Di Gray, Squad Coach
One man's story: David Lunn, Marathon Kayaker
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.
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Di Gray, Squad Coach, Armidale School, NSWI have a squad of 18 swimmers with 15 of them owning their own Wetronome. As coach I have three, for usage by those who do not own a Wetronome.
My squad consists of country and state age group swimmers, some who are targeting 2007 Nationals.
The benefits of using the Wetronomes with this squad have been to assist young swimmers (10-14 yr old) understand the variations in stroke rate between distances eg 50m vs 200m. The Wetronomes also helps the swimmers understand pacing, especially that 3rd 25 of 100m or 3rd 50 of 200m.
An unexpected benefit has been using a Wetronome with a swimmer who has Downs Syndrome - Will. He understands better how fast I want him to pace during training sets with a Wetronome although overusing it, he will just switch off and ignore the beeps. I usually set Will's Wetronome to pace the single stroke rather than a stroke cycle.
On the down side, some things to be aware of is that using Wetronomes when too fatigued can be disspiriting for young swimmers, who still determinely try to keep pace but are no longer able - time to give the Wetronome a rest.
Some swimmers may just 'switch off' and it may need the coach with a stop watch measuring stroke rate to monitor this.
If the Wetronome is set at too fast a pace for the swimmer, the swimmer will shorten their stroke to keep up. This has to be carefully monitored.
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