Back on the river

A cracking weekend of training. Saturday was a solo trip to the gym. I had a mind to have a long session so made a point of having a high carbohydrate breakfast about an hour before.

I started out with my usual warm up on the rowing machine. This time out I did 20 minutes at setting 6 though.

I then worked my way around the room. Starting with 3 sets of 15 at 66kgs on the erector spinæ. I headed across to the floor and did the plank and hand to knee sits, both twice to failure. I did some curls with the weights 3 sets of 15 with the 5kgs.

Then back for some more cardio. 20 minutes on the treadmill. I started at 7.5 mph but at the halfway mark my heart was set to explode, so I slowed to walking pace for me to catch my breath before continuing the rest of the distance at 7mph.

The shoulder injury seems to be about gone, and I want to start reinforcing the joint with some muscle mass so I headed off to the banned machines. The chest press, 3 sets of 15 at about 23kgs (I can’t remember the weight I just found one that was well within my ability) the shoulder press, 3 sets of 15 at about 23kgs. The arm curls 2 sets of 15 at 18kgs. And finally the seated dips, 3 sets of 15 at 36kgs.

I followed this up with a bit more cardio work. 20 minutes on the cross trainer at level 8. I had pretty much run out of machines to play on so I headed to the pool. 20 minutes of swimming and I was done.

Sunday morning saw me and Nigel get onto the water again. It was another frosty affair but unlike last Sunday the sun was shining and it was quite pleasant.

Nigel had to borrow my dads boat again as we still haven’t tracked one down for him, this time we pushed the footrests to the bottom of the boat to see if that would be more comfortable.


The river was in high flow, Wales must have had a fair volume of rain over the course of the week, a little bit higher and I wouldn’t have considered going out but it was safe enough, just very hard going upstream.

Nigel needs to get miles in the kayak under his belt. His paddling is fine, he has the basic technique but he doesn’t yet have the boat control or feel for how his strokes are affecting his progress. Like last time he found himself inexplicably turning around every now and again. This was exaggerated by the fast flow of the river which gladly spun him every time he executed an uneven stroke.

It was so cold that ice was forming on the deck of my boat and at one point when I took my gloves off to take a photo the gloves stuck to the ice on my spraydeck.

We travelled from the tile museum slipway to alongside the power station which is about half a mile against the flow of the river. It had taken us about 40 minutes or so and Nigel was getting cold hands as he kept dipping them into the water, to add to the discomfort the footrests were digging into his ankles as well. We headed back.

With the flow of the river, that 40 minute journey upstream became a 10 minute blast back to the launch point.

Nigel was happy with the session and he is learning fast but we both need to be in a boat more than we currently are.