After the monotony of the first week of classes, I left Bowdoin behind on Friday afternoon for the four-hour drive to Baxter State Park, home of Mount Katahdin. With a couple of other Bowdoin Outing Club leaders, I was leading a weekend hike up the tallest mountain in Maine—one of the most beautiful in the northeast. Following some sweet driving at speed on the highway up to Millinocket (with a brief stop for urination and the purchase of delicious gummy sharks), we arrived at our campsite at Roaring Brook just after dark. A gigantic dinner of couscous with sausage sent us to bed.

            I could give you the blow-by-blow of our hike, but I think that most people would probably fall asleep if I tried to chronicle the entire day. Some choice moments included:

–Eating a watermelon at the top.

–When I learned how bidets are actually used (you’re not supposed to sit in them–don’t worry, I’d never actually tried this).

–Running into the COC(K), or Colby Outing Club. This may not actually have been the Colby Outing Club, but rather a mindless agglomeration of Colby students. Suffice to say that my disdain for them is at least partially merited, if not entirely.

–When I tried to eat cranberries, and Nick (co-leader and ski team captain), flipped out because THEY COULD BE POISONOUS.

–Eating absurd amounts of pepperoni and cheese, with appropriately minimal quantities of accompanying tortilla.

When we got down, we made one of the most awesome, rad, extreme dinners ever:

ramen bombs. If you’ve never experienced the goodness that is ramen bombs, allow me to enlighten you. The gist of it is, combine cooked ramen with instant mashed potatoes. Season with whatever you want—we used ramen packet seasoning and cheese, though sausage or bacon or some other meat product would have been a welcome addition. It was awesome, and sufficiently high on the glycemic index that we all needed more sugar from brownies and smores to stave off the inevitable crash that would have otherwise followed.

          I’ve been doing much better this year than in years past in terms of being a responsible athlete. Since April or May, I’d only been sick once, and even with some annoying allergy problems, I haven’t had health interfere with training at all.

            Until this week. I think it was bound to happen at some point, as you have like 1600 people all coming from different places with different germs at the beginning of the school year. Looking back, there were probably a few things I could have done differently, mainly drinking water in the 24 hours between the end of the Katahdin hike and the beginning of my specific strength workout the next day. But this is in the past. Monday morning I woke up with one of the most intense sore throats I’ve had ever. The only thing consoling me is that about half of the rest of the school is sick, as is the same proportion of the ski team. I’ve been pounding the Vitamin C and water, and hopefully I’ll be good to go by tomorrow. 

Below are some gratuitous watermelon shots, as well as some other good pictures…

School is finally here, which along with little sleep and lots of work, also brings freshmen. For those unfamiliar with higher education, freshmen are essentially gifts from on high made to more experienced members of the ski team–useless balls of clay for us to shape into handsome, athletic specimens.
Well, sort of. If you thought that this was going to be a post about hazing, think again. (We keep those reports and pictures under wraps.) No, in all seriousness, it’s very exciting every fall to get a new bunch of fresh faces ready and excited to train hard, learn about the sport, and make new friends.
This year, the incoming group of skiers has actually doubled the size of the team. We’ve got something like six or seven new guys and a similar number of girls. They come from far and wide– Utah, Western Mass., Upstate New York, Minnesota, Michigan, and Maine–and they also boast impressive resumes. We’ve got a Michigan state champion, multiple Junior Olympic attendees, and some plain-old all-around solid athletes.
One of the most exciting things about the new freshmen are the rollerskis that they’ve been using during captain’s practices. I’m currently on a pair of V2 920s for classic, which are normally decent speed, but the bearings in them are seriously in the hurt locker. Trying to keep up with some of these new kids on their Proskis, Sharks, and Swenors has been causing me quite a bit of pain; I think I’m going to have to spring for some new wheels at a certain point or I’ll be doing a lot of training by myself.
The other exciting thing that happened this week was the absolute last paddling excursion I’ll be participating in this fall. On Saturday, I cruised down to the Rapid River (near Bethel) with the Bowdoin Outing Club for some solid class IV boating, which apparently results in disaster when combined with canoes. I felt really badass as the only person in our group in an open boat right up until the first four rapids, which resulted in four successive swims (see pictures). I then proceeded to slice open my right palm on a kayak paddle while trying to surf at a sweet play spot. Hmmmm…..
I’m heading up to Katahdin this weekend for a solid hike with a few other ski team members. Hopefully I’ll have an exciting report on that next week, although if it weren’t quite as exciting as the Presi traverse that’d be fine by me…

