Green Race Training 201
The 2017 Green Race Lineup. Do you want to be here???
Welcome back to your sophomore year of Green Race Training. Here are my top goals to reach before it is time for you to step up to race the Green Race. Reminder, these are mere ideas that I have learned through the years and maybe could have been utilized a bit earlier in my career. They are not in order of importance, they are all important.
Endurance is your friend.
Even though the Green Race is only ~5 minutes long, being able to drop into Gorilla not breathing too hard is always a hard task to learn.
Get used to paddling while fatigued.
This means, go to a kayaking run where you are the most comfortable and start going down every rapid as fast as you can. More mistakes happen when you are fatigued and being able to come back from those mistakes is even more difficult when you are already tired. Attainments are also handy to practice this talent.
Find people to paddle with who will cheer for you through anything.
Find your crew.
Having a crew that understands your goals every time you put on the river aids in your training process without creating a rift between the group.
Backstrokes, though sometimes totally necessary, greatly slow you down.
I think of backstrokes as a “negative” stroke. They pretty much do everything that doesn’t allow you to be efficient going downstream. When you think about putting a backstroke in, think about putting a forward stroke in on the other side instead, or edging harder.
Visualization works.
The ability to visualize each rapid, stroke for stroke, gives your brain the ability to learn what you are about to put it through, minimizing surprises. This is a learned ability. I started off learning it at the ripe age of 7 when I was a swimmer but that morphed into whitewater kayaking really well when I was young. My husband once told me, the week before the Green Race, he was watching me sleep (creepy). My breathing got fast and sudden, my whole body was twitching. There were moments of lulls and then moments where my movements and breathing got really rapid. This went on for about four and a half minutes, to only go straight back into a still sleep, breathing normally.
Don’t be a sitting duck.
Being proactive when a line is going wrong could be the difference between you finishing the rapid or ending up in a swim meet. Panicking is not going to do you any good when you suddenly find yourself backward between the notch and the pad at Gorilla.
Seeing Double??? I was lapping Zwicks the day before the race in 2017. I must have walked up 5 times before the talented photographer Rob Giersch got this photo.
Snowy Robertson, Dagger Kayaks designer and my loving husband, not taking the fast line during the race in 2018.
Photo by: Clay Wright
Lap your rapids.
I like to run a rapid and if I mess it up, I walk back up and run it again. Not only does this make me run in the rapid a bit fatigued but I learn from my mistakes immediately.
Work on finding fast water.
This is a trait that is hard to learn, it takes years. The ones who are best at it are slalom racers. They know where the path of least resistance is and make a point to get there. Sometimes this means just barely skirting the big waves in the middle of a rapid or slamming it into an eddyline. If your face is getting wet, you aren’t taking the dryline. A dry line is a fast line, most of the time.
Have fun.
If you arent having fun training for an event, you probably shouldn’t do it. My best races have been won with the pretense of just wanting to have a good time.
When I put in the water, I have certain goals set for that river run. Even if it is a new run and I know I will never race it. This trains your brain to think while you are paddling downstream and working on what goals you have set for yourself. Write them down, maybe even on your hand with a sharpie. Just to remind yourself through the day. Good luck and tell me if you notice any differences or have questions/comments! Thanks for reading.
In the end, kayaking is all about the friends you make along the way and the impact you make.