375 Reps

Well, it’s been a week. Not only another training week running down to the end, but, I finished my eight week “get jacked” strength training block on Tuesday. It was a grind, three days per week, hard day, easy day, moderate day, racking up 375 reps on the hard day for eight consecutive weeks. Exact programming was my own, but roughly following the Delorme Protocol. Measuring success is necessarily subjective; however, I’ve lost 5 or 6 kilograms, and I am back to climbing at my 2021 level. Given that I’ve spent very little time actually climbing (rock climbing is the ultimate strength to body weight sport) over the last couple of years, that makes the programme a rousing success. Remember, as you get older, maintenance becomes the new personal record. .

There is a certain satisfaction to completing a hard programme similar to what one feels after climbing a remote mountain, getting your first kayak roll, or sending a hard route. Mostly, of course, the secret is dogged persistence and determination. There are other things, however - like adjusting to sacrifices - which are over-looked as essential to success. Most of us have busy full lives and if we committ to something new, in all likelihood something old will have to be put aside, at least for a while. Not accounting for sacrifice is what causes a lot of people to fail. The sacrifice might be giving up junky carbohydrates and eating just meat and vegetables, or it might be passing on your favorite sedentary activity to train instead. I often think stopping doing things is almost as hard as starting to do new things. New things always hold the alluring promise of a glistening fresh reality but old things are our coping strategies for tough times or stressful circumstances. Most of us have grooved decades of patterned behavior deep into our cerebral cortex. Simply stopping is surprisingly hard.

Nutrition is like this. Most dieticians bang on about adding vegetables and fruit to your diet when the most important diet make-over people can employ is taking all manner of stuff out of the diet. Of course, most dieticians are trained not as thinkers but as ideologues and their schooling – I can’t in all honesty call it “education” – consists in learning some rote “facts” that get regurtitated at regular intervals as the answer to all questions.

Which is a good segue into this essay from Dr Vinay Prasad. In the world of medicine, Prasad is a contrarian thinker. Almost always a virtue in my judgement. The article is about “desperation oncology” but it could be about desperation anything and highlights how incremental (as in almost immeasurably small) most advances in medical treatment are in modern times despite the wide-spread belief that medical science is in any measurable way an actual science rather than a collection of facile and simplistic theories which are as quickly disproven as they are imagined.

Long Aerobic Distance

Long, slow distance days should really be called long, aerobic distance (LAD) because the goal is not to go slow but to stay within zone 2. Hopefully, one arrives at the end destination a little bit weary but not completely shattered. Finishing up completely shattered, I think, implies you got something wrong: too far, too hard, too little food or inadequate recovery time.

This week, the LAD goal was 40 kilometres. In case you are keeping track, that’s about a 10% increase on last week’s LAD day, which was about a 10% increase on the previous weeks LAD day and about a 10% increase, well you get the picture. The idea of limiting increases to 10% of previous volume is to prevent over-use injuries, which most commonly affect tendons/ligaments not muscles and are notoriously slow to heal. Yet another example of prevention being infinitely better than cure.

Yesterday I paddled 41.4 kilometres and Doug did 43.1 kilometres – there’s a story there. We went south, because the wind was southerly and the mental tactic for the day (these long days are as much mental as they are physical for me) was to rack up over half the kilometres on the way south so that returning back after a short break we would have the mental boost of knowing we had completed most of the goal distance. Accordingly, we followed the coast south. This meant some extra bumpiness off headlands, but also a bit of a break from the light headwind and pound, pound, pound of the kayaks into the southerly sea as we paddled into deeper bays.

We stopped for breakfast (for me), a snack for Doug, near Broulee Island. Our passage along the coast meant we were at 25 kilometres at this point, about seven kilometres more than the straight line distance. The problem I have on these LAD days is that I have no appetite and, if I bring along my normal daily food: mostly animal protein (eggs, meat, fish, etc.) with a few salad vegetables I am unable to eat, or, if I do eat, I feel queasy afterward. Conversely, I find it hard to give up my normal nutritional strategy and eat junky carbohydrate. This may make me as much a victim of ideology as the brain-washed vegan. In a nod to this conundrum, I had also brought a couple of low carbohydrate/high protein wraps. These Simsons Wraps are the first five star health rating food I think I’ve ever seen, which I would take with a grain of salt (an essential nutrient) as eggs do not get five star ratings. But, from a macronutrient perspective they are not too bad with 8.7 grams of protein per wrap for 5.8 grams of carbohydrate. They do crumble a bit. Anyway, I ate two of these with my usual lean meat, egg, lettuce rolled up inside.

