I am not a world-class athlete. I am
a fairly ordinary guy who works for a living and deals with the physical
issues that most people in their late 30s and early 40s do. However,
I enjoy competing and being in shape just as much now as I did when I was
18. The training methods you will find here are my efforts to do
my best with the time and abilities I have.
I should first emphasize that time in the
boat is of utmost importance. Paddling a canoe or kayak is a technical
endeavor, and one should spend as much time on the water as possible to
master the strokes, the body control, and the boat kinesthetics that the
sport demands. Get out and paddle year-round, and have plenty of
FUN--this is supposed to be something we enjoy, after all. Go fast,
go slow, enjoy the outdoors, have a picnic... make paddling a part of your
life, and those basic skills will become second-nature.
Getting serious about racing means taking
on some higher-intensity training. Doing so, however, is something
that few people can sustain for 52 weeks a year, and so I train hard for
just a few months each year. The Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak
Race, a race of about three miles on the Mississippi River at Memphis,
takes place the first Saturday of each May, and I plan my annual training
cycle to produce a peak performance in this event.
Why this race? Because the OICKR a first-class
competition. In the last eight years at least five former or current
Olympians have competed, along with many other nationally-competitive racers,
and the desire to place a Memphian as high up in that field as possible
is a great motivator for me.
The summer and early fall could be considered
the "down time" period of my year--I am paddling during this period, but
the intensity is moderate and the next OICKR is a long way off. But
I am nevertheless laying some groundwork. I spend the summer experimenting
with new techniques and pondering the areas in which I would like to improve.
I also try to maintain a decent mileage base, and I get in a few longer
races this time of year, such as the Arkansas River race at Little Rock
(about 8 miles), the North Fork race at Tecumseh, Missouri (two races of
about 8 miles each), and the Hatchie River race at Bolivar, Tennessee (about
7.5 miles).
The "serious" phase of my training for the
OICKR begins around mid-December. I begin nudging the mileage upward
and put myself on a consistent strength program as well. By February,
I am paddling over 500 minutes a week.
Having this strength and endurance base, I
now begin to get more specific about my race conditioning, working on pacing,
speed, and anaerobic fitness. The following links are summaries of
the workouts I did between the end of February and race day in each year
since 2001.
I don't claim to have any magic training secrets;
nor do I guarantee that the training I have done is the absolute best I
could have done, or that my training methods are ideal for every person
who might read this. I post my training logs here simply as a public
service, and I hope that newcomers to the sport of canoe and kayak racing,
or racers who are looking for some new ideas to incorporate into their
training, might find this information useful.