Monday 9 April 2012

DW Final Blog

Today is Easter Monday and we thought we should complete our blog for the weekend. We didn't manage to post a Day 3 blog so here is the final instalment to cover Day 3 and Day 4.

Day 3 was Easter Sunday and as our last blog said we had made a plan at the end of Day 2 to complete the 38 miles in under 7 hours. We started at 7.15am and set off on a mission of 6 miles per hour. Our support crew of Tom and Phil were on form to keep us motivated and on time - and they did a cracking job! - thanks boys :-)

We paddled the first 6 miles in under an hour, and by 3 hours of paddling we were 20 minutes ahead of schedule. We had a few mad moments including an interesting approach to the rollers at Sunbury Lock which resulted in an almost, but not quite, capsize which even the supporters classed as a "good recovery".

Phil produced the best motivator call from the bank of "Go Girlfriend" which made the lady in the Mr Whippy van next to him smile and made us laugh for quite sometime!

By 30 miles in we had overtaken all the other crews who had set off before us on Sunday morning, meaning we had to keep our stroke rate up on our own without the motivation of chasing anyone down. We have to admit to reverting to a bit of a sing song to keep us going "there were ten in the bed " proved quite inspiring in terms of keeping our stroke rate up and we even found ourselves singing the "12 days of christmas" to the people taking their Easter Sunday stroll by the river!

We crossed the finish line first of the day in a time of 6 hours 52 minutes.

That meant our time to Teddington was 21 hours 40 minutes and we were lying 7th in the Senior K2 Endeavour category.

Day 4 was always our biggest concern. We are not the most stable of paddlers and the tideway is very fast flowing and can be really difficult to paddle. We were worried and slept pretty rubbishly on Sunday evening especially as we had to get up at 3.45am with no breakfast! We were on the water by 5.45 in the dark but we managed through some low points in moral to get to Battersea Power Station with relative ease. Time seemed to go very slowly this morning even though the water was flowing very fast. We approached the finish line with the Houses of Parliament on the left and Big Ben chiming 8am. We were home and dry - literally!

I have to admit to hugging the man who placed the medal round my neck - I think I was the only person to do that as he looked quite surprised!! Our overall time was 23 hours and 56 minutes and we are vey proud. We hope we might inspire you to take a challenge and Challenge your Positivity!

It only remains for us to say a big thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement and all your wonderful donations. We have successfully raise £2155 for the oncology ward at Queens - if you wish to add a donation there is still time - visit our justgiving page at www.justgiving/Claire-Lis. Thanks for reading!

Claire and Liz signing off xx

Sunday 8 April 2012

Day 2 - It Goes On........

So we set off this morning at 7.45am from Newbury, today we had 36 miles and 26 portages to complete. We had made a pact last night that if we improved our speed on the portages we could be home and in the bath half an hour quicker - so we were on a mission!

We were delighted to see some friends of ours at the first support point. Paul and Harriet are amazing paddlers who have the DW record for a mixed K2 over the none stop 24hour race. They ran a tag team support with us along the tow path for 11 miles, keeping us going, and providing us with some great tips and hints along the way. They did a sterling job of feeding us malt loaf, bananas, and jelly babies, sometimes all at the same time!! As a consequence we managed to paddle further today in less time - hooray!!!

Today passed without incident with the exception of the attacking swan at Reading. We are channeling our positivity brilliantly and we have a plan to go even faster tomorrow! We are AMAZING!!!

Saturday 7 April 2012

Day 1 - It Begins........

5.30am and a hard frost welcomed us this morning as we gathered our kit ready for the start. 34 miles from Devizes to Newbury awaited.

As the mercury rose above -5C crews arrived for registration and kit check in the car park of Devizes Wharf. And then all of a sudden we were on the start line...and off.

The first 17miles were incident free. As we neared our nemesis the .... tunnel (where we had fallen in during our last race on this section of the canal) a narrow boat entered the tunnel and all approaching crews were forced to wait so we decided to get out and run.

Fatigue was starting to rear its head now and our portages began to draw out, but we kept up the same paddling pace on the water throughout the day covering around 6miles per hour excluding time on land.

Newbury was a welcome site and the end of Day 1 was quickly followed by a long shower and quick snooze before refuelling ready for an even better day tomorrow.

Thursday 5 April 2012

The Calm Before the Storm

D-Day appears to be upon us! We have our many bags packed, out boat polished and more frusli bars than you would ever want to eat. We leave for Devizes today and start our paddle-fest tomorrow!

Having had sleet, snow and howling winds yesterday we have fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed that we see no more arctic weather till we are home safe and sound!

A HUGE thank you to everyone for their generous donations on our JustGiving page and for all the good wishes. We have topped the £2,000 mark which is just fantastic!! Keep logging on as we will be posting a daily update on how our challenge is going. So off we go singing "row, row, row your kayak gently down 125 of stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily not swimming is our dream"! X