Cross training

After having spent New Year's with Bonte and Craig in Hermanus, and getting to bed rather late after a hectic 5 days of riding, Craig suggested we go paddling. I was quite prepared to sleep the rest of the morning away, as we had made plans to go riding in Lebanon later that afternoon (on my rest day!).

We organised paddles, Craig did some running repairs to the K2, and we loaded up 2 dogs, 3 boats and 4 paddlers into the Golf and headed off.

I hadn't paddled in years, and fond memories of spending Saturday mornings learning how to either get back into my boat in the middle of the dam, or emptying gallons of water out of it after falling out yet again came flooding back. To make matters worse, Yolanda and I were going to share the K2, which was just a recipe for disaster.

While we never actually fell out, we did have countless close calls, and by the time we had paddled across the lagoon, our boat had a fair amount of water in it.

Bonte offered up ButterCup - her surf ski - to Yolanda, as "it is impossible to fall out of this". Minutes later Yolanda was bobbing around in the water, next to ButterCup.

A wet Yolanda bonding with the dogs.

Craig suggested that we go and do some wave surfing skiing stuff at the mouth of the river. While it looked like lots of fun, this was offset by my fear of being washed out to sea never to be seen again, so I just splashed about in the shallows, and didn't go too far out. And like Yolanda, I too fell off ButterCup. But it was quite a bit of fun!

Buttercup and I getting ready.

Splashing around at the mouth

A couple days later I noticed my cycling top was quite tight around my upper arms - I think the paddling gave me some arm muscles ;)

A well earned snack after some hectic exercise.