I was watching the New Inventors on the ABC when I listened and watched quite intently to the presentation of the Wetronome. I had recently started Marathon Kayaking as my sport of choice and knew that while I had the strength and stamina something wasn't quite right. My rate of paddling stroke wasn't up to speed and I had developed the bad habit of having a long slow paddling stroke. As I mainly trained on my own and due to my inexperience I couldn't always recognise when I was slowing down I wasn't making much progress up the creek.

Was this little yellow thing going to be the solution to my challenge?

I purchased my Wetronome and set it for what I thought was a reasonable stroke rate, 60/minute. After a few minutes on the water I realised I could go faster than this. I calculated what was required to average 10km/hour and set the rate for 70/minute.

It worked and for the first time in my short paddling career I maintained the same rate for the full hour.

I kept this rate going until my next race. At this event I took 3 minutes off my personal best. As they say in the songs the memory lingers on and I remembered the beep rate.

For the Hawkesbury Canoe Classic I calculated what my stroke rate needed to be to achieve various average speeds at different parts of the race. When I was paddling with and against the tide, the stroke rate would be different and took every opportunity to practise these. 65/ minute paddling against the tide 75-80 per minute with the tide. I was amazed at how I could tell the rate without the Wetronome going, because it had programmed me after I had programmed it.

On the night of the race I took off and during the lonely stretches in the gloom of the moon or when the mind was asking the body why are we doing this, I remembered the beeps and refocused on the task at hand. It was amazing how I zoned in on what I had done before and it all became so much easier. Beep beep beep….

To my surprise I finished with a final time of 12 hours 0minutes 6secs for a 111km paddle. If I take away the hour I had off the water for checkpoint stops (food etc) I averaged 10.1km/hour.

I finished first in my class/age group over 40 TK1. Not bad for a 49 year old novice.

I am looking forward to next year and with the continuing challenge of increasing my stroke rate I am certain of a better time.