The road from Augsburg to Mezzana is stunning. Or, at least the bits I could hold my eyes open for were. After a weeks excitement I couldn’t help nodding off in the van, but as always the majesty of the mountains transfixed my attention as we crossed the Brenner Pass.
I’d been lucky enough to paddle Mezzana just a couple of weeks earlier on my grand plastic Fantastic tour of Italy and Austria. Then I’d rocked up completely oblivious as to our destination only to be greeted with a large sign advertising the event we were now competing in. While I’d only managed a couple of laps on that flying visit it was almost comforting returning to a river I was acquainted with. Even more comforting to see the level had risen to cover a few more rocks!
The scheduled called for racing to start on Thursday with the classic. We’d arrived late Sunday evening after the long drive giving us just a meager 3 days to learn the long, continuous course.
Racing is hard. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but not many people realise that thinking is harder. But, what is really difficult is doing both at the same time. They seem to pull from the same limited pool of human effort. The harder you pull in the race, the less thinking juice is available. And, as tiredness sets in, concentration begins to lapse. Lapses in concentration lead to mistakes. Mistakes cost time and cruelly require more effort to fix. This combination can easily snowball into a catastrophic race run, and therefore we practice.
We try to learn every rock, every wave, every little flow ladder the river has to offer. The aim is to know the river like the back of your hand. So, come race day, you can be all pull and no think. But, in practice this is quite hard.
On Monday we did 4 four classic runs. Two in the morning, two in the afternoon. (I did the first two in the whopper to probe out all the rocks). On tuseday we did 3, two in the morning, one in the afternoon. Finally on Wednesday we just did one in the morning, resting up in the afternoon before race day.
A grand total of 8 laps. But is that really enough to learn a continuous 17minute course? No. And if you think otherwise you’re a cocky little dickhead.
The first 2-3 runs generally get you acquainted with the river. Another few runs and you’ll probably have worked our roughly where the racing lines are. Then You’ll need at least a couple more laps to glue everything together and we’ve not even thought about optimising the line yet. Is it quicker to sneak the other side of that rock, do you need to be a half-foot further over to avoid those waves? Needless to say commiting a whole classic course to memory is no easy task.
Mezzana went loosely like this for me:
- Run 1 – Oh my god where the hell am I?
- Run 2 – Yep I still don’t recognise it
- Run 3 – Ah, I recognise this bit and I did not want to be here
- Run 4 – Okay, yeah I want to be there next time
- Run 5 – What the hell there’s a rock here too!
- Run 6 – Yep, nice, got this bit dialed. But do we go left now, or slightly less left
- Run 7 – Finally, I think I’ve got it all stuck together, I just need to avoid that rock at the start.
- Run 8 – Fucks sake, how do I keep hitting this rock?
Fortunately we’ve got a secret weapon: head cams [INSERT YOUR BRAND HERE (pretty, pretty please sponsor me)] Head cams are an invaluable tool for helping to learn both classics and sprints. Paddling is hard work, and watching back head cam footage is an easy way to squeeze in extra laps without destroying your body.
In between groaning and lying on the floor, evenings on the British team are often spent reviewing the days footage. We debate lines, identify and fix mistakes and crucially revise the river until it becomes a part of our souls. It’s kinda like F1 drivers practicing on the sim but with a much lower budget!
We had a little bit of fun learning the lines at Mezzana (alpine rivers have a very different characteristics to our brown British rivers), but by the time classic day arrived I was feeling pretty confident with the lines.
Unfortunately though it wasn’t my race. While I put the boat exactly where I wanted it (bar a smallish mistake at the end). The fast flowing alpine water was very heavy on my forearms which began to cramp up by about the half way mark. This combined with the dreggs of an illness and the need for near constant stroke timing through the continuous waves meant I struggled to really put the hammer down. Still I’ve had worse races and this was an excellent chance to get some alpine style water under my belt.