It’s been two weeks since I’ve last posted–I’ve been busy. First I was home getting all my stuff ready for school, and then I was out in the Maine woods and on Maine rivers leading some incoming Bowdoin first-years on a whitewater canoeing trip. Bowdoin’s pre-orientation sends out some 40 trips of 8-10 freshman out with two leaders doing various exciting activities, including hiking, paddling, surfing, biking, and community service. Training fell a bit by the wayside for a week, but it was worth it in exchange for the opportunity to mold some impressionable youths. The pictures are glamor shots of me and my co-leaders.

But yes, the moment I’ve been waiting so long for is finally approaching: the end of summer. I know it sounds a little crazy that a student might actually be awaiting the beginning of school, but there are actually quite a few things to be excited for–no more 40-hour a week internship, organized practices, meal plan. The meal plan is the only way I can psychologically justify the ridiculous Bowdoin price tag–19 delicious breakfasts, lunches, and dinners a week from the nation’s second (or third, I can’t remember) ranked dining service. Among my favorites are the buffalo chicken burger, Mongolian chicken hot pot, cheese and bean tostada–the list could go on forever. Seriously though, the addition of more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains added to my diet by the Bowdoin dining halls may potentially improve my physical well-being, even if curly fries and bi-weekly ice cream bar does not. Being able to tuck into a huge breakfast or dinner immediately following a hard workout will also be nice, as opposed to having to cook it after I’m finished. Tomorrow’s semester-inaugurating lobster bake marks the beginning of classes, as does the two-mile “lobster run” that takes place directly beforehand.

I haven’t been doing too much exciting for training for the past couple of weeks–I did have a really nice three hour classic ski last weekend, however. One thing that I thought was worth mentioning: I saw two kids jumping on pogo sticks in their driveway, and for the first time while rollerskiing I was pretty confident that I’d seen someone doing something that was actually more odd than what I was doing.

Much excitement comes my way this weekend with the Blue Angels performing in the Great State of Maine Air Show this weekend at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. My room on the fourteenth floor of Coles Tower makes for optimal viewing; give me a buzz if you’re going to be in the area…

5 AM on Saturday morning, I crawled out of bed and drove down route 2 in New Hampshire with Nick Crawford to attempt a Presidential Traverse. If you’ve never tried it, a Presi traverse is something like a 20 mile hike, hitting the summits of most of the highest peaks in the Whites. We were hoping to finish in something like 12 hours, and avoid thunder and lightning despite the 60% chance of rain and storms. Between the two of us, we carried four liters of water, 10 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, rain gear, and a map.

By 5:35, we were on the trail and hiking up towards our first peak, Mount Madison. After an hour of walking, we were about halfway there, but had already been passed by three French Canadians and a lone hiker carrying what appeared to be a large suitcase. By 8, we’d made it to the top, and were hoping to walk the remaining six or so miles to Mt. Washington in time to see the finish of the bicycle hill climb, which happened to be taking place that day.

The next mountain we tackled was Mt. Adams, which according to Nick is the highest roadless peak in the entire northeast. Very exciting. From the summit of Adams, we headed down towards the next peak, Mt. Jefferson. 

Coming down from the top of Adams, a familiar-looking girl blew by us, as did three more fit, college-aged students soon afterwards. Using our powers of deductive reasoning, Nick and I determined that these were probably cross-country skiers, which was confirmed after we introduced ourselves. It turns out that it was Kathleen Maynard of Colby, along with three of her friends, two of whom were also skiers at Williams–and they were attempting the same hike as us. Not willing to be outdone by Colby or by girls, Nick and I matched their pace and tagged along towards Mount Washington.

Apparently Mt. Clay doesn’t count as an official presidential peak due to weenie distinctions of height and elevation, but we decided to summit anyways, as it only added a little distance to our route. A quick history lesson: Mt. Clay is named for Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser. A prominent congressman in the early 19th century, Clay came up with numerous plans that allowed for new states to be formed without upsetting the balance between slave states and free states. The most important of these by far was the Missouri Compromise of 1820–the act that created the state of Maine. Thus, I’m glad to say that we honored the memory of Mr. Clay by summitting the mountain that bears his name.

