Messing about on the river

Some of you may know the old song

When the weather is fine Then you know it's a sign

To go messing about on the river

It's a fun song, and one I remember well from my landlocked childhood. Now, however, I have only one issue with it: the river is my happy place regardless of the weather. Rain or shine, I like to go out and enjoy the scenery, wildlife, and even the exercise!

My teen and I started kayaking almost 4 years ago, and we both took to it immediately; having tried our first session on the local river, our second - just a week later - was on holiday in Gothenburg as we decided to do a kayak tour of the city! I definitely have considerably more enthusiasm than skill, but have improved my paddling ability gradually too. And as I mentioned in a previous post, when I had to temporarily stop kayaking for health reasons while undergoing chemo, I switched over to canoeing instead. Sadly, now that I'm working mostly from home, it's not as easy as it used to be to get to multiple evening sessions - but I'm still planning on trying! One of my regular office days will hopefully be a good one to get to the river after work - and it's a great incentive to finish work promptly!

This year I set myself two challenges:

1. To take part in a race - the club I belong to is a racing club (on the flat, not white water!), and while they're incredibly supportive and welcoming even to those of us who really just want a nice gentle paddle, I felt it would be a good experience to try once.

2. To get into a lighter (and therefore wobblier) boat. All the kayaks are given a stability rating (or wobble factor, according to one manufacturer's website!) from 10 (as stable and heavy as a bathtub) to 1 (about as wide and safe as the average pencil). My regular boat is a 9, so that shows how far I haven't progressed over the years!

The club I'm part of hosts one of the 'Hasler' races every year, and encourages as many people as possible to join in. I'd been thinking about maybe doing it last year, before the cancer got in the way, so this year I signed up, paid my entry fee, and told enough friends that I was going to do it so that I couldn't back out!

The preparation for the race was excellent - the last couple of Saturday sessions had been focussed on race prep, and I did my first ever time trial on Wednesday evening just to see if I could actually paddle the full distance without stopping. That went well, and although I had the slowest time of anyone this year (I haven't checked any further back!), that didn't matter. I was sure I'd finish last in the race, and was perfectly content with that, since for me the achievement is just doing the race in the first place.

The big day dawned, bright and sunny - Sunday 25 June, so the river and our lovely clubhouse looked their very best. Despite getting there very early, there was already a good number of people around, and a good buzz in the air. I registered, collected my race number (and now know how they're attached to the boats!), and found a few other friends who were also feeling nervous about their first ever race.

The briefing helped to settle my nerves a bit - partly seeing just how many paddlers there were from our club, and partly as it was confirming information I already knew - the course we would be paddling, protocol if someone falls in, and the order of the race starts. And then it was time to get on the water and start warming up. Relief! Once I'd paddled enough to feel comfortable, I found the starting board for my start group; a few minutes later we all started slowly moving forward as the races in front of us got underway and we worked our way up towards the start line.

Despite feeling very apprehensive about what on earth I was doing, I had a brilliant time and the whole experience far surpassed my expectations. Yes, I was at the back of the group from the start, but not completely last, and even managed to pass someone on the long slog downstream after the first turning point. So you can imagine my astonishment when the results were collated and I discovered I'd come 23rd out of 27! The Olympic selectors are not exactly calling, but I absolutely could not be happier!

The cameraderie and support was absolutely fantastic both off and on the water. As the host club we had huge numbers of paddlers involved, and shouts of 'Go Falcon' were frequent whenever we saw another paddler in our club colours! Several people knew just how much it meant to me to to have been able to participate, and what a huge achievement it was, and I'm hugely grateful for all their support before, during, and after the race. There's something lovely about receiving encouragement from competitors (well, those way ahead of me, as they were coming back past me having completed the turns!) and it shows what a positive atmosphere there was!

For my second goal, I'd been chatting to another paddler on our way back to our club house at the end of a session a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned these two were my summer challenges - so when we got back to the club, she asked if I wanted to try the boat she'd been using. It was a hot evening and the river was definitely warm enough to be pleasant if the worst came to the worst, so I decided to give it a shot. My first attempt at getting in went dismally wrong, and I found myself standing in the river next to the kayak, so I was talked through how to empy the boat out, then tried again. Success second time around, so I paddled a nice big loop in front of our landing stage and was astonished by how stable and comfortable it felt! Now the race is over, I'll see if I can make this my regular boat for a bit...

And having given my teen paddler lots of excited updates on today, maybe, just maybe, there's a chance of adding a third summer goal: to enter a Hasler with her in a K2 (two-person kayak)!