A Morning Out

I was forced, by a flare up of an oldIT band issue, to spend the day on the couch yesterday. I’m so obsessive about training that I am always 1000% convinced that one day off will lead to all those “gainz” disappearing like free donuts at an Obesity Anonymous meeting (apologies to both donuts and the obese – I’m a bit fat myself). Anyway, I survived the rest day, I’m not sure how, likely just by trolling crazies on X, and this morning I took the kayak down to the beach for a paddle.

The wind was calm but the water a bit murky from the NE blow yesterday and there were lots and lots of fish. Not that I actually saw any fish as whenever I got near they flicked their tails and disappeared but there were big schools about. At the Tollgate Islands, the northerly current was insane! The NE swell was frequent but not big and, as I got near the Tollgates I thought I would be able to paddle around close in but the current had kicked up extremely volatile conditions. There were actual standing waves at the north and south end of the island and on the east side I was tossed about like a cork. The BOM surface currents chart shows the northerly current a bit below a knot off Batemans Bay but I think it had to be running faster than that to create standing waves.

It’s just a bit over four kilometres back to shore from the Tollgate Islands so I thought, as my leg had loosened up, I would have a crack at some speed work. I got my speed, briefly, up to 10 km/hour – wouldn’t it be magic to cruise at that pace – but I was getting pretty puffed out by the time I got into shore. According to Garmin, I spent 11 minutes at “threshold” which seems too low to me as I was huffing and puffing on the way back and eased up a few times to have a breather, and I certainly didn’t cover four kilometres in 11 minutes (more like 30 minutes). What’s most interesting about the graph is the two heart rate peaks: one in the latter half of the paddle as I sprint back to shore and the other as I paddle around the east side of the Tollgate Islands where I was thinking “shit, I’m about to capsize out here!”

A fun morning out and much preferred to the usual slow and steady 40 kilometres (which still has to be done).

Paddle Fit

We were only three for the Sunday paddle again. The list of injured, out of shape, or just not interested grows exponentially longer while the tally of the “paddle fit” shrinks. But what is “paddle fit” and how do you go from unfit to fit? For most people paddle fit means doing a bit of paddling, and, if you are really motivated, perhaps some supportive strength training or GPP (general physical preparedness) and hoping for the best. That’s like driving to a far off event with no idea of the route you will take. You might make it, but it’s more likely that you’ll: (a) never arrive; (b) arrive so late you missed the event; or (c) stagger in near the end of the event with a busted up vehicle and having taken ten times as long as everyone else. It’s not a strategy for success.

Long distance sea kayaking is primarily an endurance sport, which means you need first and foremost aerobic capacity and, despite the promises of fitness influencers, the only way to build aerobic capacity is do what is commonly known as LAD (long aerobic distance). If you are out of shape, you start with perhaps as little as 10 minutes a day and build gradually. It’s long, it’s slow, it’s tedious and it is absolutely necessary. No-one paddles 40 kilometres in a day without aerobic capacity. The reason some people maintain aerobic capacity year round with little specific training is that they are continuously active in their aerobic zone. They bicycle, bushwalk, trail run and paddle. All those things use different muscles in different amounts but they are all aerobic activities and build the necessary aerobic base. If you are working within your aerobic zone, you can go out day after day after day without undue fatigue.

But, if your muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints are not conditioned and strengthened as well, all the aerobic capacity in the world won’t help. This is why runners build slowly, to condition their musculoskeletal system to handle the load. I can come off my winter season reasonably aerobically fit (because I never stop doing some kind of aerobic activity) but if I go out and try and paddle 40 kilometres, my aerobic system will handle the activity no problem but I’ll be in a world of hurt – and quite possibly injury – because my musculoskeletal system is not conditioned to that volume. The beauty of being a multi-sport athlete is, I can keep training my aerobic system by simply switching to another sport. While I build to paddling 40 kilometre days, I can ride, run or walk and I’ll still be improving my aerobic system. And, of course, with other sports available I can also add in intensity without risking injury.

