Training Log Archive: iansmith

The New England championship Canoe-O. Lori and I went through a comparatively Herculean process to attend, and we didn't have a particular interest in our speed. She and I hadn't even rowed a canoe by ourselves before, and while we both had sufficient canoe experience, we expected our lack of preparation to put us well back of the field.

We had a good time, but because I was providing most of the power, I was J-stroking almost constantly to keep us on course. We also used conventional canoeing equipment as opposed to race equipment, a fact for which we were gingerly berated.

I was satisfied with our pace and strategy - control 3 was interestingly behind a dam. I estimate we could have finished in about 1:40, but we chose a poor strategy (as it turned out, an illegal strategy as well as a slower one) that resulted in our disqualification. For about 29 minutes, I rowed along by myself, and found it quite interesting. With an empty bow, the moment of the canoe is much smaller, so a stroke rotates the bow by 3-8 degrees. Once the canoe gets moving, the resistance to rotation is larger, and it's easier to maintain speed. I tried kneeling in the center, rowing from the stern, and rowing backwards from the bow; bow rowing was the most effective in general. It's certainly true that I was slower by myself, but I believe I got up to an instantaneous velocity of 3-4 mph - however, I was zigzagging slightly. I'm curious to see how a kayak would perform under race conditions - Keith and I were debating which would be faster.

Also, the climb component of this entry is a farce (though we were hit by a few impressive wakes).

Congratulations to Jeff Schapiro, who came without a boat, supervised parking for about two hours, then single handedly won the New England Championships singles race with a unique combination of brute strength, perseverance, and uberhardk0reness.

Pia's training course at Prospect Hill, part of the CSU summer training sequence. As an interesting twist, while the front of the map was the complete course with all the o-details we've come to expect, the back of the map was the controls superimposed only on the contours.

I arrived late, courtesy of my poor planning, and found the contour exercise challenging and interesting. Running into large features - roads, cliffs, open areas and even lakes - is surreal without that data. I find that while contours are interesting, I tend to rely on other features - rocks, cliffs, and major contours, like reentrants and spurs.

Anyway, after I hit control 7, I decided it was getting too late and too dark to continue using only the contour map (though I had cheated a few times), so I switched to using the complete map exclusively, and finished through control 15. In the vicinity of control 16, I couldn't find the streamer - possibly because it was too dark - so I aborted and ran back to the start.

Travel by bike to Prospect Hill Park. Route choice was not optimal.