shropshirepaddlesport.org - the blog

This Sunday (29 March) sees the first hasler race of 2009. Its Gailey which is close to home - and a great race for stable boats. Its a bit choppy otherwise - but can result in some fast times - its where Marcus & Jess got promoted last year.

Racing for the club means that we get points. Last year we got enough points to qualify for the hasler finals which were great. It would be brilliant to qualify again - BUT WE NEED BODIES ON THE WATER FOR THAT. You don't have to be good, you don't have to win - you just have to turn up, paddle and have fun!

Check in is 11am with div 7-9 and lightnings starting at 11:30 and divs 1-6 at 13:00 hours.

If you intend to race, or want more information, please let Deb know. I need to know:
What division you intend to race in
Whether its K1 or K2 (and if K2 who you're paddling with)
Which boat you intend to use if you're not using your own boat
Whether you need a race vest; the club has a limited supply of junior and senior colours for loan.

Please also remember club colours and BCU membership cards for seniors and juniors in div 6 and above.

The Hasler rules are changing again. The critical bits that affect us are that they have dropped the combined division k2 races (div 4/5/6 etc) and there will now be K2 and K1 classes for each individual division.

For information they have also finally dropped the restrictions on promotion above div 2 for junior boys, above div 3 for women and above div 4 for junior girls. About time too in my humble opinion. However promotions and demotions within the top 3 divisions will be made by the Rankings Officer in consultation with the Regional Hasler Adviser.

There are also minor changes made to the races that should be offered in the top 3 divisions at each Hasler race; now it should be either div 1 & 3 K1 and div 2 K2 or div 1 & 3 K2 and div 2 K1.

A new flat water racing calendar has now been published and the club calendar has been updated accordingly. Key changes are the revision of the sprint regattas to whole weekends and the inclusion of Leamington and Hereford haslers in May and June.

The 2009 flat water racing calendar has now been published. Selected highlights have been added into the club calendar on the blog. I have included all of the Midlands hasler races, the Sprint regattas, the descent races for next autumn and I have also included some extras - including some North West 10k races, the NW lightning events and fun races like the Ross Warland and the Reading K4s.
If anyone can provide me with entry level slalom and WWR events I will happily include them on the diary too.

The new edition of the Hasler Race Management (HRM) system is out including a consolidated set of Promotions and Demotions. There's been quite a bit of movement within the club, so just to wrap up the recent changes:

Joseph Whittle, Connor Lambert, Ellie Barnes, Deb May, Gari Sumner and Anita Bennet have all been promoted to Div 7 at various points over the last couple of months.

This means that we now have a very strong presence in Div 7, 8 and 9. There are a still a few more people who are getting close to moving up (even if they don't want to !) and a lot of steady consolidation for the rest of us.

Well done all.

Sorry - I should have done this a bit earlier...

Teams who routinely qualify for the hasler championships tend to get a bit complacent about the whole thing.  Not us.  But we've never qualified before.

It was a great day out - lots of boats (very easy to lose your car in a field at an event of that scale when you're used to looking for the one with v-bars on it), lots of people, race starts for each division bigger than the combined race entry for whole midland haslers, lots of swimming, some excellent portaging, some dire portaging - including taking out two paddlers on the water by hitting one around the face, turning round to see what solid object your boat hit and in doing so, wrapping it around the back of someone else's head, one crew getting out the wrong side of their boat, lots of swimmers, one boat being emptied over the heads of a K2 team who were trying to get out...

As a club we came twelfth out of 32.  Given that most of our paddlers are concentrated in the lower divisions and we're only a small club, I think that's pretty bloody amazing.

Once again the seniors were shown up by the lightnings who came second in the country, beating Leighton Buzzard (their aim) but being beaten by Nottingham by 8 points.  Bad luck guys but an excellent effort.  The lightnings accounted for both of our podium placings - with Florence 3rd in U12 girls and Rose 2nd in U10s.

Everybody worked hard and did well but special mentions are deserved by the following:

• Oliver, Holly and Phil Robinson (and Cal) for flying in for the weekend from Malta;
• Will Bevan, the only div 9 paddler to race the div 4/5/6 race and was seen smiling afterwards; and
• Susan Mundy and Sebastian Banks in their second ever lightning race, their first time on a river and the fist time they had ever seen that many boats and for finishing with the biggest grins ever seen at a race.

Last year's race at Fladbury is remembered mainly for the Lambo-jelly car key incident.  We forgot that it is actually quite a hard race.  It startts downstream which means you paddle upstream when you're half-way tired.  Still, we did OK with Cam and Tim looking good in the lightnings, Rose winning U10 girls by a substantial margin despite being stonewalled by a flock of swans about 20 yards into the race.

Matt did well in his first K1 race coming 3rd but just avoiding promotion which is what he wanted in his first solo outing and Will was looking tidy to come in mid-field.

Kate & Dave were once again just beaten into second place by Jenny and Tom who, if they didn't get promoted on that performance split up and race K1 for a while - leaving the gold spot free for the sub-mariners should they choose to avail themselves of it.  They were just 6 seconds ahead of Fladbury's Sam Ingles and Josh Critchley one of whom managed to swim out of their OC2 just infront of the rowing club and after a quick swim, a run along the back they ppicked up the speed and came fourth.  Brilliant effort guys!   (How anybody can stay upright in an OC is still beyond me but that one can fall out and one can stay in really impressed me).

The Mopheads christened their new boat on the river and came a commendable fouth, beaten out of priszes by 1 second.  Bad luck guys but it was god to get the boat out on the river in advance of the finals next weekend.

Ellie & I made a tactical error; two actually and they were probably both my fault.  The first one was saying to Dave "Don't worry about tightening up the footrest, its fine as it is and if you tighten it with a spanner I'll never get it off again" and the second was saying to Ellie "Shall we race in div 7 and see how we get on?"  The downstream bit of the race was OK although we were struggling to stay with the div 6 & 7 paddlers.  The way back was harder; it was upstream, the front footrest came off jamming the rudder we lost all directional control and Ellie lost most of her power trying to kick against nothing.  We didn't come last though (and were only 20 seconds behind the folk who won div 8 and they didn't have a broken boat) .  And we will race div 7 again, but not for a while!!!

All in all no car keys were lost, no vehicles broken into, prizes won and we all had a good day out.

And we found a nice man who is going to make us some green and white spray decks;  he leant me a couple and I promised to return them next weekend.  He nearly managed to keep the surprise out of his voice when he asked if we were going to Burton!!!

Are we going to the finals?  Oh yeah!  Bring it on.

What a fantastic result at Adlington!! Eight paddlers went out of region to race at Adlington in Lancashire last weekend and all came back placed.

Phil and Maria won their K1 races and all three K2s, GAri & Anita in Div 7, Alice & Ellie in Div 8 and Emily & Josie in Div 9 all came second.

I don't think there has ever been a race where EVERYONE from Shropshire got placed. Well done guys!

Thanks to Ellie for pointing out to me that Lightning races only score 10 points for first place rather than 20 (and after all she should know) which means that I accidentally inflated Florence, Oliver and Cameron's scores in my previous version of this.

The updated version looks like this.