Category: Surf Ski


Ski and Swim Session – Encouraging Signs

Filed Under: Surf Ski, Swim
Oct.17, 2010

Today, I really wanted to test my swimming time after I had already fatigued from the ski leg.  So the plan was to ski from Mermaid Beach to Coolangatta, which isn’t the full course but is about 18kms. From there, do the 700m run south, jump in and swim to Bilinga. My main concern today was the swim time.

Conditions were pretty benign. The swell was about half a foot, there was a mild north westerly wind. They were comparable to last years conditions.

Firstly, I was really happy with my ski time. I made the 18kms averaging 6 minute k’s. Translated over the whole 23km course, this is 2 hours 18 minutes. Last time(about 6 weeks ago) I did the long distance ski paddle in similar conditions, I estimated my full course time to be 2 hours 25 minutes. I found this has given me a real lift. All the hard work is paying off after all, there is improvement!

When I jumped in for the swim, I really noticed how heavy and fatigued my arms were. Within the first 1000m, it really concerned me. During the swim too, I drifted to sand really early, like somewhere around the Kirra SLSC. I couldn’t get off the sand for some reason, the tide must have been coming in or something, drifting me in – I did think I was swimming in a straight line ha ha. Anyway, I finished the swim in 1 hour 13 minutes. I was really pumped with this time, last time I did it I was fresh and I swum 1 hour 11 minutes. It looks like my 70 minute yardstick for this leg is a good one to hold.

So all in all, I was very happy with today’s hit out. It has really picked my spirits up.

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Finish The Coolangatta Gold Course Day 2

Filed Under: Surf Ski, Training
Sep.12, 2010

Today we did the ski leg of the Coolangatta Gold, completing the whole course over the weekend. We actually started at Mermaid Beach, paddled to Kurrawa, turned and went to TH & C SLSC. I think this was about 21kms, as we missed a little bit of distance between Kurrawa and Northcliff. My time was 2 hours 10 minutes. Extrapolating from this the additional 2 kms, my time in good conditions would have been around 2 hours 25 minute. This means that combined with yesterday, my times are all within cutoff. Excellent. My spirits have been raised… especially considering my slump on Thursday. Some additional considerations:

Fluids – I didn’t have any fluids on the day when all the others had their camel backs organised. Stu gave me a water bottle to carry with me. I stopped every half an hour to have a few mouthfuls. I was hesitant to do this as obviously I lost time stopping. The impact of replenishing was immediate and obvious though. Each time I started up after re-hydrating, my paddling was stronger, I felt stronger and my spirits lifted. Having a camel back sorted and re-hydrating while paddling will definitely save  me time.

Time and Distance. The other guys I was paddling with are much stronger paddlers than I am. By Burleigh Heads they were difficult to see out in front, by Currumbin they were gone – they were so far out in front that I could not see them anymore. This translated into a mere 10 minutes in front of me over the course of the 21kms. So line of sight on the water does not translate into time. This is encouraging for me on the day.

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Surf Ski Depression – Close To Giving Up

Filed Under: Reflections, Surf Ski
Sep.09, 2010

I was out on the Surf Ski today in a group and the ocean was a wild mess. The wind was a blowing a strong north east, the chop was severe, I was being thrown around everywhere. Usually I would enjoy the challenge such a day would bring, respect the lessons and the experience I would get out of it. Today though, as I watched the more experienced paddlers deal with the chop much easier than I did and watch them disappear on the horizon, I got a little depressed. What the hell am I thinking. I’ll never be ready on time to participate in this massive race. Only 8 weeks to go and look how far behind I am. What happens if race day is like today.

Having finished the session I was close to throwing in the towel. I wandered up to Stu, my coach and asked if he still thought I was on track, expressing my dissatisfaction and self doubt and he said an interesting thing to me. He told me to stop putting pressure on myself. If I enter the race and get asked to leave the course do to being too far behind, look how far I have come, how much better, fitter and healthier I am for the journey. He pointed out to me what a massive achievement each completed leg would be, given the base I started from and remembering I shaved a full 12 months off my original plan.

