Paddling Fast

There’s the battle of the bulge, the battle of Hastings and the battle to go faster. Today was the battle to go faster. Conditions for trying to paddle fast were good. No wind at all. The ocean gently rolling with a two metre swell and the water brown all the way to the east side of the Tollgate Islands after yesterdays heavy rain event.

Our beach has been eroded again by storms so even though we launched three hours before high tide there was barely any beach left and, had we gone any later, we might have launched from the parking lot! Out to the Tollgate Islands, over to Yellow Rocks and back home. My average speed at eight kilometres/hour but I could not keep that up for 40 kilometres. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could?

The Story of Erowal Bay: Part One

Booderee National Park is a big peninsular bounded on the north by Governor Head (and off-shore Bowen Island) and on the south by St Georges Head and features about 13 kilometres of steep sandstone cliffs and sea caves along the east facing coastline. At times, the water is calm, and sea kayakers can explore the many caves and clefts along the coast, including slipping between reefs at Stoney Creek to a very small but sheltered cove. Other times, wind, swell and rebound can make for a bumpy, lumpy trip along the cliffs. For whatever reason, there always seem to be a northerly current running along the cliffs from Governor Head to the headland just east of Steamers Beach. The nautical chart shows a 0 to 2 knot current running along here but the current marker on the chart is almost five kilometres off-shore. I’m not exactly sure what is happening along this section of coast but it almost always features current effects.

The trip from Hyams Beach inside Jervis Bay around the peninsula to Sussex Inlet, and across St Georges Basin to Erowal Bay is one of the best two day trips in the area as, depending on your exact paddle route, it is possible to enjoy 50 kilometres of paddling with a mere six kilometre car shuttle. The shuttle is so short it can be easily walked. I’ve done this trip twice with an overnight camp, both times starting from Hyams Beach and paddling north to south.

On the latest occasion, given a forecast for strong southerly winds we planned to paddle from Erowal Bay to Captains Beach near Greenpatch. HH, who suggested the trip, seemed to relish the fact that a northerly swell would be colliding with a southerly swell, both would be acted upon by winds forecast to 20 to 25 knots, and, of course, there is that current past Governor Head, Snapper Point and Cape St George where conditions are almost always “interesting.” What could be more fun?¹ 

Out of a party of almost 20 paddlers, there were only four who expressed interest (including HH) and one of those quickly dropped out leaving three. I would have liked to drop out. I thought of developing the ‘rona overnight, or breaking a leg or arm, even a troublesome hang-nail would be a good excuse but there is that upcoming trip that we are training for and the opportunity for a tough paddle with a very accomplished and competent companion does not happen every day, even every week or month. There was only one thing to do, go and give it a shot.

This is not a trip report where I can confidently say “mistakes were made but not by me” as I certainly made mistakes. Sometimes I wonder if I get better at making mistakes as I get older not worse. Certainly, errors still occur with depressing frequency. It’s easy, if you have a certain personality type, to beat yourself up for these errors, and there is some legitimacy to honest appraisals about what went wrong. There is, however, only one way to avoid making mistakes and that is to not try anything difficult or uncertain. If I have to choose between the cognitive discomfort that comes from never trying anything difficult or facing up to errors, I hope to continue to choose the latter. After all, the really dispiriting thing about making mistakes is not so much making a mistake and making the same mistake a second or even third time.

We were lucky to have friends willing to drop us at Erowal Bay and take our cars back to Green Patch so we did not need to worry about retrieving cars at the end, but, this also meant that the trip started to feel committing. However, there were options for escape, the most notable being landing at Summer Cloud Cove (which turned out to be incredibly calm given the conditions) and walking back along the road and some bush tracks to retrieve a car if necessary. This is a distance of only about six kilometres and I always throw a pair of running shoes in my kayak.

We got away from Erowal Bay pretty much on time at about 8:30 am which I think was both too late and too early! How’s that for being able to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time? Too late because I am about seven kilometres/hour slower than HH (especially into the wind) and too early because the wind was forecast to drop during the day. There was a pretty solid headwind crossing St Georges Basin in the 18 knot range. Luckily, no big sea could build but it was still a rather tedious and slow grind. In Sussex Inlet itself we had a slight favourable current and got some shelter from the wind and the six kilometres down to the bar passed quicker than I thought. It’s funny but I almost hoped that segment of the trip would take longer as it would give more time for the wind and sea state to calm.

The bar at Sussex Inlet was relatively easy as the reef along the eastern side breaks much of the swell. We once had a rather tumultuous entry to Sussex Inlet crossing the bar with a big swell and an outgoing tide, but fortiutiously nothing like that today. We had been paddling about 2.5 hours to this point, which is, as that master of understatment HH said was “a bit behind schedule.” I was beginning to doubt my ability to complete this trip in a reasonable time frame; a seed of doubt that once planted began to grow and grow. Doubt is really not helpful at all. Once in your brain it chews away as steadily as a beaver felling a tree to make a dam and all too frequently marks the end of any realistic attempt. My mantra on difficult rock climbs is “you can do this, you can do this, you can do this.” It’s amazingly successful. A 30 metre well protected sport climb however, is a whole different malarky to a six hour sea paddle but a bit of positive thinking would have helped.

HH was committed, and Doug would accompany me, so I was the joint that could break the whole trip apart. I decided I would paddle across Wreck Bay to St Georges Head and see how I felt there. Conditions were a bit punchy. The wind had dropped to perhaps 12 knots but was still bothersome and we had beam on sea and swell, large enough that I simply tried not to look at it too much! I got side-surfed by a couple of breaking waves which necessitated bracing; awkward and less effective with a wing blade, but I would be paralysingly slow with my flat blade.

Nevertheless, we got to St Georges Head, just a little bit more behind schedule. I was tired, but not shattered. Trying to keep up with HH however, was, and always is difficult for me. I’m always running a bit above my aerobic rate which means I get more fatigued and need a bit more food. It’s a struggle for me to eat on sea kayaking days - unlike normal days when I could eat all day long! I had been at threshold pace (zone 4) for the 1.5 hours it had taken us to cross Wreck Bay to St Georges Head, not something I can keep up forever. I really needed some food but I had nothing really easy to eat handy and stopping to eat would just put me further behind everyone else. Later, one of my paddling friends suggested gels but no matter how desperate I am, I’m not desperate enough to suck back pure (but overpriced) sugar. The resulting crash would be worse than the original symptom.

At St Georges Head I got a bit mixed up thinking the wind had shifted to the east or even northeast and somehow thought we would have this damnable headwind the entire 40 kilometre trip. Looking at the map afterwards it all made sense and Doug, who has his compass mounted to his deck as I foolishly did not (I have since rectified this), realised that we were needed to head windward/southeast for just about 500 metres before we could turn and get the wind if not complely behind us, at least from our rear quarter.

Deciding was difficult, and it would have been nice to pause, eat a bit of food, let my heart-rate drop a little, just take a moment or two to make a rational decision but I was well aware that patient HH had been paddling at half speed since we’d left Erowal Bay and I thought I should decide quickly. I have been on trips in the past, most notably mountaineering trips, where people have stood around for far too long trying to decide what to do. It’s frustrating and I’m not sure better decisions are made in the end.

So Doug and I turned and sped into Summer Cloud Cove. It’s amazing how easy conditions felt with the wind behind us. Sure, there was a little bit of staying in control and not broaching down the steeper waves but making progress felt stupidly easy. From a distance, it looked as if there was a break extending west across the mouth of Summer Cloud Cove but once inshore it was actually a very easy landing. To say I was disappointed in myself is to say the sky is blue: indisputable.

Pictures almost exclusively courtesy of DB and from previous trips as who had time to take pictures?

1Actually lots of things could be more fun!

The Lonely Road

Cancer diagnoses seem to be all around us now. Search “turbo cancer” and you’ll find all kinds of references to spikes in rapidly developing cancer following mRNA vaccines. Wikipedia, an increasingly censored information source, calls this sort of speculation “anti-vaccine” rhetoric. I don’t know what is true, I just try to keep an open mind. Of course, having a mind open to anything outside the acceptable discourse is likely to get you branded a “cooker,” but I’m 60 and I gave up worrying what people think of me a half century ago. 

The road one travels with cancer seems long and lonely. I’m not sure any of us, no matter how motivated, caring or empathetic we are can really walk the same road. The treatments, the side effects of treatment, the hope, the uncertainty, these are things we can name but not really truly experience. A sudden cancer diagnosis is the ultimate “everything was good until it wasn’t.”

PC: DB.

Doug and I got out in the kayaks this morning for a bit more training before the big wind and rain event hits later today into tomorrow. The swell had definitely picked up and shifted southerly, with the wave buoy recording average wave height at 2 metres and a moderate ENE wind forecast to build throughout the day.

It was gloomy paddling out of our home bay and around to the river entrance. The main bar was a messy break, the waves too fast and confused to really catch anything but after picking our way in we found a good break on the north side of the bay where we’ve had long rides before. The first real wave I caught the kayak turned broad side almost immediately and I side surfed in with water pouring down the neck of my cagoule and I thought “Good to get that over with.” We had a pretty reasonable session followed by a paddle back into a 15 knot wind and increasingly messy conditions. One of those days when everything stayed manageable.

Just Trying To Survive

As I’m leaving the Park Run on my bicycle, an older lady stops me and says “Were you trying to beat me?” As if, I think, I could beat anyone! “No,” I say, “I’m mostly just trying to survive.” “You did well, you also ran on the grass which is harder.” It’s true, I do run on the grass and avoid the pavement. People, particularly older people for whom proprioception is diminishing and who must, as they age, avoid falling down and breaking hips, should take all the little easy steps possible to protect balance and proprioceptive ability. This means walking on the ground beside the pavement, standing on one leg when waiting in line, standing on one leg to put on shoes, and on and on with small life “hacks” that, with consistency, add to a decent outcome. Full credit to Katy Bowman for these ideas.

I don’t know what it is, but, past 35 kilometres and certainly beyond 40 kilometres paddling in a day and I again feel like I’m just trying to survive. It’s not the same “trying to survive” as spending 20 minutes at Zone 5, it’s a slow motion kind of fatigue and discomfort from being jammed in a small space in an unnatural position doing a repetitive and cyclical movement for far too long. An occasional rest out of the boat during the session would probably help but typically neither Doug nor I stop much, if at all, during these long days.

Anything over 35 kilometres and I have started to think of the paddle as an “all day affair.” Why make an all day affair longer by stopping multiple times? Strictly speaking these are not all day affairs but it’s long enough and my body feels so stiff and contorted after finishing a 40 plus kilometre paddle that it may as take the whole day. Instead of coming home and thinking “I’ll get this, this and this done, and do my regular exercises,” I now think a more reasonable position is “I’ll eat and drink and then stretch to try and underdo the worst of the damage.” Every action has consequences.

I finished yesterdays 45 kilometre paddle (10% increase on last week) about three hours earlier than Doug who started about three hours after me. Doug’s very old and very frail Mum is in hospital and, we fear, well down the “intervention cascade.” The original term “intervention cascade” was used with regard to interventions during the labour and delivery process which have both beneficial and deleterious outcomes. Each intervention is in danger of triggering a second and third intervention which triggers a fourth intervention in an iterative pattern. This is modern medicine in a nutshell. A treatment/drug/procedure requires a further treatment/drug/procedure to deal with the side effect of the first treatment/drug/procedure; however the second treatment/drug/procedure requires a third treatment/drug/procedure to counteract the first and second treatments/drugs/procedures and, well, you get the picture, an intervention cascade has been initiated.

The point is, Doug was late leaving and three hours behind me, so we paddled together some and solo some. Paddling 45 kilometres in a day triggers it’s own intervention cascade because my butt is sore, my hamstrings are tight, my hips are stiff and my hip flexors have shortened. All these unintended consequences require intervention to correct. Mark Twight was correct when he wrote “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Fore-Shadowing

Another Saturday, another Park Run with my time virtually identical to last time, which, given I am not training to run faster is completely OK with me; plateau is, after all, the new PR when you’re old. I am determined during this training cycle not to avoid intensity simply because it’s hard.

On Tuesday, we paddled from Captains Beach at Green Patch to Bowen Island. It was short, pleasant and interrupted by a visit to a friend’s yacht moored at Hole In The Wall. Immediately getting aboard, even in these sheltered waters I felt sea sick thus confirming – if the confined spaces did not do so – that sailing is not for me.

On Wednesday we set off to paddle from Erowal Bay back to Captains Beach, a distance of roughly 41 kilometres which would have been a fantastic training paddle, but, I pulled out at St Georges Head. There’s a story there, yet to be written, but it will feature disappointment, dismay, even mild disgust. Consider yourself forewarned.

Outside Motivation

The 2010’s were my decade of Crossfit. Three days on, one day off, endlessly variable, and, almost but not quite, endlessly intense. Twenty minutes, excluding the warm-up – which is saying a lot because the meme “my warm-up is your workout” was pretty true – of lung-busting work. My adherence to the WOD (workout of the day) was near fanatical and included training even after a ski or climbing day.

These days, getting intensity in is a real mental challenge. The anaerobic efforts are hard and take more recovery time. I often find, which is not normal for me, that some outside motivation helps get the session done. That outside motivation might be chasing Quick Nick into the wind, or it might be attending the local Park Run.

The chattering mind picks up the pace along with the breathing, and is, I’m pretty sure, determined to derail efforts. “I’m breathing too heavy, I’ll never make it, sweet jesus why is it so hot? – I should have brought a hat, half-way, I’m only half-way, FFS, I could die out here!” I like how Garmin Connect shows Zone 5 in red because the experience does feel like red-lining even when I’m only plugging along at, maximum pace, 9 kilometres/hour.

In the afternoon with the summer northeasterly wind blowing, we paddled over to Yellow Rock. The wind was a bit lighter than the last time we did this and my paddle was not spinning in my hands so it seemed easier. We had sails, which we never take on day trips, but Doug had constructed a new mast that he wanted to test. The return journey was quick but, as I never take a sail on day paddles, it’s easy to forget how tippy empty plumb bow boats are with a sail up in moderate to strong winds.  The week in review: one day rock climbing, one strength training session, two easy cycles totaling 22 kilometres, 51 kilometres paddling and 40 kilometres on foot with 1290 metres gain.  A deload week before the next training push.  

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.