Saturday 14 October 2017

Four of One, Six of the Other


It's taken a four week lay-off to get to the point of getting back Into a boat, and another two weeks to restart anything other than gentle paddling. Consequently, after six weeks I've missed both Hasler events that I had intended to compete and the beginning of the club Hare & Hounds new season in September.  For me the season now starts in October, but with a reduced fitness level that I'm going to have to retrieve as I go along.

I had planned to start the season along with everyone else in September and move myself up to the six mile H&H to play with the big boys again. At the moment I'm undecided whether to do that or not as I'm not sure if I'd cope very well with the extra two miles racing. The first couple of outings were rather lacklustre with a very slow pace and no promise of any sort of performance that's likely to be comparable with that before the injury. Still, I've got a week to decide whether to go for the four or the six.

I've had plenty of time to contemplate my navel and the reasons behind my usual slow pace even at the best of times. I've spent a lot of time both on and off the water trying to analyse just what is so awful about my technique that makes me so slow. I was idly watching some of the videos of other paddlers who were in the same club course as myself and from what I can see and from the coach's feedback, my form doesn't really seem to be any worse or better than most of the other B listers. 

What I did notice was that there is a distinct difference in the stroke rate employed by the other paddlers, all of whom seem to have a faster rate than me. All the individual videos were taken on the same day over the same bit of canal. Timing them and counting the number of strokes clearly showed a difference of between 5 to 10 strokes per minute. I was aware that I had a fairly low rate, and I was aware that for the purposes of the video I was making an effort to get the best looking stroke I could which even then felt slower than usual, but I didn't think that it was all that much different.

Clearly a stroke rate about 15% less than everybody else's is going to make a significant difference to speed. Somehow therefore I've got to make some sort of improvement in the cadence of my paddling, although at the moment I haven't got a clue how to go about it.

Answers on a postcard please...

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