Rich's Letter from Camp

Rachel After Some Post-Paddling Stretches

Tuesday

Camp is really terrific. We have a warm-up and practice twice a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. The warm up consists of stretches and jogging in place/hopping. We warm-up for 15 minutes and then hit the boats for 1.5 hours. We are on the river sometimes as well as the channel that runs for miles and miles. The coach is very good and I feel for myself the exercises and input are on target, and am helping me improve every time we go out. After the morning practice there is a stretching session on the tennis court. We also have an optional lecture session for 1 hour starting at 11:30.

After this afternoon’s practice we went to our coach’s room to view the video that was taken of us in the morning. We will each get a DVD of the video session and some camp pictures, and I am looking forward to receiving it.

The OC folks do their thing at 5:45 PM. On Wednesday there is an open OC session for our boat at 12:30 PM. I haven’t decided if I want to do that or not and it is optional. They say it helps with the paddle connection to the water.

I must admit, at least for me, it is tiring and I find myself a little muscle sore. It is a good kind of tired and good muscle soreness; it is coming from hard workouts and improvement of technique.

I don’t have any pix of us all on land or in a boat but I will endeavor to make that happen over the next few days. This camp is definitely worth my time and money and should help me mature as a paddler a little faster than I would have otherwise.

The weather has been great, sunny and 76. It is supposed to stay that way the rest of the week :-)

See you soon,
Rich