Friday, July 25, 2014

That's a paddling

After a surprisingly decent showing at Belwood last weekend, I find myself without another race on the schedule until mid-September. While I never specifically planned to take August off, the timing ends up being perfect.

Back in January I looked forward to a few things this year: trying to get faster (eeh..), finishing Mine Over Matter again (check!), being a little more fun (um, you'll have to ask Tanker) and going on a canoe trip with my sweetheart.



The idea was to train fewer hours to free up some time to do more paddle training. This has not exactly happened. What with the late spring, playing crash test dummy just after the Waterloo Marathon, then a jam-packed month of June, we've only actually got out for one jaunt around Puslinch Lake.

We are, nonetheless, going canoe tripping. It'll be Tanker's first, and my first in many years. Our destination is Frontenac Provincial Park - a 5,200 hectare pure wilderness space with all campsites exclusively accessible via paddling routes between its 22 lakes and the 100km of hiking trails.

Just one small section of the park

We've kept it shorter and planned the route so we have very easy days of travel - six lakes over 4 days, with a maximum of two portages per day (getting the longest ones out of the way while we're fresh) and no more than 3 hours of paddling to reach the evening's campsite. It should keep it from being a misery due to lack of training while giving us time to explore some of the hiking trails and scenic lookouts.

Though the campsites themselves seem to be pretty scenic, too.

Since neither of us has been to Frontenac before, we hope to make the most of it while we're there. After we come off the water, we'll head to a gem of a place I haven't visited since my childhood - we'll spend another 2 nights drive-in camping (glamping!) at Bon Echo Provincial Park. Hiking trails and pictographs and Mazinaw Lake, oh my!

I'm not even going to bother bringing any running gear with me. Next week will be dedicated to simply drinking in the glories of nature and sharing the experience with the one I love the most.

It's time to relax, recharge and reconnect.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Go on, have at me!