Its funny how wise words can turn you around. Its like a huge weight I had been carrying has been lifted off my shoulders. If I don’t get through – big deal, I had a crack and I’ll do better next time. Time to focus and get back to training… just to get better myself.

Thank god for coaches huh

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Surf Ski Training and Sharks – Scary!

Filed Under: Surf Ski
Sep.07, 2010

I had quite a scary experience today. I was paddling the surf ski with my squad just before dusk, we had a bit of a staggered start racing sets session. Being a bit slower than most of my crew, I slowly made my way forward by about 20 metres and waited for our signal to start the next set in the session. We were about 2kms offshore, at Mermaid Beach. While I was waiting, I saw the tip of a fin and a tail, only about 2cms, slowly gliding across the top of the water. It was about 3 metres away, heading straight for me.

“Please let that be a dolphin” I thought to myself as it disappeared under the water. When it reappeared a mere 2 metres away, it was clear to me it was a shark. Dolphins obviously have the up and down swimming motion, this fish’s tail was gliding side to side, ever so slowly, coming right at me.

As it came closer, I saw it was a young hammerhead shark, about 2 metres in length. It came right up to my surf ski, as curious and unaggressive as you’d like, kissed the side of my surf ski, turned and swum away. My heart was pounding…

I let everyone know we had a shark in the area, we continued the session passing the same spot (in long circles) another 3 times. My eyes were peeled but I didn’t see it again. I was safe and made it home to write about it here…

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Byron Bay Ocean Paddle Ski Race

Filed Under: Reflections, Surf Ski
Jul.31, 2010

On Saturday 17th July, I participated in the Byron Bay Ocean Paddle Race. Its basically a big, ocean water race for paddlers of all variety. It includes the super long and fast ocean kayaks, SLS “spec” surf skis (which is what I raced with), paddle boards, SUP surfboards and even those plastic kayaks. The race I competed in was 12kms, although there is talk that it was only 10kms. Being my first ocean race of this kind, I have no perspective on the matter so I don’t know how far it was precisely.

One thing I noticed with this race, as compared to distance running races, is that you do not get the punters who decide to “have a go”. The investment in craft and the time in the water required to become proficient in paddling them means that everyone in the race can paddle. Everyone in the race paddles competitively as one of their past-times. This make the play of the race much different to turning up to the half marathon.

I completed the route in about 1 hour and 2 minutes. The winner (Kane Eckstein) completed it in about 41 minutes. So I completed it, but was not overly competitive. That being said, this has given me a tremendous boost in morale. Coming off the illness I’ve had, I’ve really been feeling negative, believing I am going to struggling to get myself fit enough to make it to the start. Each leg of the race has a cut-off, which you must make if you want to avoid the DNF. For the surf ski (the first) leg, this cut-off is 70 minutes behind the leader. Given the Byron route is about half the distance of the Gold, this translates exceptionally well. I’d be about 45 minutes behind the leader after this leg, well within the 70 minute mark, assuming I held the same pace the entire race. Some other points:

  • Kane is in the Open class – I will be competing in the Masters. This gives me more time to spare.
  • The improvement of the leaders between now and November should be marginal, just the minor improvement to get an edge on their competitors. Coming from such a low base (both fitness and technique) my improvement between now and November should be dramatic, pegging back more time.

In a nutshell, for morale the Byron ski race has done wonders for me. I can’t wait to get to the start line. This experience really shows you the value of competing in lead up races, as the big event approaches.

The following legs do have more stringent cut-offs, here is the list.

