Blog
At the Glasgow University Canoe Club, all through the year strong paddlers give up their time to take out newcomers and take them out on slower, easier, and in some cases what they see as boring rivers in order to further the club and the sport.
The Advanced Fort William Weekend, which is subsidised, is the clubs way of thanking these paddlers. In my seven years at the club, I have been invited on this trip six times (only in the last three do I actually think I was good enough to go). Yet due to other commitments, I had never managed to go.
This weekend, held this late on the hopes of getting rain, was dry. Oh well.
On Saturday, we ran the Pattack (a rather pretty, grade 3/4 river that was mostly (if not entirely) grade 3 due to the levels) and a whole seven of us got on to the Spean Gorge. Feeling that I was paddling better than average I joined Rupert, Sam and Tom in running the Headbanger, and having ran the flat water of death once in my life I portaged Constriction.
Sunday was more interesting. Despite protests from some of those who'd been on previous Fort William trips, we went to the Dalness section of the Etive. I was quite up for this, and planned (after inspecting the run) to paddle everything, as I could see the lines on all of the rapids, thought I could make most of them, and knew I'd be in safe hands should I screw up. It turned out that a lot of people just gave paddling on Sunday a miss...and given that most of them hadn't paddled the Spean Gorge on Saturday, that meant they'd come on the Advanced weekend to paddle the Pattack... I must admit I did feel slightly sorry for them.
No-one messed up the first drop (though I'm sure my line was not one of the cleaner ones). Sam, Rupert, Chris, Tom and I were the only ones to attempt the Slot. Tom and I swam. Not sure there's much else to say except maybe "sorry!!" to Fraser for using the throwline he was attached to while escaping the churning water.
From what I understand, I got one of the nicest lines on T-Junction, possibly (unlikely) making up for my previous failure on the Slot. It was here that Euan and Kieran both capsized, with the former picking up a swim and choosing, like Tom, to get off the river.
Dalness Falls. It may seem a surprise to those reading my blog that I really only have two fears. My friends, colleagues, and those with whom I paddle are aware of them, but I suppost I can't assume that they are necessarily the only ones who read this blog ("hello", if you fall into one of those categories). I am both afraid of heights and water. Kayaking may appear a strange choice, but it means that I can try and control my fears rather than letting them control me.
With a waterfall, particularly one as intimidating as this one, my resolve is always put to the test. It is telling that the river on which I have racked up the most swims is the Etive, a river famous for it's waterfalls.
I almost didn't do it. It was close, but I managed to run it and, more surprisingly, not swim. In fact the only person to swim here was Fraser (though Kieran must have come close when the water pushed his kayak underneath an undercut rock with him still in it).
Overall this was an excellent weekend, and I'm glad I pushed myself to wring every last drop out of it. Hopefully it will not be my only Fort William Weekend.
SUS is always the most popular kayaking tournament at Glasgow Uni Canoe Club. The fact it is hosted by us, and for some uni's essentially constitutes a weekend of drinking and hungover kayaking chat is besides the point. Much to my joy, I was able to get this final SUS competition off work so I could join the A-team as their goal keeper.
In order to be fair to our Division 1 A-team, and in order to have the maximum firepower to bring to bear, the team consisted of nine players:
Paul Walker
John MacArthur
Chris Bell
Colin McMorrin
Ben Marshall
Ross Barnie
Ezra Watts
Euan Richardson
George Elderfield
This large a team also meant that we would need to split the players time to not tire them out, and to give the weaker players some game time (something that Ross still felt a bit sore about from last years SUS).
Our first game was very good. Stirling A had a strong Div 1 player, that gave them a significant boost and were only held at bay by the fact that our entire team had played together at Div 1.
And we were further helped by my continued progression from a permenant keeper to an all round player. Actually, I think one of my proudest moments of the competition was in our final game against St Andrews Univeristies A-team, when Chris (who I have always considered to have one of the best shots in the team) passed back to me allowing a surgical, and game winning, goal.
I suppose I need to mention the only team that beat us: Aberdeen Univeristy. They brought with them the player with the best shot against whom I've played. Actually stopping a couple of his shots seemed a success, and only losing 1-0 in the semi-finals seemed a victory.
Overall this was probably the most balanced SUS (in terms of the main competition) that I've seen. Every match after the group stages was close, and that made this, to me, the best SUS in which I've competed.
Open Trophy: Edinburgh A
Open Plate: Glasgow B
Women's Trophy: Aberdeen A
A few special mentions I think are in order. Patrick Jennins, the winner of the best paddler award, in what really was a long overdue award as he has propped up the St Andrews team on more than one occation; to the Edinburgh player who tried to take on the entire St Andrews B team at once; and to James from the Glasgow B team, for one of the best goals of the tournament.
Utterly fantastic weekend...I just wish it wasn't going to be my last.
After a hard days paddling the day before, it was off in the minibus to Glenrothes for Division 1 Kayak Polo, and as this year the playlists are withheld until the start of the competition, we had no way to be able to come up with a strategy in advance. As it turned out, we only had three games with seven people to pick between, against Linlithgow (one of the top three teams in the league), Dundee Uni Canoe Club (who's team has twice picked apart our defence leaving no room to retaliate), and West Lothian (who after taking posession of our best striker now seem to know our tactics - or lack thereof - as well as us).
