Susan's Evolution: 15 Pounds, 15 Feet and White Knuckles

Monday, February 22, 2010

How often do you get to genuinely feel like a true beginner again, after practicing a sport for nearly a decade? Almost never.

You can fake it, like letting a 6 year old catch you in a game of tag, or...

You can fudge it, like using only one arm to shoot hoops.

But rarely do you get to feel the excitement and anticipation of square one again.

If you have been kayaking for as long as I have try sitting in a wildwater boat and you'll know exactly what I mean. Throw everything you know about the forward stroke, torso rotation and edge control out with the trash. Get the slate as blank as possible, you're going to need it.

Chris Hipgrave flies under the bridge. Photo: Adam Elliott

Perhaps this doesn't sound like a very good idea? You spend years developing skills and techniques and reach a fairly advanced level within a sport. Why would you want to throw it all out the window.

To get better.

It also makes class III really REALLY exciting again.

JP demonstrating the kind of focus you need to paddle the boat correctly. Photo: Adam Elliott

Me, just holding on and trying to keep up. Photo: Adam Elliott

The boat is going to teach me a lot about kayaking that I might have assumed I already knew. Just trying to get a proper forward stroke is sometimes too much for me to think about. I find myself returning to taking it in pieces, just like how I recommend my students approach learning to paddle.

I continue to struggle finding a sufficient level of comfort in the boat so that I'm not just using correctional strokes the whole way down. A little padding here, a new seat from the Czech Republic and many, many more days on the water should help out a lot. I can only imagine what this is going to feel like when I have my ducks in a row and can work on paddling as hard as I possibly can. My sister did comment that the boat looked like a torpedo. I answered "that's because it is."