Intensity is best trained via tempo and interval training. Tempo training improves lactate clearance and recycling which means you can produce more power (go faster) for longer. Interval training pulls in fast twitch muscles to improve power and provides speed for those burst efforts, like surf breakouts, or paddling hard to catch waves. If you have an aerobic base, these two workouts are way, way more enjoyable than the drudgery of the long aerobic distance. Both tempo and intervals however, have to come on top of an aerobic base, and it’s surprisingly common how poor an aerobic base many paddlers have. You can actually work out with some simple at home tests when it is time to add intensity to your training.

Finally, GPP, the building block that most endurance athletes prefer to avoid. General physical preparedness is simply strength training incorporating the four functional human movement patterns, or five if you are a Dan John aficionado. Push, pull, hinge, squat, loaded carry. Two to three times a week. As you get more experienced you can vary specific exercises and tempos or add power and dynamic movements, but, like aerobic conditioning, the bulk of strength training should be basic multi-joint movements. And it’s not Les Mills Body Pump. Strength training is not 700 squats with no load to cringe 80’s music. Strength training is 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps as heavy as you can maintain form. When the load gets easy, the weight goes up.

There is, of course, a whole science of strength training but given that most paddlers don’t lift at all, the goal is simply to get started with some basic GPP. Most older adults would benefit from a hypertrophy phase (like a Delorme protocol) but when hardly anyone lifts, the goal is simply to start lifting. This is especially important for women as we are smaller and weaker than men. Women can have the best paddle stroke in the world and we will still struggle to out perform men because men have more muscle and hence can generate more power. The reason most blokes can out perform even elite females is because of muscle mass and the concordant ability to produce more power.

Few choices in life are truly binary, and training isn’t technically binary. You could choose to train some attributes and let others slide, but, if you don’t train at all, one thing is certain, you’ll never be really paddle fit.

I like to say that the only people who are not enthusiastic about training are those who haven’t trained correctly. The only people who hate lunges are those who’ve never done enough of them to experience what strong legs feel like on the trail. The only ones who hate long, slow aerobic capacity–building runs and skis are those who have never known what it feels like to sail up the mountain, nose to the wind, with ease. Relaxed, poised, moving fast and flying. Steve House.

The Sunday Paddles: Surfing by the Tollgate Islands

“Keep an eye on the weather” Doug said as we parted at Snapper Island. We had been surfing on the Clyde River bar. The conditions were better than you might expect for a primarily NE swell, and a high and rising tide, but, if you got the waves right, the runs were long.

Robbie and I headed out to the Tollgate Islands. By the time we got there, a big black cloud bank had spread out all the way to the Tollgates. Robbie and I paddled through the gap and rapidly back to shore. A half kilometre out we could hear thunder rumbling. I got home just as the storm moved in.

First 40 of the New Year

Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. General George Patton.

I needed a rest day. Not my body this time but my mind. In the contest between two introverts and one extravert, the extravert wins. Every time. The house was blissfully quiet and I got all the little jobs that had added up over the week done.

Doug had done his long day for the week on Tuesday, it was Friday when I did mine. The winds were light all day with just a 10 knot easterly building later in the day. The swell was up; in the two to three metre range with some long period waves coming through. It was just after 6:30 am when I started paddling with no real idea where I was heading. I headed north to Snapper Island and then, because the tide was very high and it is a long time since I have done this, I went all the way up Cullendulla Creek. There were a lot of fish jumping.

East then, past the dumping surf on Long Beach, threading my way through a rock passage between Maloneys and Long Beaches, only possible at the highest tide. At Reef Point, the swell was breaking and I had to put on some power to spear over the bigger waves and into Maloneys Beach where I ate a rather nasty left over chicken burger (not recommended). Out past Three Isle Point and North Head and on towards Oakey Beach, but I was getting queasy; the sea had that oily, greasy, roiling greyness where sky and sea are indistinguishable so I turned about and headed south to the Tollgate Islands where I ate something slightly less disgusting but not actually good tasting (cottage cheese and banana) breaking my own rule to never become a sea kayaker who eats bananas.