Colin (our teams captain) asked me to organise the teams for the games, but unfortunately I was still tired from the day before, so reenacted the delegation, asking Ross to come up with a plan. In the end, it was the somewhat predictable "Paul plays all the games in goals, and everyone else rotates round as needed" plan. I'd like to say that it's what I'd have done, but it's not.
Linlithgow was the predictable wash-out. I think I was the only player who let us down in the first half, conceding far more shots than normal; fortunately I managed to return to standard for the second half, Though it's still hard to view a 10 - 0 defeat as anything other than a total pasting.
The game hardened us for the Dundee match, keeping us on form and remembering to pass well. I managed to pull out of my stuper and set Colin up for a goal in the first half, meaning that for the first time in a Division 1 match, we were in the lead. And we never lost it. Glasgow Uni Canoe Club defeated Dundee Uni Canoe Club 2 - 1 ... and this is particularly good news when SUS (or SSS) is such a short time away.
Despite the hard fought victory against DUCC, West Lothian was just as good a match as despite it being a 6 - 1 defeat it didn't feel like they'd managed as much.
Throughout the competition the team was playing well, coordination was good, defence was much improved, and less shots were woefully off target (George's attept to knock the goalie out not-withstanding). Overall, an excellent tournament on the run-up to SUS.
The trip back was uneventful (Ezra had bet us that we wouldn't beat the DUCC's and lost so had to forfeit by being silent on the journey home). Serena's was excellent, even if Euan and George decided to bite off more than they could chew:
Oh, and Ross needs to learn to shoot.
Well, it's that time of the new year where every sinlge person in Glasgow Uni Canoe Club wants to get on a river no matter how cold it is. For this trip, on one of the coldest days of the university year, twenty-five people signed up top go - and for anyone who knows anything about a kayaking trip, you will know that not all of them would turn up.
And guess what? Four people, including one of the drivers pulled out, meaning that others who had really wanted to go paddling missed out on the opportunity. I am always against signing up for something until I know that I can make it. As it turned out though, this ended up offering some comic relief on the journey there and back, as George Elderfield and I tormented Ross Henderson who had been desperate to go paddling, but had been too slow, and arrived late for the sign-up.
Once at the river, the safety paddlers had a look at the river and knew it would be a long day: the water was flowing much faster than normal and was looking slightly brown. All the beginners were keen, and got ready in the freezing cold and we all clambered into our boats and slid onto the river.
I'm not sure exactly when it was, but within five minutes we had our first swim of the day; this was by no means the last. Every couple of corners, as one group would start to have a rest, a boat would bob past upsidedown and paddlers would scramble to action. As the day progressed, more people began to tire and make the little mistakes that a river running high is unforgiving about. Fraser, slipping sideways into a hole was one of the casualties of this; then George when trying to tow a kayak....though he somehow managed to tow both kayaks into an eddy despite swimming! Pretty impressive actually, but he was slapped for the attempt at a hand roll.
Of the twenty-one people to get on the river at the top, eighteen completed the run. The cold proved too much for some, and one person volunteered to stay with them. It has to be said that everyone enjoyed their trip, even the ones who looked blue afterwards, and I was impressed by the groups firm commitment to pushing all the way to the end. A great trip! And Ross was un-impressed.
At the new year, Ross and I made a new years resolution to take part in the RAF 42-day fitness programme. As I was under pressure from imminent deadlines at the time, I couldn't take part in it immediately, so we postponed starting the programme until this week.
On Monday, we began with a quick fitness assessment consisting of a 1.5 mile run, and as many press-ups and sit-ups as you can do in a minute. Despite Ross beating me by a small margin in the number of press-ups and sit-ups, I was overall satisfied with the results....and my 1.5 miles in 8 minutes 55 seconds was far better than I'd expected (coming in at about 10 miles an hour).
Tuesdays twenty minutes of low intensity exercise (swimming) actually proved more challenging, though I think that it's mostly because (despite thoughts to the contrary) I haven't been swimming much in the last seven years. The steam room and sauna afterwards made it a pretty nice session overall though.
Due to having too many lectures on Wednesday, we switched the circuits we were meant to be doing then with Thursday's rest day. Having now done the circuits, it's possible we could cram them into an hour, but doing it today allowed much more freedom for warming up and cooling down, along with the insentive that we have kayaking tonight too (which will hopefully benefit from this programme too).
Tomorrow (Friday) we have to have a 20 minute run at moderate intensity - this is obviously intended to boost endurance in particular.
So far I feel dedicated to the programme, and actually felt that I hadn't done anything the one day that I wasn't in the gym.....from someone who's not seen the inside of one since their freshers week! If this continues, I imagine I'll be happy with the results, even if the only difference is being able to perform a shuttle run for kayaking faster.
On Saturday and Sunday of this week I have a river trip and a kayaking competition, and while it's naïve to presume that this training will have had any effect by then, I would love it if I can feel the difference by then.
