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Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. <div>This Easter bank holiday my husband Richard and I are taking on the Devizes to Westminster Canoe Marathon in aid of the Stars appeal Pembroke Unit. Here is why...</div> <div> Last year, my wonderful and couragous father recovered from Lymphoma after a course of chemotherapy. We would like to show our appreciation for the support and work of the lovely people in the Salisbury Hospital Pembroke Unit, by raising money. The unit provides specialist care to people suffering from Cancer and blood disorders.</div> <div> </div> <div>The challenge we have set ourselves is not an easy one, in fact there have been times where we have faultered in our decision to tackle this race.</div> <div> In summary, we'll be competing in the senior doubles category, racing non-stop for (at least) 24 hours, covering 125 miles in our double kayak (K2). This is the longest non-stop canoe race in the world – a unique physical and mental challenge. The race runs from Devizes through the canals to Reading (52miles) where we join the Thames for another 55 miles. The last bit is on the tidal Thames taking us to Westminster Bridge in London (18 miles). To make it even more challenging there are 77 locks to run around throughout the course, and a tide-window that we have to meet or it will turn against us! This race is sometimes refered to as "The Canoeist's Everest" and has run every Easter since 1948 Famous personalities to have taken part are explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Rebecca Stephens, the first woman to climb Everest solo, and Paddy Ashdown. This year, Sir Steve Redgrave is going to be competing, and we watched him soar past us during one of our training paddles on the Canal. a funny quote I found... "To complete the DW, you need the speed of a racehorse, the stamina of a carthorse, and the brains of a rocking horse." (Sunday Times, Easter 1995) </div> <div></div> <div> for more info on the race... <a href="http://www.dwrace.org.uk/">http://www.dwrace.org.uk/</a> more info on the pembroke Unit Fund and what they will do with your money... <a href="http://www.starsappeal.org/projectsmain/details/projects/pembroke-unit-fund/">http://www.starsappeal.org/projectsmain/details/projects/pembroke-unit-fund/</a> </div>   --------------------------------------update------------------------------------------------------ WE DID IT! Here is our account of what happened. <div> Debbie & Richard DW2012 After a fairly short 9 months of training it was finally the morning of Saturday 7th April and we were driving in the drizzle to Devises for our scheduled 3pm start in the 64th annual Devises-to-Westminster Canoe Race….. We planned to hit the second tide window in Teddington to avoid the crowd of boats starting in the morning on Saturday who would be aiming for the early Sunday tide. Kit scrutineering passed, custom cider-bottle-based outriggers accepted, mortuary wrist bands affixed, race number attached. No going back now. Bedwyn - 20 miles & 5hrs in, 8pm sat The first 14 miles, known as ‘The Pound’, is free from locks but subsequently a bum numbing 3 hours of paddling. However, we cracked that 15 mins quicker than our best in training with no sense of fatigue. Neil, our primary support crew shadowed us from the start and was an extremely welcome sight in various comedy hats at each of the accessible bridges and locks proffering a calorific assortment at every occasion. We gradually crept ahead of our planned but conservative schedule and enjoyed a few extra minutes at our 'dinner' stop in Bedwyn where Neil had quite a spread laid on. The self heating beans & sausages proved a winner. Newbury - 35 miles & 8hrs in, 11pm sat We continued to make good progress into the evening and pleasingly overtook 2 all-male crews. The intermittent drizzle was offset by the overcast and hence reasonably mild temperatures. Chasing down our next support point became the objective in preference over torturing ourselves with the knowledge that we still had an incomprehensible 100 miles to go. Claude, and then Gareth + roped-in teenage cousin + dog, joining Neil to support over the night was extremely welcome. The Newbury checkpoint represented the longest paddle we had completed in training and we were again ahead of schedule and feeling pretty good. Reading - 50 miles & 14hrs, 5am sun The small hours of the morning were difficult. For hour after hour just dark, drizzly canals and countryside. The only thing to distract from the growing fatigue was the intensely welcome sight of our support team members. It was around 3am that we started to experience the startling phenomenon of falling asleep whilst