Snappy Exit

Rob’s been after me for the past year to get into a Junior C-4 crew at Senobe.  I have been putting him off because I have no intention of traveling out west for Nationals.  Last night I was at the club going for my first paddle in 12 months, and Mark and Eddie were giving me a hard time about it.  Rob said that his strategy for winning the Black this year is to put my name on the program and watch all the best crews drop out.  Then he subs me out and puts Nick in instead.  Something tells me the days of my name striking fear in the hearts of Canadian Canoers are long gone.  Anyway, this all got me thinking about Junior C-4 and about the day that I - and seven other people - almost won the Black.

For those unfamiliar with The Black (the two of you reading in Australia I mean), a short explanation is in order.  First you must understand what a Canadian “Junior” is (or at least used to be).  An International Junior is, of course, any athlete who is under the age of 19 on December 31st of the year of competition.  In Canada, we called that a Juvenile.  A “Canadian Junior” is an International Senior (i.e. over the age of 18) who has not yet received sufficient points at a National Championship to be dominant, or, is so far from the peak of their career that they have not finished in the top five in a Senior race for 4 straight years.  Status is given on a per-event basis, so it is possible to be a Senior in C-1 1000m, while still Junior in all other events.

Complicating things even more is the fact that  National team athletes can be Junior, but once they turn Senior they remain Senior as long as they are on the National team.Confused?  Good.  Here is what you really need to know.  In the Junior C-4 race, the top two teams at the National Championships receive enough points so that they must race Senior the following four years.  There is almost always one or two excellent young canoers who are in the race, so it generally makes it difficult for an older crew to come back from Senior and win.  Timing your attempt at the event can be crucial, and it is rare for someone to win the race more than once in a career.

Now, those familiar with canoeing but not familiar with Canada will assume the C-4 is a long, sleek, fast boat that is propelled down the course by four skilled canoers who must paddle extremely well and perfectly together or the result is a horrible shaky and ugly-looking race.  You are wrong.   Although Canadians have been racing C-4 since the beginning of time, our boat design did not progress much past 1936.  If you were to look at a C-1 from the Berlin Games, you would see a boat that looks much like the Canadian C-4; slow, fat, and relatively easy to paddle.  The boat was a great leveler.  Even four great canoers could not make it glide, and trying to go too fast would often result in a bounce that killed your speed faster than throwing out an anchor.

The last thing you will need to know is that the winner of the Junior C-4 race at the Canadian National Championship is awarded one of the most legendary trophies in Canadian sport.  The Black Trophy.  The trophy stands about four feet tall, is made of silver, and has been awarded for the Junior C-4 race since the early twentieth century.  It held a ridiculous amount of beer and has been the subject of many a story coming out of the Nationals after-party (some of which should be enough to convince people to never drink from it again).  Every canoer in Canada wants to get his name on the Black.

Back to 1988.  I was in a great Black crew.  There was Kevin Mullen, Glen Girard, Brian Burns, and me.  Glen and Brian had raced in1987 at the Junior Worlds.  Kevin and Glen would go on to almost take the C-2 entry for the 1992 Olympics.  I was only 16, but well on my way to becoming a dominant C-1 paddler in Canada.  Together we were a strong smart crew, who combined to win most of the Junior and Juvenile canoeing medals at the 1988 Canadian Championships.  We were the heavy favorites in the C-4.

Popular opinion was that the second best crew in the race was from Banook.  Albert McDonald, Carl Francis, Steve Gallant and Dave Gallant. They were a more mature bunch, most of them approaching the end of their careers.

Adding some colour tot the race was the crew from Cartierville, Quebec. In the crew was Bob Kay. A Canadian canoeing legend, had last won the Black in 1968. His crew certainly were past their prime and would take on the role of ‘Old Bull’ on that day.

