Wacko, National Whitewater League and other stuff!

Last weekend everything came together for a great weekend up in Wicklow for Wacko on the Jacko. The lads from the Shackleton course were helped out by Brian and the lads from Total Experience and they had everything organised down to a T. They even booked the rain for the Thursday night before the race! The schedule was a long distance race and then BoaterX on Saturday, and then a team race on Sunday. When we showed up on Saturday there was a savage amount of water coming down the Annamoe and a rumour went around that the Glenmac might be running, so me, Dave, Barry and Andrew went for a quick spin on that instead of a practise run on the race course. It turned out that the rumour was wrong and that any water that had fallen on the Glenmacnass had well run off at that stage but we scraped our way down anyway since it beat walking! Never mind that it resembled a rocky ditch more than a river, I have now paddled the Glenmac :P

The race run went fairly well, I did the best time I could have and I didn't really get caught up on any rocks or anything but all this college work and lack of paddling is definitely affecting my speed across the flat sections; the best I could do this weekend was 10th place. After the individual runs were done it was time for the real highlight of the weekend, the boater cross! Heats of 4, 1st two from each to touch a banner at the end go through to the next round and physical contact is strongly encouraged! People racing through Jacksons 4 at a time provided endless entertainment for everyone on the bank and local lad Dave Holden came out the deserving winner in the end. Unfortunately I went out to ridiculously tough competition in the second round, after a rugby match in the bottom eddy for the finish banner!

Photo by Aidan Dunne

 

We were well looked after on Saturday night by Diarmuid Ryan and the rest of the UCD paddlers, who must have the comfiest sofa in a student house in the entire country! So a massive thanks to them for that! Sunday morning brought the team race, falling water levels and baltic weather conditions! I was on a team with Eoin Farrel and Ethan O'Brien and we had a smooth, clean, but unfortunately not particularly fast run. In the end the team title was taken by Eoin Rheinisch, Dave Holden and Paddy McGovern. I haven’t seen the times but I doubt that any other team came close to them! By the time we were leaving for Limerick it was snowing, with the weather only forecasted to get colder over the next couple of days. ...I can’t wait for spring to arrive properly!

Wacko was the penultimate event in the inaugural Irish white water race league/ national extreme race league. First place this year went to Mickie Brennan, who had the title sewn up from his results in previous events. The league has been dedicated to the memory of Colm Johnson, an Irish, UCC and ULKC paddler who passed away in Norway last summer. Unfortunately the event that I was meant to be organising, the Clare Glens Race, didn’t happen this year due to the lack of water but hopefully over the next few years this thing gathers momentum, preserves Colm's memory and promotes white water paddling and friendly competition like it was intended to do. The numbers at the last few races, especially Wacko and Galwayfest have been huge, so hopefully that's a sign of some more great leagues in the future! A big thanks to Orky too, who has put loads of work in behind the scenes coordinating events and scores and generally making the league happen.

I'll be starting co-op, college work placement, in May so there won’t be any big summer trips this year, but since I'll be finished at 5 every day hopefully I'll have time to get some serious training in. The plan at the moment is to come back in much better shape for next season's races. The slalom Irish Open and team trials are on in two week’s time too, so I must get a decent bit of time in the slalom boat before they come around!

Anyway, that’s about it for the moment!

Keyes

 

Galwayfest

Last weekend saw the NUIG crew put together a phenomenal event for the second year in a row! Galwayfest was a great event last year and the lads managed to make it bigger and better the second time round.With 120 people entered in whitewater it was definatly the biggest event of the whitewater racing calender and with those kind of numbers the Boluisce was the perfect location for it. It's even dam controlled, which makes it one of the few Irish events that you can be certain won't be called off at the last minute! The standard of the competition was extremily high, with virtually everyone who competes in whitewater races in Ireland at it. Unfortunatly I only came in joint 7th place which I was slightly dissappointed with and just missed out on the boaterX final, which was meant to be an 8 man event, but was changed to a 6 person race since there were 3 of us tied for 7th. Oh well, I'll just have to paddle faster next time!

 

Dropping into Poll Gorm in the WW race

The party on Saturday night was pretty epic! Many paddlers, started in a hotel bar, migrated to a night club; your imagination can fill in the rest! One thing that was great to see at the weekend was the amount of college clubs who were represented. Loads of people that I'd ony recognise from varsities were there, people that I've never seen at a freestyle comp or whitewater race. Hopefully this is the start of a new trend, with college clubs coming along to other kayaking events besides varsities. I think college clubs are some of the most active in the country and have huge numbers of people paddling regularly; but they often tend to do their own thing and not interact with other paddlers outside of the intervarsities every year. It would be really cool to see all those people get to know each other at some of the other events and possibly start cooperating and paddling together a bit more.

 Unfortunatly the we weren't as lucky with water levels for freestyle on Sunday as we were for whitewater. Dry weather for a week or two before the competition meant that everything had to be moved from Tuam to Clifden, which although it's good as a training spot isnt great for competitions because the hole is constantly changing as the tide comes in. I had really been looking forward to getting some practise runs in Tuam, since I havn't paddled in a hole since I got back from the summer. All the hole boating I did over the summer definatly counted for something tho, in the competition I did the best I've ever done in a comp in a hole. I was particularly pleased with the entry move I landed, since that was something I put a bit of work into when I was training in Austria over the Summer. The hole was working at it's best for my heat which can only have helped and I ended up coming 5th in the competition; happy out :) Just to top it all off after the competition there was some great food handed out while we were waiting for the results! At the prizegiving there was some great swag given out courtesy of the likes of I-Canoe, Great outdoors and Palm Ireland. Fair play to all the winners, after that scale of competition anyone who came out on top well deserved everything they got! Full results are up here; Galwayfest Results.

Warming up before freestyle

This weekend the plan is to head up to a slalom competition on the Inny. I'm bringing a few of the lads from UL up to it too, my new role as disciplines officer for ULKC. I'm looking forward to it now, hopefully it'll all go well!