channel, but I hadn't come to be an ice breaker so I took my leave from the others and went back towards Deepcut which is usually free of ice due to the trees overhanging the water. I traveled a mile and a half in the opposite direction up to the bridge there. It took lots of stopping to rest the shoulder and to free off my frozen hands to get some feeling back in them. After a couple of miles some semblance of rhythm returned and it seemed that the paddling was better with the wing and the blade entry cleaner than with the Robson. But by this time I was so wet and cold I wasn't any longer in a position to judge what was good, bad or indifferent. Returning to the clubhouse I gave it up for the day and went to change and warm up.
On the jogging front I'd missed Monday's long run due to wet and windy English rain. Long slow drizzle for two days that gets everywhere, dampens the surroundings and the enthusiasm. If I was keen I'd have jogged a bit anyway but I was still a bit stiff from Saturday's ParkRun effort and just couldn't work up enough enthusiasm to get out anyway. It was Thursday before I took to Bushy park for a longer run. This time it was the first two miles of the ParkRun course before heading out towards the perimeter track to work my way around the outer edge of the park. In the scheme of things I really should have been doing some form of intervals or hills at this stage but miles was something I was short of, so I settled for that instead. It was pleasant enough, even the adrenalin rush when I ran into a herd of deer bedded down in a copse, necessitating a sudden detour and backtracking over a bit I'd just covered was... erm... exciting. The jog extended out to just over six miles with the splits being:-
1) 8:52 2) 8:56. 3) 9:32. 4) 9:14. 5) 11:51 6) 11:51 inc deer.
All in all its not been a very productive week. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get to the ParkRun for the following weekend so the sum total for the week, one paddle and one jog, albeit a long one. The weather has not been conducive to outdoor activity but I do need to consolidate what little I've done.
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