Challenge The Wind

 Challenge The Wind

Whoop whoop I made it to 💯 days on the water! 

 

I wasn’t sure I would cross the finish line before the ice forced me to stop. That’s because I had a bit of a slow start to the season, and honestly - after the Red River Paddle Challenge - I was feeling a little burned out from all the hard days on the water.  

Why the goal of 100 paddle sessions? The number is actually arbitrary, and I got the idea from Brad Friesen. When you think about it getting in 100 days in Manitoba is a relatively difficult thing to do because we have nine months of winter in central Canada (unlike the East and West coasts), and all our rivers, lakes and ponds freeze solid. They don’t call us ‘WinterPeg’ for nothing. 

I had been warned off paddling today because it was too windy. You can imagine what I had to say about that. “Sometimes to live your best life you have to challenge the wind!”

For my 100th session I planned on getting in a ‘one sided threshold effort’. This is no mean feat when the wind direction changes with every bend in the river. Just to be clear, I literally paddle on one side, without switching, for 30+ minutes as hard as I can. However, the wind had something else in mind. 

What ended up happening was I paddled for 40-minutes up river, which was actually ‘downwind’ much of the way. Going upriver at 9 km/hr surfing the waves without paddling in the middle of the prairies is really cool. Give it a try the next time we have a strong northeast wind on the Red River of the North.  

It took 40-minutes of surfing and laughing and smiling and having a grand old time to reach the BDI (i.e., local ice cream hangout). I can only imagine what people fishing along the riverbank thought when they saw me flying upriver and whooping and hollering like a kid on Christmas morning. Days like this are a gift, not something to be avoided. 

Lucky for me I enjoy this paddling thing because what I did next was probably against what you might call better judgement. Without a moments hesitation I turned around and headed back downriver right into the teeth of the wind.

I had to laugh at the insanity of the situation. I was choked up on the paddle, crouched as low as I could be, huffing and puffing like the old man I am, and churning away at 80 SPM but making zero headway. Amazing! Does it get better than that?!? 

With almost zero current at this time of year, it really was a grind pushing against a sustained 35 km/hr wind for almost an hour, but the 50 km/hr gusts put the icing on my paddle cake. You gotta love it! Right?!?

All in all, it was a good day to paddle, sunny, windy, and choppy. A perfect day for my 100th paddle in my training log. 

 

Dave