At Keeners, Wednesday is race day. This raises the question, though: why spend a whole day racing at a playboating camp? What I learned yesterday is that racing improves your overall kayaking skills in a variety of ways.
Racing builds paddling stamina, a vital skill for future multi-days or long days at a playspot. It teaches you how to run rapids and deal with beatdowns when you are both mentally and physically exhausted.
Racing builds paddling stamina, a vital skill for future multi-days or long days at a playspot. It teaches you how to run rapids and deal with beatdowns when you are both mentally and physically exhausted.
Racing also emphasizes the importance of the line you take and teaches you to read water. As I learned on race day, it doesn’t matter who can paddle the fastest, whoever takes the best line is going to win. To take the fastest line you must cover the shortest distance from point A to B while staying in the current as much as possible. Some more keys to speed I learned from wildwater racing back home: every wave that crashes over your bow slows you down, the fastest current often hugs the outside of a bend, and it’s faster to skirt the eddy line rather than go over the middle of a wave train.
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| Getting a bad start in BoaterX |
Case in point: during our BoaterX race through No Name rapid, I got a bad start. As we reached the bottom of Upper No Name, the person in the very front went right and everyone else followed. I went left instead, thinking it would be faster, and I passed everyone and won the race.
In fact, Keeners is not just a playboating camp; here we learn how to become better overall kayakers by paddling playboats, and days like race day and “Big Water Beatdown Thursday” help us develop these skills.
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