shropshirepaddlesport.org - the blog

Can you believe it - we're already two races into the season. A small but perfectly formed Shropshire Paddlesport team went off to Fladbury and had a completely storming day.

Dave & Kate took a comfortable win in Div 9 K2 and finally bowed to the inevitable and have been promoted to Div 8. Ellie's K2 partner - Sarah Walters from Burton - was promoted to Div 6 at the Hasler Finals and so they were now both racing the 8 mile course. Unconfirmed rumour has it that Ellie was even seen to run a portage !

I've updated the results page to reflect Soar Valley and Fladbury - at this stage the leader board is completely up for grabs, but as a club we've got a lot to do if we're going to make to the cut before the Hasler Finals in 2010 (and yes, before anyone else points it out I know I've not been in a boat for months !)

Well it was a beautiful sunny day in Reading with a lot of good racing on, as usual, a fairly lumpy bit of river. Mixed fortunes for the SHP collective but Anita and Gari upheld the honour of the club taking silver in their K2 race. A cracking Lightning run for Tim Bevan as well in his last L1 race seeing off a number of the usual competition.

Full results when they're confirmed, but in the meantime a few pictures from the weekend

Gari & Anita collecting their silver

Matt powering off the start line

Dave & Kate in the bedlam of the Div 9 K2 start - it's quieter up in Div 8, honest !

Tim looking determined...

Sam and cam looking knackered

Well, it doesn't seem to have been the best race for SHP but sometimes things just don't go your way.  With Ellie and the mopheads having to retire through illness, Matt running into trouble part way round and Cam & Marcus being bounced into the bank the youngsters didn't have the best day out.

On the other hand Kate and Dave came 4th in a combined div 8/9 race beating a number of div 8 crews and the sun shone. That promotion has to be iminent.

Overall the club got 2 points.

The clubs going to the Hasler final are:

1st Nottingham 90 points

2nd Worcester 89 points

3rd Gailey 64 points

4th Anker Valley 63 points

5th Solihull 62 points

6th Shropshire Paddlesport 60 points

7th Lincoln 55 points

8th Burton 53 points

There are currently 14 people who hav qualified for the hasler finals.  These are the top 14 people in the points table and are listed below for clarification:

• Andy May - K1
• Ellie Barnes - K1 or K2
• Mathew Whittle - K1 or K2
• Dave Barnes - K2
• Will Bevan - K2
• Kate Jinks - K2
• Cameron Lambert - K2
• Connor Lambert - K2
• Deb May - K2
• Sam Rudd - K2
• Alice Russell - K2
• Phil Russell - K2
• Joseph Whittle - K2
• Marcus Whittle - K2

Plus as many lightnings as want to go.

I know Gari & Anita are planning on heading down to the nationals to get one final race in to qualify aswell which means there could potentially be 16 of us going to Reading.

Go Shropshire!!!!

Shropshire had a phenomenally successful days racing at ironbridge today with lots of people racing and lots of people winning.

In K1 racing Matt Whittle won his first ever div 7 K1 race taking the lead right from the start and maintaining it throughout the race.  Paul Crisp came second in the div 6 race (his second hasler race, and first div 6 race), overtaking at least one div 5 K2 on the way through and Sam Rudd came a commendable 5th in div 8 - again, only her second K1 race!

The K2s were equally successful with Connor and Joseph just pipping Anker Valley's Liz Franklin and Jenny Sykes to first place by 4 seconds, closely followed by Marcus & Cameron who beat another K2 team into third place by just one second.  The finishs for these boats was so exciting I forgot to get any photos.  Sorry.

The div 9 race was consolidated with div 8  so Kate and Dave, despite their protestations that they like being in div 9 and shouldn't be promoted because they're not fast enough for div 8 managed to beat several div 8 crews to come second in the combined race which makes their chances of promotion reather more likely.

Also in the running for promotion are Anita and Gari who decided to enter the 8 mile div 6 race rather than do their normal div 7 course and again managed a second place.

Almost everyone came home with a pot and shed loads of club points.  Well done team.

Mick is sorting out the HRM so promotions etc should be known in the next week or so.  Hopefully (or maybe not) we'll know before the nationals - Kate & Dave and Gari & Anita might be racing their first races in new divisions...

[Edit by Andy - a few photos from today]

Well it has been a glorious day in the sunshine at Bridgnorth with the weather giving us a perfect end to the Midlands regionHasler 2008/2009 series. This was Ironbridge 2 - as I explained in a previous posting they have now moved their race to the end of the season rather than the beginning. What this means is that (until the Marathon Committee change the rules again) all of our regional races fall in sequence with the closing dates for qualification for the 2009 Hasler Final in mid-September and the 2010 race season starting with Soar Valley on September 20th.

