Competing for a spot on the US Olympic whitewater team
"Fortune favors the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur
Whitewater kayaking is the most challenging, exciting, and satisfying thing I ever did in my life.
Imagine an interstate highway.
Take away the lane lines.
Add traffic.
Now imagine that the pavement is flowing, in your direction of travel.(current)
Add potholes, big enough to hurt you. (rocks)
Throw in a few major bomb craters. ("holes")
Remove an occasional bridge, fell a tree across the path. (waterfalls, and downed trees - generally NOT on a race course)
It's fun, a little like playing "Asteroids" or "Tetris". Try to keep up.
"The game, Pyle, is played with your life, the lives of your buddies" - #TSCC, Derek Reese, GBtAT
The analogy isn't perfect. On a river, you can use some of these features to your advantage, to rest, or change direction.
You learn how to read the river, deal with the challenges, and build strength, over a period of a year or two.
I was doing this for fun. I started in a tandem canoe, with a partner who frequently chose his own path around the same rock. To preserve the friendship, we switched to single kayaks. We taught each other to Eskimo Roll, and then went to advanced training, at a school run by a Canadian national slalom champion.
I didn't start racing right away, but used what I learned to have more fun on harder rivers.
Running a slalom course adds another level of complexity. By stringing pairs of poles called gates, over specific points on the river, the paddler is required to pass between them, in sequence, in the correct direction, without touching the poles. To make it challenging, the course designer hangs gates near obstacles, or on opposite sides of a powerful current. She might design it so that a wave needs to be surfed to get from one side of the river to the other, in order to prevent getting flushed downstream by the current.
The goal of the paddler is to get from Start to Finish, as fast as possible. Touching a pole adds 5 seconds to his time. Missing a gate, passing through in the wrong direction, or out of sequence, adds 50 seconds for each mistake.
Racers are ranked based on their performance in races of varying difficulty. Beginners start off in the "D" category, and work their way up to "A" Expert. Special races, like the Team Trials, earn extra points.
Some of the members of my club WERE running their own "C & D" level slalom races. One was pretty cocky and mouthy about it. I decided to show him that he was NOT the pinnacle of kayaking perfection. The training and playing on harder rivers gave me an advantage. I wasn't winning, but did pretty well against the dedicated slalom racers.
Fortune noticed me. One day in early Spring, I was getting an ice-water river workout below a staircase of waterfalls, with snow decorating the rocks. A photographer for the city newspaper just happened to drive across the bridge downstream, took some pictures, and interviewed me. He screwed up the information I gave him. The next morning, my picture was on the front page of the newspaper, with a caption stating the *I* was preparing for the US Team Trials. I had no such delusions. I took tremendous rations of sh!t from other club members. There was only one way to save face.
I knew I could safely paddle the river where the race would be held. I called the race organizer. I got his approval to register. My goal was to finish, without capsizing, getting pinned, or ending up dead last. I beat that goal, by two or three positions.
I never had any delusions of earning a spot on the Olympic team, but they let me on the course with the Big Boys, who gave me helpful advice, and I didn't embarrass myself, or my club. It was a surprise bonus when the annual rankings came in the mail: the extra points I earned by racing in the US Team Trial, had carried me over the line into the "Upper Division". I was ecstatic.
Whitewater kayaking is the most challenging, exciting, and satisfying thing I ever did in my life.
Imagine an interstate highway.
Take away the lane lines.
Add traffic.
Now imagine that the pavement is flowing, in your direction of travel.(current)
Add potholes, big enough to hurt you. (rocks)
Throw in a few major bomb craters. ("holes")
Remove an occasional bridge, fell a tree across the path. (waterfalls, and downed trees - generally NOT on a race course)
It's fun, a little like playing "Asteroids" or "Tetris". Try to keep up.
"The game, Pyle, is played with your life, the lives of your buddies" - #TSCC, Derek Reese, GBtAT
The analogy isn't perfect. On a river, you can use some of these features to your advantage, to rest, or change direction.
You learn how to read the river, deal with the challenges, and build strength, over a period of a year or two.
I was doing this for fun. I started in a tandem canoe, with a partner who frequently chose his own path around the same rock. To preserve the friendship, we switched to single kayaks. We taught each other to Eskimo Roll, and then went to advanced training, at a school run by a Canadian national slalom champion.
I didn't start racing right away, but used what I learned to have more fun on harder rivers.
Running a slalom course adds another level of complexity. By stringing pairs of poles called gates, over specific points on the river, the paddler is required to pass between them, in sequence, in the correct direction, without touching the poles. To make it challenging, the course designer hangs gates near obstacles, or on opposite sides of a powerful current. She might design it so that a wave needs to be surfed to get from one side of the river to the other, in order to prevent getting flushed downstream by the current.
The goal of the paddler is to get from Start to Finish, as fast as possible. Touching a pole adds 5 seconds to his time. Missing a gate, passing through in the wrong direction, or out of sequence, adds 50 seconds for each mistake.
Racers are ranked based on their performance in races of varying difficulty. Beginners start off in the "D" category, and work their way up to "A" Expert. Special races, like the Team Trials, earn extra points.
Some of the members of my club WERE running their own "C & D" level slalom races. One was pretty cocky and mouthy about it. I decided to show him that he was NOT the pinnacle of kayaking perfection. The training and playing on harder rivers gave me an advantage. I wasn't winning, but did pretty well against the dedicated slalom racers.
Fortune noticed me. One day in early Spring, I was getting an ice-water river workout below a staircase of waterfalls, with snow decorating the rocks. A photographer for the city newspaper just happened to drive across the bridge downstream, took some pictures, and interviewed me. He screwed up the information I gave him. The next morning, my picture was on the front page of the newspaper, with a caption stating the *I* was preparing for the US Team Trials. I had no such delusions. I took tremendous rations of sh!t from other club members. There was only one way to save face.
I knew I could safely paddle the river where the race would be held. I called the race organizer. I got his approval to register. My goal was to finish, without capsizing, getting pinned, or ending up dead last. I beat that goal, by two or three positions.
I never had any delusions of earning a spot on the Olympic team, but they let me on the course with the Big Boys, who gave me helpful advice, and I didn't embarrass myself, or my club. It was a surprise bonus when the annual rankings came in the mail: the extra points I earned by racing in the US Team Trial, had carried me over the line into the "Upper Division". I was ecstatic.