1st Leg – Surf Ski – Kurrawa to Northcliffe to TH&C SLSC – 23.00km – 1hr 10min after leader
2nd Leg – Beach Run (1st) – TH&C SLSC to Coolangatta SLSC – 0.65km – 1hr 10min after leader
3rd Leg – Swim – Coolangatta SLSC to Bilinga SLSC – 3.50km – 1hr 25min after leader
4th Leg – Beach Run (2nd) – Bilinga SLSC to Currumbin SLSC – 4.00km – 1hr 30min after leader
5th Leg – Board – Currumbin SLSC to Burleigh Heads SLSC – 5.50km – 1hr 40min after leader
6th Leg – Beach Run (3rd) – Burleigh Heads SLSC to Northcliffe to Kurrawa – 10.00km
TOTAL DISTANCE
46.65km

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Ergo Surf Ski Training – An Encouraging Update

Filed Under: Surf Ski
Jul.22, 2010

I had another session on the Ergo surf ski paddling machine recently. I did a 500m effort which was encouraging. Since March (over 4 months of training) my 500m time went from 2 minutes 53 seconds down to 2 minutes 24 seconds. Its an improvement of about 15%. If I make another 10% improvement between now and November, I’ll be pumped.

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A Week of Firsts – Running and Swimming

Filed Under: Run, Surf Ski, Swim
Jun.11, 2010

Been a pretty good week all up. It started out well on Sunday when I ran my route to Mermaid Beach car park and back. Compared to my effort in April this was much better. It still left me very sore, but not feeling crippled. Coming back too, my knees were not seizing up and I made it back to the start of the hill in Tallebudgera Creek road, finishing the 1 hour 40 minute time requirement for the day and strolled home from there. It was probably 16kms all up, this is longer time wise and distance wise, than I have every run in my life.

From there, I did the hill runs over the Talle Creek Rd hill and for the first time, made it over and back three full times. The last one was very difficult but I pushed through.

Finally in the pool I started me 3 squad sessions per week. I have never done three weekly sessions in the pool on a consistent basis so I am really looking forward to seeing how 3 months of this will see me improve. Today we did a 1km time trial too – I’m not too happy with my effort. 19 minutes 37 seconds. I did my first 100 at 1:41 and every 100 after that was around the 2 minute mark. You can see all the splits at the swim training page – but clearly I have so much work to do in the pool.

Ski training tomorrow – I am looking forward to that one. Since learning how much I was still using my arms to paddle, each session is an opportunity to get my core better.

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An Ergo Surf Ski Session – More Technique Work

Filed Under: Surf Ski
Jun.05, 2010

Learn How To Surf Ski

This morning, we paddled for about an hour in the ocean. We went from Mermaid Beach to Miami and back, then caught waves for 15 minutes or so. Stuey continues to get up and on my back about putting the brakes on when I paddle. Apparently I am clumsy enough with my stoke, that each time I put my paddle in the water, it slows me down a bit, before my stroke regains the lost propulsion through the water. This is terribly inefficient and a problem. I’ve really been struggling to get my head around what I need to do to correct it.

So after our paddle today, we went back into the gym and jumped on the Ergo paddling machine. Stu went first and explained to me that marathon paddlers paddle at about 105 – 107 strokes per minute. He jumped on and illustrated for a couple of minutes. We noticed his paddling consistently generated a 135 watt level. When I jumped on, I struggled to lift my rating above 80 strokes per minute, on the other hand my wattage was around the 170 mark. This is because I was really using me arm strength to bully my way through the stroke. Despite all my training, I am still using my arms too much.

Working through the session, Stu showed me to increase my rating I had to let go of my arm power and increase the emphasis on my core rotation. As I did this, an amazing thing happened – my wattage dropped and my ability to increase my rating picked up. Pretty soon I had dropped my wattage down to the 135 mark and increased my rating to over 100 strokes per minute at a level I could maintain. Sure, I lost a fair amount of technique messing around with this, but I can clean that up later. The two big big eye openers for me from this session were:

  1. how much I was still depending on my arms to paddle when I thought I was using my core
  2. the tremendous gain I got in stroke speed and energy efficiency when I switched to using my core.
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A Ski Training Session In Less Than Benign Conditions

Filed Under: Surf Ski
May.30, 2010

Today we went for a big ski session in terrible conditions. It was pouring rain, the wind had picked up and the waves, if not massive, were washing all over the place.