Between Mount Clay and Mount Washington, the weather started to get gnarly. Rain started falling, and I was dumb enough to comment that “at least it’s not snowing.” No sooner had those words left my mouth than pebble-sized hail began pelting us. Then, to make matters worse, we started hearing thunder and lightning. Above treeline, half a mile from the summit, this was about the worst place in the world to be for us to be during a thunderstorm.

The danger of our predicament was reaffirmed after one lightning strike where I actually felt a very, very mild snap through my body (does this count as being hit by lightning?). At that point, we ran just about as fast as we could to the summit of Washington, avoiding any further lightning strikes. At the top, there are a whole bunch of antennas and other apparatuses, so we walked over to quickly check out the stragglers still struggling to finish the bike race (the finish clock said something like 2:40 at this point, making for an average speed of like 2.5 mph up the 7 mile auto road). Amusingly, and perhaps sadly too, people were falling off their bikes on the steepest stretch up to the finish line (I think it’s 22%–so says Nick, who has raced it twice), because the hail had made the pavement quite slippery.

For lunch, it was 3 PB+J’s apiece in the visitor’s center, which we unfortunately had to share with the aforementioned stragglers. The weather improved a bit, so we headed out quickly to the next safe point on our route–the Lake of the Clouds AMC hut, which is a mile and a half from the Mt. Washington summit. We made it there with no real problems or lightning strikes, took a quick water break, and headed towards the next peak–Mount Monroe.

As we were leaving the hut, I was preoccupied with the large, dark, threatening storm clouds making their way towards us. I was pretty concerned, but nobody else in our group seemed to mind, so we continued on. Over the top of Monroe, we were quickly enveloped in fog/cloud, which was actually pretty cool–we couldn’t see more than about 10 yards in front of us. It got darker and darker, though, and then started to rain, and then lightning, and then thunder. And then the thunder started to sound like it was getting really close.

At this point, we were faced with a tough decision–three more miles of really exposed hiking until we reached the beginning of the descent and treeline, or a quick mile back to the Lake of the Clouds hut. And when I say we were faced with a tough decision, mostly I mean there was a lot of heated conversation, hand wringing, head shaking, etc. We finally decided to head back to the hut, and amazingly escaped any lightning strikes on the way there. Fortunately, the family with four children all under 12 years of age caught in a similar spot to us also made it to safety (if I ever have kids, I don’t think I’m taking them outside unless there’s 0% chance of rain).

We hung out in the hut for a while, debated whether to head down to the valley on a nearby trail, and ultimately decided to keep going when the weather cleared. The sun came out for a bit, and it the weather seemed promising again, so we prepared to depart again. As soon as we stepped outside though, a bunch of us saw a huge bolt of lightning jump across two relatively innocuous looking clouds heading our way, so we decided to hike out.

One of the Williams skiers’ mom met us at the bottom of the trail down from the hut. A few of us wanted to run to our car to finish the hike, so the friendly mom agreed to drop our packs off at the car. Forty five minutes and five miles later, we arrived at the parking lot in full, bright sunshine.

Totals for the day: something like 15 miles hiked, 5 more run, one-half lightning strike, and a lot of peanut butter and jelly. I had three really good pieces of bacon pizza at the Mallard Mart in Bethel on the way home (highly recommended). Bottom line–the Presi Traverse will have to be attempted again before the end of the summer, as we were tantalizingly close to completing it. We’ve got a few pictures, but I don’t have them yet–I’ll put them up when I do…

Also–”travers” in the title is not a typo–we almost finished, but didn’t, so I left out the e….

So, two of my major goals for the summer were sticking to a 550-hour training plan, and to diligently record my hours in a training log. Thus far on this blog, I’ve been showing everyone the glamorous side of summer (races, hikes, swordfish, etc.), but in order to accomplish the aforementioned goals, there’s also been a decent amount of the mundane-rollerskis, runs, strength and threshold sessions, which I have managed to record in an online excel spreadsheet.