We'll update you with the dates for 2010 season races as they become finalised (which should be over the next few weeks - at presnet the only ones we know about are:

Soar Valley - 20/9/09

Fladbury - 4/10/2009

Lincoln - 11/10/2009

Anyway, that is looking ahead to next season. Before that, of course, there is the little matter of the 2009 Hasler Finals on September 27th at Reading.

Finally (just to put the Barnes/Jinks "we're only in this for the fun, we're not competitive at all really" team out of their misery), I've updated the table with the final scores for the club's own internal Hasler trophy. Despite a heroic end-of-season charge by Matt Whittle, Dave and Kate came away from Ironbridge not only with some nice pottery, but with the top spot by 22 clear points. The full list is here but as you can see we've had 36 people race for the club at least once this year with an impressive 132 race starts in total.

The Lightning entries have been down a bit on last year due to a significant number of our previous lightning team progressing up to Senior racing because of age (or in Cameron's case due to being a complete K2 floozie). Florence gets top spot in the Lightning table although she was being chased hard by Tim Bevan. Hopefully we can start to involve our next generation of Lightning paddlers and build back up to our previous position of greatness.

Thank you everyone for your commitment to racing this season. Enjoy the Nationals and the Hasler finals, and let's start it all over again at Soar Valley in about 6 weeks time.

Runcorn Canoe Club is holding its hasler race on 19 July.  It is out of region so there are no points to be won for Shropshire paddlers but it does could towards hasler races to qualify for the hasler finals in Reading at the end of September for those who haven't yet qualified.

All races will take place on the River Weaver, starting and finishing at Runcorn Canoe Club, Clifton. Located 0.5 miles from M56 J12, (OS Ref 526798). Sign posted from Motorway.

Starts will commence at 12:00 prompt (13:45 for Fun Race & Lightning's).
Check-in 09:30 – 11:30.
Briefing will take place 11:35

Fees:

Divisions 1 – 9 £5.00 per seat, (50p discount for Under 18’s)
Lightning Race £2.50 per seat

Plus £3 event ticket for non-BCU members.

Reminder:   you need 3 k1 races to race K1 (or 3 C1 races to race C1) at the hasler finals; to race K2 or C2 you need 3 races of some kind either in a canoe OR a kayak.   If you're not sure whether you have qualified, give Deb a shout.

If you think that you might get bored the day before our own club race (and you're not busy helping us get it set up) you could always pop down to Worcester and have a go in their mini-sprint regatta.

Saturday 27th June 2009

Worcester Canoe Club

Grandstand Road

Worcester

Worcestershire.

WR1 3EJ

• Registration open from 12pm - 1p.
• Racing 1.30 - 4.30.
• 4.30 - 6.30 "the plastic boat challenge"

To quote Sue Hawthorn "Don't expect split second timing, don't take it too seriously, do come and have fun"

Andy & Deb have more info so call us if you're interested.

Warm, sunny day, lazing by the river bank eating chocolate brownies... well that was my experience anyway.

Others went racing (and I was insanely jealous) but Shropshire produced some cracking results.

Kate and Dave are nudging close to promotion with a tidy second place ("Just as well" said Kate "I was gtting bored with coming third all the time") - only a boat length behind the winners of div 9 and would have come 4th in div 8 on that performance.

Marcus & Cam fought their way up the field to come second in div 7 - half a boat length behind Kath Nadal and her div 6 partner and a long way ahead of the team who came third.

Ellie had a reasonable race coming mid field in div 7 k1 but was beaten by Tom Lusty of Solihull who crossed the finishing line with the words "I beat Ellie, I'm happy now". Ellie crossed the finishing line about 40 seconds later saying "I hate marathon; its three and a half miles too long). Personally, I think that sprint racing is 199.5 km short of something worth getting out of bed for - just as well paddlesport caters for lot of different paddlers!

Matt had a brilliant start and a great finish but was hampered by a dodgy shoulder in the middle. Andy (who was mostly having a bad race - but blaming it on the fact that I made him weed the veg bed yesterday 'cos I can't breath and bend over these days) overtook Matt part way through but Matt, clearly remembered Geoff Barber's instructions to Jenny at Andy's first race and dodgy shoulder or no, pulled  a trickout of the hat and "beat the bald guy".

Connor has a lot of the race on film so it will appear here shortly!