With scrambling and mountaineering shelved until early July, today marked the true end of the dry-land training. Tyler and I went out for a short 16-mile (27 kilometre) jaunt on the Red Deer River. Our put-in was Three Mile Bend in Red Deer and out pull-out was at Canyon Ski Hill. The day was spent basically just getting the arms, back and core into shape and provided a good opportunity for a portage practice. So we hit the river at 9:00 AM with our 17" Prospector with a 38" beam...a barge! But to our surprise, the river was in good shape, some ice shelves stil existed on the river left bank and water temperature was about 5C (41F), and eventhough it was quite shallow and slow in some locations, we did also experience class I rapids in a few locations..The forecast for today was calling for a partly cloudy and a high of 8C (47F), a mere 32C (61F) cooler that we are expecting to experience in Texas. However, the gods smiled upon us, it ended up being mainly sunny and a high of 10C (50F). That's right, the tempertaure hit the double digits. In fact, it was so sunny that both Tyler and I ended up getting a bit too much sun, the first sunburn of the year. This really wasn't smart of us and reminded us, if 3.25 hours on the river with a UV Index of a moderate 4 can cause a minor burn what will 4-5 days on the river in Texas with a UV Index of 11 do to our face? Let me use this as a time to remind everybody...wear sunscreen. I am personally a fan of Ombrelle, arguably the best on the market using both chemical and physical blockers. I know I have decided to use Zinc Oxide on my nose for the Texas Water Safari as it won't sweat off and will provide a full protective barrier.
Anyway, back to the run. Today's run was 27km in length (16 mi) and took us just over 3 hours. Our speed ranged from 6.1 kph (3.7 mph) to 13.4 kph (8.3 mph) with an average s
peed of 8.3kph (5.2 mph). The current of the river averaged 2.1 kph (1.3 mph) where we decided to measure it. This means that our average speed over the 3 hours and 15 minutes was 6.2 kph (3.85 mph). This is very similar to our run that took place last October where we averaged (minus the flow) 6.4 kph (3.97 mph) over a time of 10 hours and a distance of 82 km (51 miles). For a little fun we extruded those times at zero fatigue and concluded that we will finish the TWS in a mere 66.9 hours. A whole day and a half before the finish. We also know that zero fatigue is impossible, but we can pretend.
peed of 8.3kph (5.2 mph). The current of the river averaged 2.1 kph (1.3 mph) where we decided to measure it. This means that our average speed over the 3 hours and 15 minutes was 6.2 kph (3.85 mph). This is very similar to our run that took place last October where we averaged (minus the flow) 6.4 kph (3.97 mph) over a time of 10 hours and a distance of 82 km (51 miles). For a little fun we extruded those times at zero fatigue and concluded that we will finish the TWS in a mere 66.9 hours. A whole day and a half before the finish. We also know that zero fatigue is impossible, but we can pretend. Next week we'll be looking forward to a 95km (60mi) run from Ghost Dam to Calgary, which will provide a 200m (220 yd) portage around Bear's Paw Dam.
An update on Team Sponsor's, we have asked several corporations and local businesses to become offical team sponsors. There have been a few good responses, but no concrete answers as of yet. I will update these as soon as possible. I will also give a shout out to my Live Out There network and thanks for your moral support in training for such an adventure, and good luck to Jamie on your Everest attempt.
See you all soon and GO TEAM CHINOOK!
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