And then we headed back north. The little wind that had been blowing was gone, but the sea was still a bit lumpy and a long period swell was running. From our home bay to Burrewarra Point always seems like a nice easy day out, so I thought that Burrewarra Point north would feel similarly easy, and it wasn’t too bad, but, as we approached Black Rock, the usual LAD day mantra “how much longer, how much longer, good grief I want this to be over” started running on loop. I’m tired, uncomfortable, sick of being stuck in my own head, cramped and my butt hurts. I just want this to be over.

I pulled up on the beach pretty much exactly 7 hours after we started (6.5 hours paddling), so a bit of a slow pace at only 6.5 kilometres/hour. My friend, Les, brought my trolley down from where I leave it near his garden shed and we chatted a bit. I was knackered, which really means I got something wrong. Too far? Not likely as I only paddled four kilometres further than last time although conditions were just a bit tougher – but only a bit. Too hard? Not likely, I was 0.5 kilometre slower per hour. Too little food and inadequate recovery: Probably. We had a hard – but fun – climbing day on Monday, and I had a hard strength day on Tuesday so those two things combined with not eating much are likely the problem. Interestingly, my heart rate track shows pretty pronounced cardiac drift over the last hour or so.

Today, for some active recovery, and because it makes me happy, I took the local bus south to Malua Bay and walked home on the Headlands Trail. Council was working on the track south of Wimbie, and there was lots of evidence of new trackwork along the southern sections of the trail with some new boardwalks, guard rails and stairs in place. Even at an easy pace I felt pretty weak and hungry by the time I got back. Another clue that I got something wrong.

Critical Power at 34 kilometres

I haven’t quite decided whether activity tracking watches are a blessing or a curse. Thursday we went out for our LSD paddle (long, slow distance) with the aim of paddling about 10% further than we paddled last Thursday. Somewhere between 37 and 38 kilometres if you haven’t read that blog post. With northeasterly winds forecast, we went north. Past North Head and up the Murramarang Coast to North Durras where we had a five minute toilet and breakfast break.

But, we were only at 17 kilometres, not the 19 kilometres I had expected. Doug suggested we lap past the Tollgate Islands on the way back as that would add a few kilometres. At the Tollgate Islands my watch was still only reading 33 kilometres, so we really needed to paddle another 4 to 5 kilometres. Probably the distance back to our home bay, but, despite paddling out to the Tollgate Islands dozens of times, neither Doug nor I could remember the exact distance.

About two kilometres out of our home bay my watch vibrated – “critical power level saving data” – and turned itself off. When the manual warned that the watch battery may not last through longer activities, I didn’t expect death at 34 kilometres. I was prepared to paddle around to Snapper Island to get the right number of kilometres, but Doug’s GPS recorded just over 37 kilometres when we reached our beach and that seemed close enough to be good enough.  Conditions were easy with no wind to speak of and just a few lumpy spots around headlands so we were able to keep up a good pace the entire day and finished the paddle in 5.5 hours.

Power Endurance And Threshold

When I was in my 20’s I was convinced I would die young. Not of some dreadful debilitating disease but as a consequence of mountaineering, climbing, and backcountry skiing in avalanche terrain. Through my middle decades, there were a lot of near misses, particularly in relation to avalanches, but, there was also rock-fall, and climbing accidents. Despite the foreboding of those early years, I did not die young and I now consider myself old. Funnily enough, Doug also had the exact same belief and he is old now too. Perhaps, at a certain age, most people think they will die young, although given the laxadaisical attitude to life of the current crop of youth, I have no conviction around that hypothesis.

My attitude these days is “do what’s important and do it now.” This is not just because I sometimes think we are on the cusp of World War III; it’s watching friends and relatives slide off the health and vitality slope into terminal illness and/or waning capacity. Waning capacity can, to some degree, be improved upon by smart training, terminal illness has no cure.

Training for our upcoming kayak trip continues apace, and perhaps more apace given there has been a drop-out reducing our group size to three, and, to some degree firming up Doug and my commitment to do this trip as planned. Even though I no longer think I am going to die early, I have no confidence that I won’t be the next person to discover that I’m the one with a terminal condition. Terminal conditions aside, we’ll be a year older next year, and the time really is now.

