(Friday 15th)After the really cool hike yesterday
my body was really hurting. My forearms
were weirdly tight and my legs hurt bad.
So in the morning Emmanuel, Chris and I did a easy paddle on the lake
just to loosen some tight muscles and get a feel for out boats on flatwater for
the first time. Later we came back and had lunch before Emmanuel and I did one
classic run. Nothing too eventful, still
feeling pretty nervous on the bottom half of the course. (And Chris did recover
the wavehopper, it wasn’t his race boat)
(Saturday 16th) Today was going to be a tough day
of classic runs. Two in the morning and
one in the afternoon. It took me a while to admit how demanding the course
is. For long days I’m used to 2 or 3
hours in a boat, but so far here I’ve never spent more than 2 hours in a boat,
or done more than 3 classic runs. The
whitewater requires very precise maneuvers that need a certain amount of
strength and if you are exhausted then you can’t make the moves and will be
slow or possible break your boat. I still am not feeling completely comfortable
on the bottom half of the classic course.
I feel fine following someone, but I’m not completely confident in my ability
to remember the lines on my own. Luckily I brought my helmet camera so that I
can video the lines to be able to watch them over and over again. For the first
two runs in the morning the camera was pointed too high and you couldn’t really
see the water so over lunch I reglued the camera mount on my helmet and was
able to get some good video of the third run. None of my runs were
spectacularly good, all had some hard hits and the result was the appearance of
some fresh cracks on the stern, but it the only the outer layer of resin that
had cracked, it was still very strong and incredibly stiff. Later in the
evening Emannuel and I did some minor boat repair and then the two of us as
well as Fanch went into Aime to grab some bread and water and stopped by a bar
for a beer. Bars in Europe are quite a
bit nicer. Small open air very relaxed,
it’s really cool to be able to sit outside in sunshine, and talk about
wildwater.
(Sunday 17th) Today I did a time trial for the
classic course without following anyone. We put in a Bourgh so we had a
20minute warmup, I got out of my boat walked around a bit, went over some of
the lines in my head and then started my run.
The top half was very good, I had clean lines and felt fast. The middle
portion of the classic is fairly flat so it’s the place to put on the power and
make a good time. Unfortunately for me there was a large raft trip that I hit
right at the beginning of the very hard, final third of the course. Luckily I was able to pass them all before
the big stuff really began. My line in hamslicer was horrible and I had a very
hard stern hit. I managed to get it back
together for the beginning of the the 400meters but in the end I hit a hidden
piton rock and banged both my bow and stern very hard. My line through the sprint course was
alright, nothing spectacular but not horrible. In the end I had a small chip in
the bow and a nice big crack in the stern, not quite as bad as I thought, but I
now know several more places where I can’t go.
As bad as it seems to start breaking my boat, it feels good to go fast
at maximum effort. Sometimes you have to
cross that razor’s edge just to know where it is, and with some more practice I
know I can go faster.
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