South again to Black Rock and starting to feel I desperately needed a cup of tea. Circuit Beach had a spilling wave and not too many people so I landed there and enjoyed tea out of a plastic mug. On the move again after 10 minutes heading back north following the shore. Lots of swimmers and sun-bathers at Surf Beach, a few less at Denhams Beach, and then only three or four at Sunshine Cove. My watch was stubbornly one kilometre shy. Doug would stop, but I think the power of training is in not stopping when you desperately want to, so I thought about Steve Bechtel’s latest training article, and turned and paddled 500 metres out to sea, and then back again.

J's Big South Coast Adventure

I made this map for J. The kilometres may be a bit off. J’s Garmin watch steadfastly recorded about two kilometres less than my watch on every outing. On the first afternoon of J’s arrival, we walked just 2.5 kilometres, a little loop walk that takes in a beach, a headland, and a bridge over a creek.

Next day I drove us up to the Dam Loop near the Botanic Gardens. We walked around the Dam Loop. The mountain bike trails would have been hopping but we only saw two young blokes who had randomly picked a “blue loop” from TrailForks and ended up on the Dam Loop which is all but abandoned by mountain bikers these days – with good reason - there were half a dozen trees down, the track is eroded and covered in sticks and even logs. After the loop, we went into the Botanic Gardens for a beverage at the cafe and then with a handy laminated map the volunteer at the counter gave me we walked around all six of the giant trees in the Gardens. I had remembered the spotted gum at the far southeastern end of the Gardens as bigger than it was in life. Like being a child and finding adults tall then growing up and realising some adults are actually quite short.

On Monday, we all three drove down to McKenzies Beach to walk the Munjip Track. I had planned for us to take the bus – I love public transport and I love taking the bus to walk home – but J’s morning routine seems to be much longer than ours and I wasn’t sure we would make the first bus. As it was a public holiday, the service was pretty sporadic. McKenzies Beach used to be a great surf beach but all the east coast lows have steepened the beach so much that it’s almost always a shore dump now. It was a glorious day on the Munjip Track and we did all the side tracks to lookouts. At Mosquito Bay we discovered we were rather hungry so we had lunch (thanks for the burgers J!) at the cafe. It was busy. I will never understand how or why people will drive down from their holiday home to wait half an hour for someone to make a middling burger when you could make ten burgers that are more delicious for the same price at home in half the time. But, as my grandma used to say “there’s nowt so queer as folk.”

Tuesday, I did weight training before we cycled into town, over the bridge and around the shore to the Cullendulla Nature Reserve and the mangrove boardwalk. I thought this would be a rest day for J after the previous two days, but, given her Garmin body battery was 9 when we got home and she wrote: “up and down hills,” for the first and last half hour even though there aren’t really any hills!

Our longest walk, at six hours, was from Cookies Beach to Maloneys Beach. J and I drove to Cookies Beach (so many cars!) and walked to Maloneys Beach while Doug drove to Maloneys Beach and walked north. We did all the lookouts, of course, but our pace was quite slow so don’t be deterred by the time taken.

Split Rock for Christmas 2025

Christmas Day 2025 and, as usual, we are in the middle of a paddling training cycle, so I felt an extra bit of delight when I saw that the weather would be sunny but cool (overnight lows near zero) around Namadgi National Park. That meant, instead of doing an overnight paddle (I get weary of paddling during long training cycles) we could do something different and go for an overnight walk.

Namadgi National Park has become one of our go-to bushwalking locations. The driving, as driving goes, is pretty painless. Just a bit over two hours on good roads and we can circumvent most of Canberra. The bush is a bit less dense for whacking than around the Budawangs which has gotten really ferocious since the fires, there is always a peak to bushwack up, pretty good camping, water, and the new bonus, no ticks!

In all the walks I’ve done around Namadgi National Park, I’ve never driven up the Orroral Valley to the site of the old tracking station. The interpretive signage around the picnic area (on the site of the old tracking station) certainly highlights how much technology has changed in the last few decades.