I just finished my internship on Friday, and I’ve got a 10-day vacation ahead of me before I return to school to lead a bunch of freshmen on a whitewater canoeing trip. Since I’ve got some time, I figured I’d do a little number crunching, both to share with any readers and to help me take stock of the training I’ve done. Also, I’m aware that this post is a little bit self-congratulatory, but I figure self-congratulation is justified after 65 hours of rollerskiing…

Nat’s Summer, By the Numbers:

Total hours trained since May 1st: 160.88

Total rollerski hours: 65.7–at 12 kph, that ends up being about 490 miles, or from Brunswick to Ithaca, NY

Average rollerski hours per week since June 1st (when I bothered to start using them): 6.57 (much better than last summer’s dismal average of .5 hours per week)

Shortest workout: 15 minute run in the middle of the night in the pouring rain on April 29th, the first day of the training season (I was in a really, really bad mood)

Longest workout: 240 minutes–hiking Mt. Washington

Longest real workout: 210 minutes on rollerskis (2 times, once classic and once skate)

Biggest week: 16.3 hours–I’ve got 16.5 hours planned for this week                 Rollerskiing is rad!

Smallest week: 8.75 hours (not including the last few hectic weeks of school)

Hours of threshold training (all on rollerskis): 5.4

Number of bike races since June 1: 3

Number of bike races last year: 25

Number of rollerski crashes: 1

I’m including my training log to prove I’m not making all this stuff up–I have to credit Marty Hall with the template…

Nat’s Training, 2008-09

Also, the photo is courtesy of James Cook, and was taken in the fall of 2006.

Bowdoin Ski Team at the summit of Mount Washington

L-R Maren Askins, Nat Herz, Anna Ackerman, Spencer Eusden, Shem Dixon, Nick Crawford, Tom Cook, Woody Mawhinney,

The tale of the Bowdoin ski team’s ascent of Mt. Washington begins on Saturday night, as I was trying to fall asleep. Instead of drifting peacefully off to relaxing Enya music or anything like that, I was actually being serenaded by the lovely voices of the Bowdoin baseball team as they partied in the next apartment over.

“GET FU-KED UP!!!”

“DRINKIE DRINKIE DRINKIE!”

It seemed as if they were playing some sort of game involving chanting these lines over and over. And so on and so forth until the wee hours of the morning, much to my simultaneous amusement and chagrin. At a certain point, though, my fatigue won out over the cacophany, and I fell asleep.

Sunday morning I woke up around 6:30 and met up with about 6 other skiers on my team that had gathered at Bowdoin for a summer training weekend. We piled into vehicles and set off west, stopping at the lovely Bridgton Hannaford’s for some provisioning. Coffee was delicious and entirely necessary.

The forecast for Sunday had looked dubious at best, and we drove through a few showers, but by the time we got to Pinkham Notch the rain had mostly tapered off. We suited up in our finest synthetic clothing and set off toward storied Tuckerman’s Ravine. We set a surprisingly steady pace, and made it up to the summit in about 2.5 hours. Some highlights from the hike up:

1. A rock sneaking up from nowhere and brutally attacking my left knee. I now have scrapes to match the ones I got on my right knee from a rollerski crash while sprinting for a town line.

2. Freshmen I’ve known for less than 24 hours already giving me crap.

3. The old guy who said “not much, woof,” when I asked him what was up, dawg.

4. The ATVs that were the first things we saw once we got to the summit.

Once we made it to the summit, we cruised into the observatory for a delicious lunch of peanut butter and jelly, peaches, and watermelon. Yes, that’s correct–watermelon. I swear. It was really good, too. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture before it was all gone, so you’re going to have to take my word for it. But regardless of whether you believe me or not, you should try it. Watermelons are perfect for adding a challenge to a hike, because you eat it at the top and don’t have to carry it down and ruin your knees.

No highlights from the way down. In fact, I actually managed to get dropped by the rest of the team on the descent, though fortunately our captain Nick Crawford was dropped too and kept me company.

The way down, on the Lion’s Head Trail (sorry–I couldn’t quite figure out how to align these pictures)

Amazingly, I woke up on Monday unable to move. Who knew that hiking was going to make me so sore? Everyone in my office has been making fun of me all week for hobbling around like an old man…

Despite soreness, Mt. Washington is still totally rad!

With two more long weeks left in my internship, I was hoping for an exciting, confidence-boosting weekend–the high from which I would ride through the monotony of the work week. At least I got some excitement…

On Friday, I cruised down to Western Massachusetts with a couple of friends for one of my last bike races of the year–the mythical Tour of the Hilltowns. I’ve ridden a lot in the area, knew the course, and was racing with lowly cat 3s, instead of mixed in with pros, cat 1s, and cat 2s. I haven’t been riding too much, but I’ve been training for skiing really well, and I’d had a great spring on the bike. There was no way I could screw this one up.