Yesterday was an exceptional power-endurance session. A 20 knot plus northeasterly wind had built a lively sea. We often paddle out on summer afternoons into the wind and yesterday was one of only a couple of days when I remember the entrance to our home bay having such big wind waves at the entrance that they broke over my head. I’m always astonished at how fast Quick Nick can go in these conditions, though not how hard I have to work to come even close to keeping pace. The six kilometres to Judges Beach took about 1:15 minutes, I’m sure Quick Nick could have shaved some time off that. My paddle ended up being loose in the shaft and the two halves were spinning in my hand so I had a lot of “missed” strokes and strokes where the power face was not oriented correctly. Luckily, Nick had a multi-tool and we could tighten the screw when we landed at Judges Beach.

Our return trip was about 40 minutes. The only runners I caught, I caught by chance. I was shaky, feeling like I desperately needed some food, a flash back to my carbo-crashing days when I followed the standard nutritional advice. I simply could not go fast enough to get out in front of the waves. Looking over my watch data at home, I spent over an hour above threshold paddling into the wind so it is little surprise that I punching back up into zone four on the way home. My watch recorded 244 metres of elevation gain on the paddle which is a clue to the punchy conditions.

PC: Quick Nick

I’ve often fallen into the trap of too little intensity in my sport specific training; it’s just too easy to keep plugging along at aerobic pace (and a base is important), and I have trouble paddling threshold without some external impetus. A 20 to 25 knot headwind is the way to go for power endurance/threshold training. The external load of the wind adds the power-endurance component and simply making headway into a strong wind provides the metabolic stimulus.

Time For Fun: Depot Beach to Maloneys Beach on the Murrarmarang Coastal Walk

We generally celebrate birthdays with some outdoor adventure, but, for various reasons, Doug’s birthday came and went without us doing anything significant. It was two weeks after that Doug suggested we walk from Depot Beach to Maloneys Beach along the Murramarang Coastal Walk. In May, we walked the full length of the trail in a day, which, despite what you read on-line, isn’t really a feat of great endurance. My tracked distance that day was somewhere between 39 and 42 kilometres (tracking on my Garmin Instinct can be 10% off), a distance which anyone who’s even marginally functional should be able to do in a day on a good track.

Depot Beach to Maloneys Beach is possible with a pretty short car shuttle for a good amount of walking, and, as we would be only doing about 24 kilometres, we would not have to hustle as much as walking the full distance in a short winter day. I dropped Doug at Maloneys Beach and drove up to the trail head for the Point Upright track in Depot Beach and parked.

For the first time in quite a few trips along the track, I managed to follow the exact route the entire way. Doug, coming from the south, missed a few track junctions and had to do some off-track walking at times to intercept the track. I think the track is slightly harder to follow from the south than the north.

Tricky points for finding the “proper” track are at the sandstone headland between Cookies Beach and the main Durras Beach. The route heads up the good steps north of the headland, along the road allowance a short distance and then down the first set of steps, or bush track back (either works) onto the beach. I think a lot of people walk this section on the road as they are weary of soft sand walking – Durras Beach always seem pretty soft – and coming from the south, the bush track/steps are hard to see from the beach.  If you go right to the end of Mill Beach – more soft sand but think of it as mental toughness training – a good set of stone steps leads up to the Wasp Head track and, if you follow this somewhat meandering track through forest, a track sign is reached at the Wasp Head lookout.

The other spot where it is easy to get slightly off-route is the rock headland between the north and south Emily Miller Beaches. The actual signed track heads uphill and west from the rock buttress that separates these two beaches. It’s easy to miss the trail head sign which is up on top of the rock buttress and it doesn’t really matter as it’s also possible to just walk over the rock buttress to the north end of Emily Miller Beach.

Doug missed the track from Richmond Beach which is also easy to do. Coming from the south, once up to the Richmond Beach parking area, the route goes up the road for about 150 metres before a trail sign on the north side of the road gets the walker back onto bush tracks and off the road. A sign would be good at the car park here. My Garmin watch had the distance at roughly 24 kilometres and 700 metres gain for the Depot Beach to Maloneys Beach section, which tallies with the distances on the NPWS site.

