Now that we've had a little rain, we can start to do some good skills work on the whitewater. 

I'd like to highlight a skill that is critical to advanced racing, and makes recreational paddling a WWR much easier as well - Predicitve Edging

The WWR manual has a number of drills that can be executed on flatwater, one of which is the 'drop hip steering'. This teaches the paddler to use downward pressure on the seat (or hips) to control the edge of the boat,, leaving the paddler able to continue with leg drive.

It is this type of edging (rather than bracing up into knee blocks or thigh bars) that we as paddlers employ a lot. One of the most common causes of problems on a rapid is edging incorrectly, or applying an edge too late. This is particularly true of capsizes involving entering a flow change (e.g. on a corner)

I hope you all have had a great summer paddling and having a little rest away from paddling. Now is the time to really lay down some good background work that will form the foundations for the next season. 

This time of year the emphasis is on building up the volume of the paddling, rather than the intensity. Try to make one paddle of the week a good long session. In much the same way as marathon runners prepare, we would not want to increase the length by more than about 10% each week. 

As a guide, the sessions at this time of year will tend towards 8 miles (1 hour) paddling, with some going over that to about 10 miles - and the long paddle of the week working up to around 14 miles. The duration of the sessions will depend on your current conditioning and capabilities - but the general emphasis of longer and easier over high intensity holds true.

The first Division A events of 2012 took place on the River Dart over the last weekendin January. These races were sharing the Dart with the “The Rivers Source a white watersymposium” lots of paddling themed workshops & coaching for recreational paddlers.

This years Dart Races were also designated as the English Open events which were wonby Hannah Brown & Alec Baker, well done to both of them.

On arrival on Saturday morning the Dart looked a bit on the low side and variations tothe Newbridge Sprint course were discussed. We settled on a section that started higherup into the “Upper” Dart section which included two good features that presented morechallenges than are normally faced on the Dart Sprint events. With more water this wouldbe a very challenging course.

With some new faces to WWR on the Start list & loads ofencouragement from boaters completing the Upper Dart and people lining the finish pointjust above Newbridge the races started, Open Mk1 LK1 and 3 C2 crews, The C2 race brought together some unlikely crews but all entered into the spirit determined to makeit down relatively dry. Some managed this and the new pairing of Scott & Matt worked well enough that they decided to race the Classic race on the Dart Loop in a C2 as well as MK1.

Well, it's been a little time since our last posting. This month I'd like to talk about how we can get the most out of our river time.

Often we are paddling within a group of mixed abilities, sometimes on water that may not be taxing us particularly. We could see this as just an opportunity to get some miles in and just use the river for conditioning work, or we could look at how we could be a little more inventive and work on some skills as well. It is often possible for two different athletes to work on completely different skills on the same piece of water. For the relative novice they may be honing their river reading skills by leading a simple rapid, whilst the more experienced athlete might be working on timing their strokes to every wave.