Fueled with oatmeal and fresh raspberries from my friend’s house, I breezed through the first 20 miles of the race to the bottom of the first big climb, a 3 mile, 6% grade up East Hawley Rd.

My friends had warned me that I should probably be at the front at the beginning of the climb, so as not to make things more difficult for myself. I had initially planned to heed that advice, but then there was a long downhill, which left me at the back. I still planned to move up in the field, but I decided instead to mess around switching the empty water bottle on my bike for the full one on my back, so that I’d be able to drink easily on the climb and over the top when I would surely be in an escape group.

We started the climb. I was at the back. My legs started to hurt. I passed maybe 30 people, but there were still 50 in front of my. My legs started to hurt more. Much more–to the point where I was struggling to maintain contact with the field.

Then I had to slow down, and watch the field ride away. Then I got passed by the support car going over the top. I worked with a group of maybe 10 guys to close some of the gap, but to no avail, and then I dropped my chain and cramped up hard while getting back on my bike. The 20 other guys behind me all rode past  as I stretched it out–I waved as they went by.

Muscle spasms under control, I was left with about 30 miles of pedaling back to the finish. Rather than suffer, I rode easy the rest of the way around the loop, contemplating my fitness, and misfortune.

With 20 miles to go, I smelled goodness. I wasn’t sure what it was, but then I came around a corner and came upon a country store with a grill out front. One of my friends had stopped at a barbeque at this race last year, so I figured it was worth a try.

I walked over to the woman manning the grill, and asked her if there was a discount for cyclists– expecting and hoping that she’d just offer me something delicious right then and there. Instead, she just grinned and said “sure…”

I reached into my jersey pockets, fully knowing that there was no wallet inside, and came up with a strawberry banana powergel.

“Crap,” I said. “All I’ve got is this gel. Can I trade it to you for something?”

The woman laughed.

“Sure, why not? We’ve got lamb kebabs, shrimp kebabs, and swordfish kebabs.”

Swordfish it was. I grabbed a kebab, thanked the woman, and hopped back on my bike as fast as I could before she reconsidered. It was delicious.

On Sunday, I went on a pretty solid 3-hour classic ski. That went really well until I got my rollerskis tangled up, ate s—, and broke a pole. On an uphill. No consolation there…

Lessons learned from this weekend:

1. Rollerskiing does not make you a faster cyclist; riding your bike makes you a faster cyclist.

2. Cat. 3s are actually pretty fast. Also, getting dropped hurts a lot more when you’re expecting to win.

3. If you ever come to a barbeque and you’ve been dropped, make sure to stop for swordfish.

One of my roommates is a Cat. 2 cyclist (that’s sick nasty in bike-speak), and last spring he finally prevailed upon me to jump in a few road races. I wasn’t particularly excited about it–I’d done a criterium the year before, and gotten totally served. It was in New York City in the middle of March, not warmer than 30 degrees with a fierce wind, and I’d gotten dropped before I even knew what was happening–needless to say, a pretty miserable experience.

When I finally entered some road races last year, though, I discovered that the addition of hilly terrain worked in my favor. I did pretty well in a few of them, and then started going on group rides with the local bike club. All of this was awesome, and in all of the excitement, I pretty much forgot that I’d had a decent ski season and could have improved even more with focused training. Instead, I raced bikes into September, then hurt myself on a canoe trip and didn’t start rollerskiing until October.

This year, I resolved to quit screwing around on my bike (I’m planning to do plenty of that after college) and train for skiing one last time, so I hung up my chamois at the end of May. Sort of. Actually, I still ride once or twice a week, and picked out four races to do over the course of the summer. Since I only get to do four, I figure I have to make the most of the opportunities.

Of all the races I plan to do this summer, the Clam Fest is probably the most exciting. It’s only 10 miles from Brunswick, it’s hosted by my club, and delicious recovery foods (read: fried clams) are available no more than 10 yards from the finish line.

All this is a roundabout way of explaining how I ended up two nights before the race limping and swearing around my apartment with a seriously tender ankle. 15 minutes into my run on Friday, I rolled my ankle on a root after being distracted by an obnoxious, fat dog, and instead of stopping, I decided to keep going for the full hour and a half. This was fine until I got home. By nine that evening, I had resorted to ice and popping large quantities of ibuprofen in hopes that my Clam Fest aspirations could be preserved.