I learned a few things today. Firstly, there were a couple of hairy situations that I got in and out of. I won’t go through them here, I have covered them in a different blog of mine. If you want to read about them you can by clicking through here: Surf Ski Wipe-Outs In Rough Seas. Both the situations though occurred due to a lack of concentration. I was fine in today’s conditions except when I started checking up on the other paddlers out with me. As soon as I started concerning myself with what they were doing, rather than with what I was doing, in the drink I went.

The second thing that Stu picked up was a paddling technique issue I had. I tend to really labour through every stroke when once I get going, my stroke should be a help along, not a labour. By continuing to labour my strokes once moving, I am braking as much as I am paddling. To explain with a picture, imagine an upside down bike. To get the wheel spinning, you grab it and spin it. To keep the wheel spinning, you do not keep grabbing it though as each time you grab it, you’ll put the brakes on. Rather, you give the wheel shorter, momentum taps and pushes. This is the same with paddling. Once I am moving, I have to concentrate on momentum paddling with a rhythm, rather than really labouring through my strokes.

Relaxation continues to be a problem too – I still do not understand how you can concentrate on everything, paddle in crazy conditions and relax at the same time. I’ll keep trying though.

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Big Surf, Intimidating Waves and a Surf Ski

Filed Under: Surf Ski
Apr.21, 2010

I have had some experiences with monster waves recently. Two experiences particularly were pretty intense, they were good learning experiences though.

The first was at the Mermaid Beach club championships on Sunday. I was winning the masters ski race, coming in off the last buoy and rather than, like the other “wiser masters” did, waiting for a manageable wave to catch in, I took off on a bomb. It was 3 – 4′ I reckon. I got pretty excited as I flew down the face, gees you fly fast on these bigger waves. I have to say though, I knew right from early on that I was having trouble managing it. I was keeping the ski straight but I just could not hold my balance effectively enough to really start stroking again at the bottom of the wave.

So I got to the bottom, leveled out and flew out in front of the wave. I tried to start stroking again, but while doing my balancing act, I did not really get any purchase and then **BOOM** the wave crashed down behind me, it was a big dumper! When the surge of white water hit me, I just lost it. Off the ski I came, I lost my paddle and I was picked up by the wave and tossed “over the falls”. I was a little bit lucky that the wave had already taken my ski away as I had no control whatsoever, if it was in my way I would have been thrown onto it.

The lesson here was I still need to work on my balance, particularly when the conditions are more critical. And I need more practise with bigger waves.

The second experience was at training on Tuesday, similar size and conditions but I was heading out rather than coming in. From the shore, it didn’t look as bad as it was. I was heading out with Stu, marking time till I saw a break. I saw one and went. As happens so often (well – to me anyway) with surf sports, just when you think you’ve made it out, an extra big wave rolls through, breaking right where you are at the time. It is like Poseidon rears up and wants to slap you down! Well, this is what happened. I shat myself (if you’ll excuse the phraseology). The wave hit me right in the chest and slapped me back, for the first time I was hit hard enough that when I was pushed backwards in my seat, my head actually hit the ski. I was pinned on the ski for a second or too also, underwater, before the ski rolled, throwing me clear.

Stu who was watching behind me said I could probably have attacked the wave harder. Really hitting it hard to pop through. Deep down I know he is right. I was intimidated, I took the foot off the pedal before getting to the wave, bracing myself and in the process, letting myself be dominated. That is the learning from that experience. In those situations you just have to attack!

One last point, I was there and I survived. Easily swimming out of both situations, retrieving paddle and craft along the way. My confidence and will to go again has skyrocketed.

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