2009 Irish Canoe Union Liffey Descent.

For those of you who have never heard of the event, it is one of the biggest races in Europe. Before you get put off I should however point out that whilst it is classed as a race, in reality it is only a race if you enter the true racing classes. For everybody else it is just part of a fun weekend with endless stories to tell afterwards about your mishaps, misfortunes and how you nearly got the weir shoot right!

The event takes place on Saturday 5th September but you have to be in Ireland for the check-in which takes place on the evening of Friday 4th September. Some clubs travel out Thursday and some Friday but most return on the first ferries back Sunday morning, which means that everybody is back home for Sunday evening.

We are sorry but due to safety restraints, the age limit for the event is 16 and because of the weirs and the huge number of people taking part everybody must have their entry countersigned by a club instructor or coach to verify their ability and experience.

See the event website at http://www.liffeydescent.com/

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.

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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV0ldEThTrQ

We are also offering a 1* course starting on Monday 8 June from 6:30 to 8:30 lasting for 4 weeks.  This leads to a recognised British Canoe Union qualification  and will give you basic boat handling skills and is the recommended minimum standard for club trips and saturday morning sessions.

Further courses are available in July and August.

Places are limited for both the Come and Try It and the 1* course so booking is essential.  Please contact Deb on 07747 535341 or deb[at]shropshirepaddlesport.org

(Please note that due to IT work, e-mails may not be picked up after Friday night)

June 6/7 Nottingham sprint regatta

June 14  Burton hasler

June 21  Hereford hasler

             Also Trentham lightning day

June 28  Shropshire hasler

July 4/5 Nottingham sprint regatta

July 12 Cardiff Sprint

July 19 Reading K4 race (10k)

If you are interested in entering Burton hasler or the July sprints, please speak to Dave Barnes.  Speak to Deb about entering any of the others!

A small (but perfectly formed) team of racers made the trip down to Warwickshire with us fileding two K2s and two K1s across divisions 9 to 7. A few glitches in the Hasler Race management software meant that Ellie nearly got an easy race in Div 8 but Deb went and sorted it out with the organisers such that Ellie ended up racing in her proper division (which I’m sure she appreciated).

Despite the rain it was an interesting race - first time for us at Leamington, marked by the fact that it’s an extremely short 500m section of river between two buoys and so to make a longish (4.5 mile) hasler race, we ended up doing three loops - yes SIX turns!!!. This was reflected by the times (not just for us, for everyone) being a little slower than you might expect for a normal Hasler.

A good effort all around though, with :

• Dave & Kate coming 3rd in Div 9 K2
• Matt & Cameron coming 2nd in Div 8 K2
• Andy coming 5th in Div 8 K1
• Ellie coming 7th in Div 7 K1

The club points hadn’t been listed by the time we came away, but I’ve updated the rest of the Hasler results page which you can find here. No Lightning racers for us this week (although Grace & Rose Blackman were racing for Gailey coming 2nd & 3rd respectively) so our Lightning table hasn’t changed.

I’ll update the club points bit as soon as I know the results.

Congratulations go to Ellie Barnes for being promoted to Girls C at last weekend’s sprint regatta.

She managed to get into the A finals in K1 500m and 100m, B finals in 500m and 1000m with Sarah Walters from Burton and came 3rd in the K4 over both distances!

She also got to paddle OC2 and only got slightly damp.

A good weekend’s work - especially for someone who was ill!

Firstly there was the issue of what we do with Lightnings. It’s always been our wish to include Lightnings in the running for the main trophy, especially given that in most years we seem to have members crossing-over between Lightnings and the senior race. Because there isn’t any divisional structure within Lightnings we felt that we had to use the standard Hasler split of Lighning races counting 10 points and down compared to the senior race being 20 points and down.

What we have realised however is that this means that people who *just* race Lightnings aren’t getting adequate recognition, and so we’ve decided that as well as Lightning points being counted within the main club table, we’ll maintain a separate “champions” list for the Lighning paddlers to ensure that their efforts don’t get overlooked.

Secondly, it was pointed out that the Hasler Race Management system includes a number of relatively complex rules about discounting the points of people racing “out of region” as well as the rather ridiculous rule about your points only counting if you’re within 110% of the time of the winning Team which cost us, as a club, so many points at Gailey.

The national Hasler rules do provide a useful starting point, but we don’t feel that we need to be bound by them, so what we are proposing for the internal club trophy are scoring rules as follows.

1. You can earn points for the club Trophy by competing in any qualifying regional race - for Midlands this is Ironbridge, Fladbury, Lincoln, Gailey, Anker Valley, Worcester, Leamington, Nottingham, Buron, Hereford, Shropshire and Soar Valley.

2. Of course we would encourage people to  compete outside of region (and we sometimes do) but this helps us to focus on the fact that we need regional qualifying points to take us to the Hasler finals.

3. You will earn points based on your position *on the day* irrespective of whether the people you are competing with are paddling in our out of their own region. We’re all doing the same race after all.

4. Points will be awarded for seniors starting as 20 for a 1st, 19 for a second and so forth down to 1 point for everyone who completes the race. We will ignore the “your points don’t count if there’s a very fast team in your race” rule which the BCU uses.

5. Lightings will have a similar system starting at 10 points, *but* we will actively recognise the efforts and results of our Lightning paddlers by maintaining a separate award just for Lightnings. Lightning points will also count towards the main trophy for members who are moving between Lightnings and the Senior race.

I’m going to go back and correct the table based on these changes to the rules as it was felt that the Gailey results unfairly penalised a number of our K2 teams. An event where there are a large number of out-of-region paddlers (such as you get at an assessment race or as happened at Worcester) would also skew the numbers from what we are trying to do with this award - “To encourage consistent successful paddling which contributes to the standing of the club nationally and recognises personal achievement”.

We appreciate that this may cause some changes in the middle of the table (I don’t think it will make any difference at the top) and that effectively we’re changing the rules halfway through the game, but it seemed to us these were imnportant changes. If anyone has strong objections to these changes or they think that we’ve missed somethingthen please give Deb or I a call.

I’m confident that the race team will be guided by wanting to make the rules fair for everyone rather than requesting changes which improve their own particular standing in the table - remember we’re only half way through the season so there is everything still to play for.

Rather than keep cluttering up the blog pages with them, I’ve set them up as a single page over here

In summary not a lot of change in the personal results, but we’ve dropped one place to equal 5th in the club championship. Well done to those who turned out on a bank holiday weekend to race, and well done to Ellie and Cam for getting back in and completing after an early swim.