It was a typical Lake Banook day  - sunny, warm and a screaming headwind. There were whitecaps on the first 800m of the course and there had been several casualties throughout the day. In fact, Larry Cain’s crew sank in the Senior C4 that day. But my boat was full of Lake Banook natives, we had seen it all before and were unconcerned.

I remember the race quite well, considering it took place nearly 22 years ago. We got off to an early and commanding lead. I looked around a few times and saw absolutely nobody. Watching the video later (memory says CBC had the race shown tape-delayed but I have not seen it since) we came through the 500 almost 50m ahead of the next crew. At that point I remember thinking the race was in the bag…

…Meanwhile, somewhere behind us, Banook was putting a plan into action.

Realizing that the race was unfolding as predicted and that they were likely to be ‘Blackwashed’, they began to slow down. And not wanting to appear too obvious, they started early and put themselves in a position to finish a convincing third. Cartierville were happy to oblige and took over second place with several hundred meters to go. Calm and steady were their words to live by.

As we closed on the finish the crowd was cheering loudly. Orenda was on it’s way to a second National Title and we were excited. The Black was the biggest race of the day and everyone was watching.  We were about to become the first crew from our club to win the coveted trophy.With 150m to go our boat began to behave strangely. We veered hard right and I was forced to pull the bow over. As I did so I realized that I was in water above my bottom knee. The boat had veered because of the huge mass of water we had taken on. Two strokes later the stern was underwater, two strokes after that the bow was underwater and we were swimming.  Our dream was over and a hush fell on the crowd.(With apolgies to Bill Jensen who owns the photo)

Then, the cheering masses went wild again as they realized the real drama was only just beginning.

As we went down, the crew from Banook came to the sudden realization that they had made a serious error in judgment. Had they continued on at there regular pace they would have been in position to claim the gold after we deep-sixed in the final 150. What they had done instead was allow Cartierville to get into a convincing second - which had of course just turned into a sizable lead.

The atmosphere inside the Banook boat at that moment must have been foul. There was a sudden burst as they thought they had a chance to catch Bob Kay. Then an even more pronounced capitulation as they realized they could not win. The end result was a Banook crew standing still just a few meters from the finish, waiting for someone to claim the honor of being Blackwashed.And who were the champions. Cartierville of course.

The ‘Old Bulls’ had beaten us all.

So it looks as though the schedule for the World Championships next year has been changed.  Gone are the Men’s C-4 and K-4 500m and the Woman’s K-4 1000m.  This seems like a decent idea to me as participation is pretty low in the woman’s K-4 and men’s C-4.  I don’t really agree with taking out the 500m K-4 for men as I think its a great race, but I am all for changing things up a little. 

Here’s the real kicker though.  There are three additions to the program next year – 4 x 200m relays for the singles events.  Now, I was lucky enough to witness this event in Duisburg (2002 or 2003 I cannot remember which) and here is how it works.  There are 4 teams per race.   Two members of each team line up 200m apart facing each other.  There are 4 automatic starting boots at each end.The race starts like a normal race with four athletes starting together and racing from the finish line to the 200m start.  As each team reaches the end, the boot for the next competitor on that team is dropped by an official.  The competitor then races from the 200m start to the finish.  Obviously, this repeats until the fourth competitor crosses the finish line, at which pint the race is over.

If you are a fan of 200m racing (which I personally am not – but to each his own) then this might sound exciting.  I guarantee you will be disappointed.  If we ignore the fact that there are very few countries that could put together a team of four excellent singles athletes (surely we could come up with four teams in each discipline to make for a competitive final), we are left with the serious problem of wash.  What you will see is a very competitive first leg, followed by a display of boatmanship, where the team that wins is the team that paddles best in the wash.  It is not pretty, it does not showcase the beauty of our sport, and I am willing to bet that the team that wins will win by a significant margin.  We will not see the excitement that I am sure the ICF hopes will lead to more TV coverage.

