Hare & Hounds April 2018

I missed the ParkRun on the third Saturday of April as it was time for the club’s Hare & Hounds once again. I really didn’t want to miss this one as the previous two had coincided with very cold weather, which had cancelled the January one and the one in February hadn’t looked much better.  This time though I wasn’t the only ‘Hare’ as another member was on the start line at the same time as myself. 

On paper I should have  left him standing and taken the max points relatively easily. Indeed I was quite quickly away and he soon dropped behind. By the first half-mile bridge I couldn’t even hear him in the background. My style, for want of a better description, mainly consists of some fairly speedy events followed by equally lengthy recovery periods. The fact that I had only had a couple of paddles in the previous month did not help one little bit. 

My opposition however had evidentially been doing some unsportsmanlike practicing and has developed his own style of paddling action which could be likened to the Duracell Bunny. An almost completely flat stroke with only half of the paddle blade submerged, all done at about waist height. Nevertheless it worked well enough for him to catch up and overtake me at about the end of the first mile. His paddling was however, relentless. It just kept going while I was still forced into my regular breaks to allow the blood to return to my arms. 

The only thing that slowed him was an occasional foray into the bushes as he cut the corners on the bends just a little too tight. By the turn at two miles he had opened up a gap of about 50 yards    and it was there that was able to make up most of that distance as I made a much faster turn and came out of the turn almost on his tail. On the return leg we were both overtaken by a pair in a k2 which had started a couple of minutes behind us. Just for a while I was even able to wash-hang on the k2 pair and that stopped me falling any further behind. We both also had to negotiate our way around another pair in a c2 which had a start of about five minutes on us and at that point I lost the assisted ride from the k2.

All the same, he opened the gap up again and held it until we got to the last half-mile. As we passed into the last open stretch he was at last faltering and slowing. I put in a bit of a spurt and closed down the gap again, but he was still too far ahead for me to be able to overtake. We passed through the finish line with a 50 second difference between us placing 2nd and 3rd to the k2 pair.

I’m not sure what all that proves but clearly style didn’t win out over strength in this case. I think I’ll need to do a bit of practicing.