The Cotter Hut road runs north and climbs steadily to Prairie Dog Creek. It’s not particularly pleasant walking as the road is hard underfoot, but after 5 or 6 kilometres the Australian Alps Waking Track (AAWT) splits off and head west descending a short distance to Sawpit Creek and then climbing about 200 metres to Cotter Gap. The last time we walked in to Cotter Gap we had come from Honeysuckle Campground on the far (NE) side of Legoland Ridge. That day, three years ago, we covered 20 kilometres and accumulated 900 metres of elevation gain on the first day of a three day trip, but, I’m not sure it felt any harder than the relatively modest 12 kilometres and roughly 600 metres of gain we did on Christmas Day. It turns out that walking up and down steep climbing trails with a climbing pack probably does keep you somewhat fit for backpacking.

About a kilometre downhill from Cotter Gap the track crosses the start of Pond Creek and there are a few good campsites scattered in the forest. We opted for the best one, just off the track and set among a couple of large boulders with a grassy open tent area. I think this is a better camp than we had three years previously when we camped down at Pond Creek Flats. If you are continuing west to the Bimberi Range there are unlimited good campsites down at the Cotter River Valley only a couple of kilometres downhill from Pond Creek Flats.

It was definitely time for tea and lunch. We had our new Primus canister stove with us, an upgrade from the last cheapo model which started to leak irreparably last year. With a wind guard, it was very quick to boil water. Another piece of technology which has improved a lot of the last couple of decades and, even I now think, is a reasonable replacement for the trusted liquid fuel MSR stoves that we used for decades. The beauty of MSR liquid fuel stoves, of course, was their ability to burn any fuel (including diesel or kerosene – both very stinky) and the repair them in the field if you had the parts, and you could always buy the parts. The downside, of course, is the fuss and bother of priming them and the fact that in recent years the spare parts have become as costly as a new stove.

Anyway, after tea and lunch we stashed our spare gear under a rock and set off for Split Rock. Split Rock is not named on the map but if you are at Pond Creek and look south you can’t miss it. Two tall granite tors on the ridge above. The bush was rather thick! It took us almost 1.5 hours to gain just under 300 metres in elevation over the kilometre or so to the top. That’s not fast! Near the top, you have to scramble around some big boulders but the split tors are pretty obvious and you can walk right through them. If these tors were more accessible, and had some bolts, they would provide fantastic climbing as the granite is really clean, featured and solid! I could not find any evidence on the internet of anyone climbing to the top but lots of things don’t make it onto the internet.

There is a rock balcony overlooking the two tors and the valley below and we sat here for a bit admiring the view. An hour down and back to camp. We took a slightly different route of the top which was more than slightly worse than the way up!

We had frost overnight which is an interesting concept in Australia in late December. The next day we had planned to walk further west along the AAWT and bushwack up Coronet Peak. But ideas made in the comfort of ones home don’t always translate to actions in the field. Our legs had felt tired and stiff the previous evening and, disappointingly, you have to lose 200 metres of elevation to get to the base of the bushwack up Coronet Peak. Two hundred metres which we would have to regain on the way out and Coronet Peak is 100 metres lower than Split Rock!

When we made coffee in the morning, which I enjoyed in the tent, we decided against Coronet Peak. After all, it was Christmas. Accordingly, we had two big mugs of coffee in the morning before packing up and walking out. Just before the Cotter Hut road crosses James Creek, we took an old vehicle track down to the trail that runs north up the Orroral River valley. This is pleasant open walking with views up and down the valley and much softer on the feet than the Cotter Hut road. Where the track joins the Link Track which comes over from Honeysuckle campground, I walked across open grasslands back to the picnic area while Doug followed the old roads. More tea and lunch at the picnic ground. We encountered a surprising number of people walking into Bimberi Peak from the east. I had though most folk would go in from the west (Pocket Saddle Road) which is much shorter and easily day tripped.

Another good Namadgi trip and, although we did not climb two peaks as planned, we now have a reason to go back.

That Speed Graph

I made the mistake of looking at my watch. The news was not good. Our speed had been gradually dropping, and, as we paddled past Jimmies Island to Burrewarra Point and bashed into a developing sea, a southerly swell, and a building wind, our average speed was around five kilometres an hour! Yikes. After two hours of paddling we turned around and our speed immediately doubled!

A super fun run back catching lots of runners. We took a break on Lilli Pilli beach ‘cos I was running out of gas. It’s not often that training days as this much fun.