Thursday, February 23, 2012

Varsities

Now that I've got all the work that I should have done at the weekend finished I might as well throw in a few details about what actually went down! Since the Polo was on Saturday we had to leave Limerick as crazy O'Clock in the morning, which meant meeting up on Thursday night to pack up everything. I've never seen such a variety of gear being loaded up for one trip before in my life! 2 trailers, 30-40 odd boats and lord knows how much paddles and other gear! I guess it doesnt help when you've got teams competing in Polo, Freestyle, Whitewater and something like 8 different classes in Long Distance.



For some reason this year they changed the format of the Polo competition. In the past it was run as a league to start off and then moved into semi finals and finals. This year it was a knock-out all the way, meaning that if you got a tough draw in the first round it could screw you over for the rest of the entire competition. Thats what happened to the team who were regarded as being the second best team in the competition, they came up against GMIT in the first round and that was the end of their polo competition. We didnt do as badly as that, we only came up against them in the second round, and lost miserably. We weren't too happy that we went out that early in the comptition but what can you do, we just had to do better in all the other events to make up for it!


  
The next morning the Whitewater event was run on the Clydagh, again at stupid o'clock in the morning. I stayed in bed and had a lie-in since I was competing in the Freestyle in the afternoon and this was my only event off but the lads came back saying that they weren't sure how they'd done but they thought they were pretty quick. They had one swim towards the end of the race, but so did every other team and since they had swam over the finish line that can only have been another advantage!

The freestyle that morning went really well! The water level at Tuam was awful but this was probably an advantage to us since none of us can stick moves like McNastys and Phonixes consistantly. As it was we played the score-sheet and went through all the fun moves before going for real moves, including attempting to stand up in our boats at the end for 50 points! As soon as we got off the water we knew that we'd scored well, and thanks to Adrian putting the results up on Irish Freestyle we found out that we'd come first in the event not long after. What surprised us was the margin we won by. We were 200 points clear of the next team, NUIG! I put together a video of the heat there in the last few days, check it out:


After the Freestyle the only competition that was left was long distance.This was supposed to be a 6km marathon but after problems with locations it got shortened to a 2km sprint. The classes for this were similar enough to the liffey descent. To get the most points overall we had people entered in every class but the specialist classes were very competitive with lots of people who paddle for Ireland in Wildwater and Marathon in them so we didn't really get any points from them. The less specialist classes were a different story tho! Barry and Niall were paddling the Duo, and Ethan and Oisin were in the Canadian and they won both of them! I was paddling in mens GP which was a huge class, with somewhere between 60 and 100 people racing. The race went really well and I was up around the front of the field for the whole race but was kind of disappointed to only come 3rd in the end after a good battle in the sprint to the finish.








At the awards sunday evening we found out that we had won the whitewater and fancy dress, as well as the freestyle that we already knew about. All this gave us 1st overall and a nice shiney new Molan to bring back in the back of the van! Delighted! Thanks to the lads that were in the club before us this is the 3rd year in a row that we've won the event so the drive back to Limerick was spent planning parties to celebrate the occasion and plotting world domination i.e. 4 in a row!

Monday, February 20, 2012

1st in Varsitys!

News just in, ULKC finished 1st in varsitys for the 3rd year in a row! We had a savage weekend, won freestyle and whitewater and had some epic parties along the way! Full report and video coming soon!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Gower Sessions

We got two sweet Gower sessions in the last 12 hours or so. Its not too often that the conditions and the motivation required show up together, since one or both of them are going to happen at a ridiculus hour of the day! Unfortunatly the way the tides worked out this time it meant that the first session was yesterday night/this morning from 12 untill about 2am! Apart from the lack of daylight tho everything else worked out perfect. The wave was working really well, high paddle-on level and there was plenty of light coming from the council offices on the far side of the river to see what you were doing. It wasnt even cold at all, pretty surprising for 2am on a February morning!

Luckily since the wave was only working in the afternoon the next morning we were able to have a pretty decent lie in. We headed out to Gower at about 12.30 expecting to find a perfect wave only to be greeted with a water level lower than I've ever paddled Gower at and all the islands in the middle of the river at least a foot out of the water. Luckily since we had nothing better to be doing we decided to get on anyway to see what the small wave that was there was like to paddle.

Almost as soon as we got on the water the level started to rise, going from dirt low at the start of the session to high and paddle-on at the end! Trufst the ESB to be screwing around with the water but I guess its better than having them turn off the water as soon as we get there! In the end we had a class session on it, I spent a while practising competition runs for the next round of the national league thats on here in a few weeks time which went pretty well, really looking forward to that competition now.

There was even a photographer there who got a few sweet shots, talk about all the stars aligning!







I got some footage of Dave there too, I'll throw that together and put it up here when I'm done.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Sluice Rodeo

Last weekend another freestyle competition was held at Sluice in Dublin. Its a long drive up so myself and Ethan O'Brien headed up on Saturday and the plan was to meet up with Niamh Cleary, the Farrels and Dave Holden for a paddle. We were hoping that the Glenmacnass or something like that would be working since apart from the Annamoe I havnt paddled any rivers up in Wicklow. Unfortunatly the water levels didnt play ball but the Annamoe was running as always so we had a fun run down that instead. That evening we went to Lacken Kayak Clubs pool session in Clondalkin, apparently it was a quiet one with "only" about 30 kids in the pool compared with the 50 that they sometimes have but the ones that were there were flying. If they all keep it up then Lacken Kayak Club is going to be one to watch out for in the nest few years!

The Sluice rodeo the next day was some craic, despite the baltic weather. Its been ages since I paddled in Sluice so we headed up fairly early to have some time to get used to the feature again before the competition started. Its no Gower but by the time the competition I started I was getting the hang of the place again and blunts and stuff were starting to feel pretty smooth. The competition was run in a 15 minute jam session format with everyones top 5 moves counting, which is great because it allows people to risk going for big moves without worrying about flushing off the wave. My heat went pretty good. I got a few spins, blunts and roundhouses out of the way at the start, and then spent the rest of the heat going for back blunts and loops. In the end I managed to land enough to put me in 5th place, only 20 points behind the winner, Moe Kelleher. I'm happy enough with the result, since its a really tricky feature and the top three places were all taken by locals who know the place like the back of their hands!

Huge thanks to Gerry and Tom Cleary for giving me and Ethan food and floor space for the weekend, much appreciated! The next competition thats coming up is a big one, the kayaking intervarsities in Castlebar in two weeks time. Cant wait to have a fair go at defending last years title at this one, we've been putting a lot of work into training for it recently! Its going to be epic! Full results from Sluice are below.

Results:

Junior Men
Alan Murphy 135
Billy Brett 105
Conor Macken 90
Shane Little 90
Robbie O' Shea 90
Mathew Cassin 85
Conal Murphy 80
David Mclure 80
Tom Gallione 70
Craig Cummins 60
Daniel Burke 40

Sport Men
Niall Power 80
Kevin Niland 40

Sport Women
Maria 65
Rosseane 55

Expert Women
Niamh Cleary 115
Aisling Griffin 105
Muireann Lynch 95

Expert Men
Moe Kelleher 160
Neill Gibson 155
Adrian Durrant 150
Barry Loughnane 145
Tom Dunphy 140
Eoin Keyes 140
John O' Rourke 115
Ronnie Brennan 110
Colm Healy 100
Daniel O' Broin 60
Conor Mathews 50
Kevin McCabe 0

Heres a pretty sweet video from the day by Conor Macken, looking good!