Stop When It Is Easy

Training for a big trip often turns out to be a balancing act, particularly as you get older. You need to train enough to accomplish the trip without crippling fatigue or injury, but you don’t want to train so much that you succumb to injury, fatigue or both before the trip starts. Additionally, resistance training – the holy grail of healthy aging – has to continue to be part of your regular training regime, and appropriate resistance training requires more recovery than aerobic efforts. Health guru’s who blather about “recovering harder” are simply blathering. Recovery can be assisted through good quality protein and sleep but in the end, recovery takes time.

The problem is, we often only discover in retrospect if we’ve trained enough for the trip. If the trip turns out to be pleasantly easy and fits nicely into your own personal adventure zone, you’ve trained enough. If every day you are thrashed beyond your limits and so scared you can’t spit, your training was nowhere near adequate.

Whether it’s good luck, good management or a bit of both, I’ve managed to train about the right amount for most of the trips I’ve done in the last couple of decades, and uncooperative weather and/or conditions notwithstanding, most of my trips have fallen into my own personal adventure zone and have been successful. Which does not mean I haven’t had spectacular failures. Life without failures would be drab indeed as we would never push beyond our current limits.

Knowing yourself helps. If technical climbing with a big pack is going to feature on the trip, you better gets lots of experience doing just that. Perhaps surf landings are required or paddling in strong winds and rough conditions. Again, lots of surf landings and doing most of your training in adverse conditions is required. Paddling on lakes and rivers simply does not prepare a paddler for the ocean, and clipping bolts on sunny days at the local 10 metre crag is similarly ineffective training for load carrying over mixed mountain terrain.

Marathon training plans typically include one long run of around 20 miles (32 kilometres) so that the runner has the mental advantage of knowing that the distance is achievable. After all, the mind is primary. I think training for long paddle trips should be similarly structured. If the trip requires a 50 kilometre day, make sure that you hit 50 kilometres at least once during your training period. Preferably multiple times. After all, a trip is much harder than a marathon. Some trips require days and even weeks of marathon type distances stacked up without the aid stations, hot showers and comfortable beds that are a feature of a one time marathon event.

PC: DB

After 34 kilometres on Thursday, I went out on Saturday to do my default 20 kilometres. I would try to keep up a faster pace – something I did not succeed at – and paddle into the wind for 10 kilometres before turning around. I was alone as Doug’s training schedule did not coincide with mine. The day was a mixed success. My Garmin watch, with the current GPS settings seems to be always about 10% off, so I did 22 kilometres before the watch ticked over to 20 kilometres. My big problem was the endemic Blue Bottles. They were everywhere and huge. When I started, the seas were flat enough that I could see the buggars and paddle a zig-zagging course between them, but once the wind came up, the chop with the residual swell from the southerly blow, made it impossible to see the creatures before they were wrapped around my paddle and in danger of whipping across my face. When we were training for our Bass Strait crossing I got savagely stung by a big Blue Bottle and it was quite painful. Not something I am keen on repeating.

I was on my way out to the Tollgate Islands from Black Rock when the fourth of a series of Blue Bottles wrapped itself around my paddle and I only just managed to dodge a face shot. The side of the boat was wrapped in sticky tentacles and a big whopper of a Blue Bottle was adherent to my paddle leash. I unclipped the leash and dragged it behind me into Wimbie Beach where I managed to remove all the bits of stinging tentacles from my leash, my boat, and my (luckily) long sleeve shirt. For some reason, inshore and north of Wimbie Beach, the Blue Bottles were not so numerous so I paddled back and forth between my home bay and Snapper Island until I had wracked up the requisite kilometres. The wind was up, so at least half the laps were into the wind. This morning, the beach was littering with the cadavers of Blue Bottles so hopefully the invasion is over.

The week in review: Three strength sessions including one with climbing wall training, one climbing day, three paddle days for 69 kilometres, two easy cycle days of 24 kilometres, five core training days and a measly 14 kilometres with 430 metres elevation gain on foot.

Buzz, Buzz

Picture of the day from yesterdays training paddle of me getting buzzed by a helicopter near Burrewarra Point. We had company with two friends along who are prepping for their own Bass Strait crossing and it was nice to have someone else to chat with. Conditions were easy, no real wind and only the usual lumpy current effects at Burrewarra Point. Effective training really is just doing what you don’t much feel like doing. I miss my solo trail runs and rock climbing, both of which have largely displaced by paddle training, but there is a prize at the end of the training cycle, and, as I’ve often quoted before “the goal is to keep the goal the goal.”