Now, I have said that I am not a fan of the 200m, but that doesn’t mean I am against changes in our sport or even against the 200m.  I see the value in having a race for sprinters and I certainly acknowledge the skill involved in racing it (one that I never had).  The 200m offers an opportunity to sprinters and showcases an entirely different aspect of our sport – and there is beauty in seeing the all out effort involved and the sheer power of the C-1 paddlers who can paddle 200m without ever having their bow touch the water.  I really don’t think;  however, that you will see anything like this in the relay.  It will be a hard fought, ugly battle with paddlers missing strokes and looking horrible.

Having said that, I have a responsibility as Chair of the Competition Committee for Canoe 09 to help ensure that this race goes off as smoothly as possible, whcih of couse I will do.  Perhaps I will be proven wrong and it will be a great addition to the program.  We shall see.  Your comments and suggestions are welcome…though they make take a few days to appear on the site.

As an canoe athlete in Canada I was always looking for ways to beat the winter cold and get a jump on my competitors,  and I often turned to the ergometer.  Now, in many sports people have found ways to make realistic training machines that do a rather good job at simulating the sport.  Rowing and Cycling being the two most obvious.  At the very least they allow you to train the right muscles and keep some semblance of the technique that you require in your sport.  I have yet to find a canoe ergometer that came very close to allowing me to feel like I was in an actual boat.

I used several machines over the years and found that the best ones were the ones with a moving platform.  They allowed the hips to move in a way that was very close to a real canoe, not just while you were pulling, but more importantly, on the exit.  They also helped to get the feel for keeping the boat gliding on the recovery as all of your body motions translated into movements on the platform so it was very easy to see the effects of throwing your weight forward (the platform would shoot back).

The major issue I had with paddling ergs was that my right hip (I paddle on the left) would always tighten up within minutes of me getting on the machine.  This was not something that I ever experienced in a real boat and it was enough to limit any erg workout so that there were no pieces longer than 3 minutes.

I attribute it to the following problems:

 Problem 1 - The platform is too stable.

Obviously the platform is usually a piece of plywood bolted to a sliding apparatus.  It does not rock side to side, it does not bounce up and down.  This is a problem because it does not allow you to feel the actual movements of a boat, and the rigid platform does not give way as your body moves forward, putting your front leg in a different position than where it would be in a real boat.

To solve this, I rasied my paltform onto some very springy springs.  They had to be quite rigid so that my body weight did not fully compress them.  The effect was good - the boat bounced and rocked - but I had to be extra careful because falling off an erg is both embarrassing and painful.

Problem 2 - All of the pull is front to back.

Even after creating some give on te platform of the erg, I was still having leg/hip problems.  So it I tried to make the stroke even more like an actual stroke.

We all know that a big part of the canoe stroke is the downward force you apply to the water by dropping your weight on the paddle.  I have yet to see an ergometer with any effective way to apply downward pressure.   Most ergometers create resistance using a pulley of some description - a good idea to create the front to back resistance.  This same resistance can be translated into vertical force by raising the pulley.  The higher the pulley, the more downward force you can apply; however, by raising the pulley you also raise the point of contact for the stroke resistance, effectively changing the stroke.  I was thinking that this problem is what caused my hip pain, since I was constantly trying to hold myself up instead of allowing my weight to fall on the paddle.

My solution to this was somewhat less elegant than the spring solution (and somewhat less effective).   Since I was in my own basement, I attached a stiff bungy cord (the black rubber kind) between the bottom of my erg paddle and the ceiling, just above the place where I start my catch.  It worked well on the catch, but interfered a bit with my top arm during the pull and felt really odd on the exit as the paddle was yanked out of the “water”.  But it was better than nothing and helped with my hip issues.

Of course, the first time the bungy broke I was cought completely off guard and went down to the floor fairly hard.  After that I checked the bungy regularly for wear and tear.

Overall my ergometer experience was less than satisfactory.  Has anyone out there had a positive experience using an erg on a regular basis for physical training?