A nice pick me up, came in the form of a raft race that afternoon. We’d noticed it in the schedule on the drive over and had thought it’d be a good lark. When Jamie, out team leader, asked at the briefing about entering there was some umming and ahing from the organisers until they concluded, yes. Yes we could enter.
What we hadn’t realised is that the raft race wasn’t just a mere jolly and was actually part of the rafting world cup. It also wasn’t just the one race, with a raft classic and sprint on the first day of racing. Followed by raft slalom and raft cross in the days after. A lot of bang for our buck of €15 (and we even got bonus stash).
They didn’t even ask how competent we were, which was probably a good thing. Somehow I was the most experienced rafter in our boat, thanks to having actually been in a raft before. Nevermind that was probably 8 years back. Making up the rest of our Men’s ‘British’ boat was Andrew (who paddles C1, which is kinda like a raft), Leon (who’s been in C2s before) and a totally unexperienced American who we’d press ganged into racing. A second British boat was entered into the Mixed category consisting of all three Christies and horary Christie, Rob.
We didn’t exactly fancy ourselves as ringers (not since we discovered it was a world cup), but somehow we didn’t end up finishing last! So the British rafting team better watch their backs!
Doing the raft races the day before sprint heats probably wasn’t the best race prep, but nobody in our team was really targeting the sprint (and the rafting was a lot of fun). However, Andrew still made it through to the Finals in C1 and C2 with Jamie (despite a little dip) and the Christie Girls also qualified their C2 for a final (no dips required).
Maybe one day I’ll make a final too, but I’ve got a lot to improve on the sprint. My heat 1 line was dairly on point, but my technique often seems to fall apart in the heat of the moment. Jamie provided me with some much needed advice for the 2nd run, to avoid upping the rate too high and just focus on connecting with each paddle stroke and pulling hard. This seemed to work wonders but unfortunately my line in the second run took me through a lot of the chop. Still I was only a second slower when compared to the first run, which was a better margin than most of the field. However, I was still a long way off the final. So we’ll just call that another learning experience.
Obviously, the main event for us that day was the raft slalom! It was about as chaotic as you’d expect. There was a lot of ‘constructive’ shouting aboard our raft and between the two run we did manag to get all of the gates! Unfortunately we didn’t manage all of them in a single run, but once again we weren’t last.
Without a team race at the World cups and with no finals for myself this was sadly the last of my racing for the event. But we wouldn’t let that be the last of our paddling. Throught the week Jamie had been remincing of the 1993 World Championships he’d raced in. That race had been held on a different section of river, somewhere bellow Mezzana, and we all (or well mostly) thought it’d be fun to go check this part of the river on finals morning.
This was part of the section I’d paddled previously paddled in a plastic boat. I was again, back in a plastic boat, but now it was a much more lively wavehopper. This turned out to be quite a good decision as the river had dropped a tad, and definitely would have been a bit better with a little more water. But bouncing off rocks was a lot of fun in the wavehopper (although slight less fun for everyone in composite boats) and there were definitely clean lines through everything (bar maybe a big weir drop) but learning them properly would be a lot of work and quite a bit of trial and error. A bit like Treignac really.
Still this was a great section of river and somthing I’d love to paddle again. It was so much fun that (thanks to a small miscommunication) I sailed right past the get out (which I’d previously camped at) and right round the corner! I survived the experience, but Leon who followed me was less than impressed.
We finished off the morning with a couple of farewell classic laps before hanging around to watch the sprint finals and have a couple of well earned beers.
There was also a ‘small’ party which was a nice chance to let loose and get a little better acquainted with the other teams. Although that’s all I’m allowed to say on that…
The only thing left to do on Sunday for Rob, Leon and myself was a leisurely sight seeing drive over to Verona airport. Our underpowered little hire car strained itself to drag us over stunning mountain passes and we had a lovely little dip lake Garda. Inevitably, the flight was delayed into the early hours and I had to sleep on the airport floor before getting into work late on Monday.
10/10 would do again!
River Stench 