Dunedin Winter Kayak Series - Race 5 Henley 21st August 2011

Race 5 of the winter Kayak series was on this morning out at Henley., It was about a 12km course up the Taieri river and back. A strong wind made it hard paddling into it. There was only about 10 hardy souls at this race today due to a postponement from last weekend. I had a good solid hit out and headed off at a pretty fast pace from the start but maybe a little too fast as I was caught by 4 chasing paddlers and passed just before the turn around and settled into a more manageable pace to end up finishing 5th fastest for the race in 1hr24min. The Kayak races are always a good hit out and gauranteed way to destroy the upper body muscles for the rest of the day.

Race 3 Dunedin Tri Club Winter Series - Sunday 31st July 2011

This race was out at Henley. The morning was a super duper frost and the course of 5km Kayak/20km Cycle/5km Run had to be changed to a slightly shorter cycle consisting of out and back laps of about a 3km loop – the planned course of riding over the Henley Bridge was changed due to the bridge being covered in Ice and Frost. The Kayak started off well where I was charging hard from the start early on Matty Graham and myself led out and made a good mark on the rest of the field trailing, close behind us was a couple of other paddlers. I worked hard through the paddle to hang onto Matty in his K1, we exited the paddle together and onto the bike together. It wasn’t long before Matty’s stronger legs opened up a wee lead on the bike, I was hammering hard on all laps of the cycle, it was pretty painful working at a very high intensity and seeing the gap between the leader and your self and the chasers. I finished the bike feeling pretty good other than having frozen feet and hands!! It must have only been a few degrees out there. Onto the run I started with a guy who had just caught me at the end of the bike, the 5km run was all flat and pretty fast, I ran hard but didn’t quite have the legs to stick with the other guy and ended up finishing in 3^rd place which I was pretty happy with. My finish time of 1hr12min40sec was just over 1min off the winning time of Matty G.
link to the results here RACE 3 RESULTS