paddling. Everything appears to be ticking along before 'WOW!', your eyes burst open to reveal a different version of dreary canal to the one your mind had painted on the insides of your eyelids. Who knows how long you're out each time but certainly it gets harder and harder to differentiate between miserable reality and miserable dreamland. We made the second cut-off checkpoint at Reading well within the max time permitted and 40 mins ahead of schedule. We allowed ourselves the luxury of a 15 min stop here. But after some hastily consumed hotfood and an extra layer we sloped back into the boat and disappeared off into the slightly menacing damp and cold gloom of the Thames. The canal section of the race was done, but given the pain developing in everything from the waist up a further 76 miles seemed simply incomprehensible. Boulters - 76 miles & 19hrs, 10am sun We were hoping to paddling toward a motivational sunrise but the weather stamped all over that vision with a slowly brightening and still drizzly greyness. The spacings between the large Thames locks was much longer now to. I think these factors didn’t help our second and now more powerful phase of sleep paddling which struck around 6am. I don’t recall it clearly, I just remember occasions such as Debbie gently enquiring if our pace was still ok when I was clearly slumped forward and doing little more than waving the paddle around. It was around this time that the GPS running watch decided to mirror the same sentiment as my conscious mind and informed me it was time to shut down with no battery life left. Without this speed and distance input we did erode most of the cushion we had built up but the master plan had built into it more than enough contingency to comfortably make the all-important 2hr tide window at Teddington. Being early means waiting to be allowed on the Tidal Thames. Whereas if you miss the end of the window you are forced to wait 12 hours for the next tide. Bovney - 82 miles & 21hrs, midday sunday We were just about bang on our planned timings, we were paddling ok, very tired, hurting badly, but feeling like this might just workout ok if we didn’t stop. Then the pivotal moment of the race happened] We came across a crew we had played leapfrog with a few times much earlier in the race before they crept ahead many hours before. The two guys had started not long after us, and been apprehensive but confident. But as we approached Bovney Lock we could see all was not well. By the time we pulled up it was clear they were struggling to disguise their emotion and looked destroyed. The revelation that came was their statement that there was now no way they could make the tide window and they were giving up. 'What, why, how come, we’re ahead of our conservative schedule, and aiming for the same tide of course….'. After some laboured mental arithmetic I realised to my horror that they were right. I had a screw-up in our timing. Our pace had been great and indeed faster than we planned. But I had rolled an error down the schedule such that we only had 4.5 hours to the start of the tide and 6.5 left until the end of the tide window. Our race speed would mean we’d struggle to cover the remaining 25 miles and 8 large locks.   After 6 months of planning this endeavour trying to think of every little detail that could improve the odds of a very part-time and extremely amateur mixed crew completing the race, and this happens. I guess 21 hours into this we were too tired to entertain the expected emotions. However, exhaustion fortunately also seems to allow the mind to easily fixate, childlike, on a plan without much in the way of rational sense check. I was simply overcome with one feeling; we just weren't going to fail to make the window. If we got there before 18.30 then we can float on the tide down to the finish. Before even considering the practical feasibility of this I looked at Debbie and saw immediately that she was of the same mind. As simple as it was to say it; we just had to make it. We worked out that if we managed to increase our average paddling speed by about 20% between the now fortunately more spaced-out locks (which destroy your average speed) and eliminate all our breaks, then we could just make the back end of the tide window. At this point Neil came in over the Radio calmly asking for snack preferences at the next lock. The reply, thankfully fairly emotionless thanks to the fatigue, informed him of the shock predicament and that for the next 5.5 hours we would be running flat out with no breaks. As ever, Neil went above and beyond to do everything he could to support us. Teddington - 107 miles & 27 hours. 