I had to skip a rollerski I had scheduled for Saturday, but in the end, I made it to the start line without too much trouble. Actually, I didn’t get any sleep the night before due to the apparent racquetball game going on in the adjacent apartment, but my ankle was fine. 

Of all the bike races I’ve done in my two illustrious years of racing (this is actually more than you’d expect–I raced about 25 times last summer), the Clam Fest is probably the biggest spectacle of any of them. There are about a bajillion people who are already at the Clam Fest, anyways, and about half of them end up wandering over to see all the funny people pedal around with their shaved legs and spandex (my legs are actually still hairy–it’s not worth the effort for four races). Everyone in Yarmouth takes it super-seriously, too: full-road closure, national anthem, newspaper coverage, etc. There were only three pros in the field, but people still call it a “professional bike race.” The effect of all this was to make me feel EXTREMELY badass lining up at the start. My parents also showed up, as did a bunch of my friends, so at this point there was some serious pressure not to make a fool out of myself.

I wish I actually had a lot to say about the race, but I don’t. I was relatively out of my league, so I was generally concerned with trying to be useful for a sprinter teammate. Toward this end, I had an exciting moment trying to chase down the pro that soloed to victory–but this lasted for no more than a half mile, until lactic acid caught up with me. Mostly, I sat at the back of the pack and bumped around with Matt Boobar (SMS coach) and Andrew Gardner (Middlebury coach). A futile attempt to control the pace at the beginning of the last lap ended with me limping in at the back of the field.

One exciting thing that happened was during the second of ten laps. I was riding next to my roommate (the one that got me started on bike racing), and he pinch-flatted on a gnarly set of railroad tracks. I honorably expressed my sympathies to him and watched as he drifted backwards towards oblivion, not even considering for a second that my bike or rear wheel might have been useful to him, especially given that it was his birthday. All I can say is that if we’re neck-and-neck in a ski marathon and my ski breaks, I’m still taking his….

Check out the sweet pictures–one is the ankle in question; the other is a racing shot that makes me look way cooler than I did in real life….

Beer. Bad equipment. Inexperience. Midway through the Chief Worumbo canoe race on Sunday I was already thinking of excuses for losing to the boat of two extremely jacked women that was creeping up behind us.
A seven mile slog down the Androscoggin River north of Brunswick, the Chief Worumbo canoe race is a part of the town of Lisbon’s annual Moxie Festival. For those of you lucky enough to have never tried Moxie, it’s a soda found in New England with a distinct taste something like cough syrup and motor oil combined (that’s really what it tastes like, but it’s actually surprisingly good anyways). I was there with a Bowdoin ski teammate, Nick Crawford, and we were psyched to knock heads with some locals and get a good workout. We entered the male tandem non-racing canoe division, and figured our chances were good, given our fitness and good looks.
If you’ve never done a canoe race before, they’re totally rad. With 20 minutes before the race, we hopped in our boat and paddled over to the far side of the river. As the race start neared, there were about 80-90 boats from bank to bank, and when the whistle blew for the it was as if someone had turned on a huge blender–men, women, and children all flailing around with their paddles. We had a good start on the left side, and were mixing it up with a couple kayakers as well as a racing canoe with a chubby old guy in the back and a teenager who looked like the banjo-playing kid from deliverance in the front.
According to my podiatrist, who I talked to after the race (he’s a competitive paddler), canoe and kayak racing is a lot like cycling–you can get a 15-20% draft if you’re in the wake of the boat in front of you. I wish I’d known that as we were killing ourselves trying to keep up with the old guy/deliverance boat.
Anyways, due to our lack of knowledge of boat-drafting, Nick and I found ourselves drifting backwards after our excellent start. Canoe racing is hard (I can say this authoritatively now that I’ve done one race)–it’s fun when you’re going fast for the first fifteen minutes, but when you realize you’ve only gone 1/4 of the way and your arms want to fall off and there are no downhills, it starts to get less appealing. We adopted some strategies to lessen the pain, mainly switching sides every 10 strokes or so, which also makes steering a little easier–instead of using correction strokes, you just switch sides when the boat starts turning.
Halfway through the race we were still getting caught. The two-woman boat was getting disturbingly close, as well as another non-racing canoe containing a former Bowdoin ski coach (Bill Yeo) and his wife. This was the point at which I started thinking about excuses: