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.
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.
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