5.45pm (45 mins before the tide window closes) The idea of increasing your normal firm but sustainable paddling speed by 20% is ridiculous at the best of time for all but a sprint. The insane reality that accompanied the plan to make the tide window was that we needed to 'sprint' at this pace, not for maybe a 20 min blast, but for over 5 hours, AND after already paddling over twice the distance of our single longest training session. But we did, largely fuelled by a horrendous but very effective mix of redbull (never tried it before now!), chocolate and ibuprofen. After 2 hours holding close to 6mph (normally 5mph is av cruising speed and I assume more like 4.5 given the lock portages. This also assumes no helpful river flow which was sadly the case due to the lack of rain) for the 2-4 mile legs between locks we were on fire. The pain and fatigue was terrible but we shared, a frankly scary, single minded focus which over rode absolutely everything….we just had to make it. All sense of sleep depravation disappeared, as long as we didn’t leave it too long between redbulls (I consumed 6 cans over that 5 hours). Debbie's already swollen right wrist stared popping and crackling on each stroke and her hand was permanently clamped in claw like pose. I could feel a sensation of muscle fibres knotting in my lats (under arms down side of torso) and then tearing slightly when forcing the torso rotation that increases the power of each stroke. At each portage the fingers on our right hands had to be coaxed from the paddle shaft and I frequently found my second-to-smallest finger curing up onto itself to the point of me having difficulty unfolding it and snapping it back onto the paddle after a portage. At one stage we could see another boat which had set off a long way ahead of us, but now we fairly quickly closed it down. We nervously enquired how they were doing hoping to hear they were expecting to hit the tide ok. Disheartened head shaking and some gesticulating in the direction of a forlorn paddle partner in the back of their boat made it clear we needed to keep up the insane pace to run ahead of the virtual failure line moving out still in front of us. Again, I was immensely heartened to feel the boat surge onwards even faster when it was clear the conversation had dried up. Unspeakingly Debbie's resolve was clear. At 5.45 pm with really 15 mins to spare (by the time we had done the admin we needed to get done) we finally swept under a bridge crowded with very welcome faces and crunched the boat uncaringly up the concrete ramp at Teddngton. Its easy to get rather choked recalling all this now but after nearly 30 hours of sleep deprived endurance you simply don’t have the energy to waste on such things at the time. But the relief to know all we had to do we jump on the Thames to make it was massive. Westminster - 126 & 30.36, 10.30pm sun Floating to Westminster didn’t really happen as we had hoped. It soon become obvious that we had paid a high price for the caffeine-induced thrash. It took at least an hour of trying to coax our shattered muscles into accepting the prospect of another 4hrs of infernal paddling. The only saving grace was that we weren't running against any checkpoints that could see us fail the race. After an eternity of guessing which bridge was which it became clear we were entering central London. All the lights seemed to congeal together into a hazy blaze making our deadened brains struggle to workout where we might be supposed to finish. For a fleeting moment I wondered what happens if we miss the finish and drift out into the darkness of the estuary, but quickly dropped that though . Then a handful of small river lifeboats appeared from nowhere and waved us into the right get-out point. A small band of luminous, dry suited angels pluck you from the object of your torment and you get used to dry land for a few seconds. Only then did Debbie and I blinkingly emerge from the top of the steps to find a sea of familiar faces somehow still waiting for us. Our aim was to finish but for what its worth; We came 91st out of 110 finishers. A further 44 crews didn’t make it (30%) We were 7th out of the 15 mixed crews. 3 former Olympic rowers/paddlers competed including Steve Redgrave. None completed it. Most importantly; We wouldn’t have stranded a chance of entering into this ordeal, let alone dragging ourselves over the finish line without the unfathomably generous support from our friends and family both before the race and particularly during it. Neil in particular was our ever present guardian always on hand and running ahead doing everything he could to help us. Thank you all so much. </div>

Tackling the Devizes to Westminster Canoe Marathon.

Tackling the Devizes to Westminster Canoe Marathon.

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