We are only 11 days away from the Upstate NY Training camp and it is shaping up to be the biggest event to date. We are here to give you the scoop of what is to come the weekend of 3/21 and 3/22 on Fish Creek. The Put in will be at the Kayak Shak located at 251 county, Co Rd 67, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866. Cost will be $5 for each Canoe to launch each day but this launch site makes it very easy with nice docks to launch from. We then paddle down stream for about 4.25mi and complete loops on creek with varying water conditions.
Demos!!
This year we are lucky enough to have paddle demos at camp from ZRE, GRB Newman Designs, and from RippleFX! You will have the opportunity to test each of these paddles out and provide feedback over the course of the weekend.
This is going to be a great opportunity to paddle with a very large and diverse paddling community. There will be all ability levels present and we will be swapping partners to help keep groups together for more paddling fun. We plan to be on water at 10am both days with roughly 4-6hrs of paddling planned for Saturday and about 4hr on Sunday. This camp also has a good dry land portion as well.
After paddling on Saturday we will be getting together at Gary Mclain's house for all of the dry land activities. These will include a dinner (please bring a plate to share), a dryland clinic and "paddle party". The dry land activities will start at around 6:30pm on Saturday.
Dryland Clinic
We are really excited for this year's dry land clinic portion of the camp. This year we have TWO grade A presenters. CanoeRaceWorld's own Ben Schlimmer (or myself if he cannot attend) will be presenting on overall race strategies with specific workouts geared to allow you to take advantage of your strengths and will be tieing in information from Peter Heed's presentation on wake riding. Peter will be bringing model canoes and a "wave blanket" that allows him to actually show you with a model representation the different positions you should be in to take advantage of the wakes from other boats. This is something that is very hard to do "on the water" so this will be extra valuable to newer paddlers.
The People
The numbers keep on growing for this event. Although none of these names are 100% guarantee, it looks like there is at least 40 people that are either commited or just waiting on the weather forecast to make the final decision if they will be coming. Some of these paddlers include Rob Mihalic, Becky Sutter, Joe Schlimmer, Mike Schlimmer, Ben Schlimmer, Sarah Lassard and partner, Karen Pleasant, Patrick Madden, Teresa Stout, Melissaa Swislosky, Greg Lowrey, Rod Mclain, Myriam Belanger and partner, Claud Roux, Jeff Pedersen, John Young, Dave Sennett, Ed wagner, Kim Greiner, Pete Ross, Shane Mcdowell, Steve Burton, Travis and Terese Wheeler, Roger Henry, Alec Davis, Brian Bearss(90%), Phil Millspaugh, Phoebe Reese, Jo Olney, Paul Olney, Dave Wiltey. The following people are looking to come but still not fully committed, Tommy Pellerin, Chris Proulx, Bob Rapant, Rick Olson and Mary Schlimmer(she is a traveling machine as of late) fresh off her win in Belize. There are also other Quebec paddlers are still thinking of coming down.
It is going to be an exciting weekend and we hope to see you there!