Updated on Apr 25th 2011 at 8:36 AM from the JustGiving API

We did it! 26hrs 20mins, came 59th out of about 150 who started with 40 who didn't finish. No flow on the river (due no rain) added 2-3 hours to everyone's time compared against normal race conditions. Combined with the heat, it was generally considered to be the toughest race for years. Which is borne out by the state we were both in at the finish!

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common cancers in women and each year around 6800 women in the UK are diagnosed with the condition.  At the moment, in the UK, around 65% of those diagnosed will die of the disease.

Almost all women with ovarian cancer suffer symptoms in the early stages and if it is found and treated early, survival rates are over 90%. Unfortunately however, in the UK currently, in over 75% of cases, the diagnosis is only made once the cancer has spread significantly and survival rates are much lower.

Ovacome is a UK charity providing a support network for everybody affected by Ovarian cancer.  You can find more out about the fantastic work they do here…http://www.ovacome.org.uk/

We thought we’d try to raise some money to help support the charity by “going for a paddle”…....The Devizes to Westminster International Canoe Race is held every Easter.  It is a 125 mile non-stop race along the Kennet and Avon Canal and the river Thames from Devizes (in Wiltshire) to Westminster Bridge in London.  Paddlers start during the morning of Easter Saturday (did you know that it’s more likely to snow at Easter than at Christmas?) and paddle throughout the day and night hopefully arriving at Westminster Bridge at some point the next morning.  Along the way there are 77 locks where you have to get out, lift the boat onto your shoulders, walk (some people run…..) past the lock, put the boat back into the water and paddle away and numerous swing bridges where if you don't duck low enough you risk a scalping. 

The race is known as the “kayaker’s everest”.  In a good year, 65% of crews that start reach the finish.  In a bad year it’s about 40%. Over the years many well known people have completed the race including Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Lord Paddy Ashdown and James Cracknell.  James Cracknell described it as “the most brutal
day of sport I’ve ever experienced” and upon finishing Paddy Ashdown remarked that he could only think of one person who’d had a more painful Easter….

You can find out more about the race here (it’s got a fascinating history and like so many good things, and indeed our involvement, started years ago as the result of a bet in a pub) http://www.dwrace.org.uk/ and read the accounts of a few of the amateurs who have tackled the race in recent years
here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/3353796/The-DW-canoe-race-The-common-mans-Everest.html
and here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/outdoors/4962934/Paddling-through-the-pain-barrier-in-the-Devizes-to-Westminster-canoe-race.html
and here http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/article5982782.ece
There’s a lot more to be found online, particularly on YouTube, but we’ve decided not to watch too much as it all seems to say how hard the whole thing is!

It's fair to say that we're not natural paddlers.  In mid 2009 when we decided to do this, we’d never been in kayaks in our lives.  We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for.  Since we started, we’ve done a lot of unplanned swimming, been overtaken both by paddlers old enough to be our grandparents and young enough to be our children, done a bit more unplanned swimming, got completely disorientated and steered into the bank of the canal in the fog in the dark more than once, capsized and then had to wade through 300 metres of chest deep murky canal sludge in a tunnel with bits of ice floating in the water and then been rescued by the army about half an hour later semi-hypothermic...….so, as you can see, the training has gone well all in all.  (We have improved a bit recently though to be fair).

It’s going to take about 90,000 paddle strokes to get us in our two man boat from Devizes to Westminster.  That’s 1p per stroke for every £900 we can raise. 

Please donate generously and help us to help the people who are affected by this disease that has taken loved ones from both our families.

Thank you so much,

James and Kelvin

 

p.s. we’ve got a Twitter account “JimKel_DW2011”.  We’ll use it to provide brief updates on how the training is going, maybe a link to the odd bit of YouTube footage but more importantly will try to send out regular updates during the race itself so you can see how we’re getting on….if our fingers keep working and we can remember who we are..

 

p.p.s. very occasionally, the race gets cancelled (foot and mouth, bad flooding etc).  Also, there is a small chance that we may not reach the finish.  If your donation is dependant upon us completing the race, please wait until after we've finished to make your donation as making refunds is a complicated procedure.

 

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