It's been a few weeks since our last regular blog, and autumn's begun to take hold in the meantime – yet now as SUP school beginner teaching season is done, our SUP year is very far from over as we're continuing to pack a lot into the ever-shorter days. We've had another couple of classic SUP Clubs,...
It's been such an amazing year, we've pretty much run out of superlatives to describe what great times we've had – but last weekend really was the icing on the cake that is our 2018 SUP season. Because SUPsect, our super-social paddle club out here in Essex, finished 5th overall in the UK at Saturday's British...
Wow – it's mid-September so we're well into meteorological autumn already! How time flies...
Results are in from the 2018 SUP 11 City Tour – and I'm absolutely delighted to discover that I made 9th place Master in a combined time of just over 25 hours (25:00:46). This is way beyond my wildest dreams for my first attempt racing 220km around North Friesland in Holland: I wasn't sure I could do it,...
Mission accomplished! I finished the 2018 SUP 11 City Tour – and today’s 27k time trial turned out to be the hardest paddle of the week, I think the hardest I've ever paddled, into a brutal headwind pretty much all the way back into Leeuwarden. But it really couldn't have gone better for me… The morning started a...
After yesterday's brutal headwinds, we were blessed with a tailwind for almost the whole of today's 43.3km stage from Franeker to Dokkum – it made it a super-fast one, basically a 4-hour downwinder, plus I went probably as hard as I've ever paddled to get what I think was another top 10 finish in a strong...
Today was pretty brutal – first a 12k time trial, then a 30k non-stop: 20k into cross-headwind including some of the windiest stretches I've ever raced, then 10k downwind from Harlingen to Franeker, where I'm currently in the van in the pouring rain. But has to be said I'm still totally buzzing from today's racing...
Here we are in another cute Dutch town, Workum, at the end of day two of the 2018 SUP 11 City Tour – the longest stage of the week at 45.5k. My day's gone well, I started off back on plan and racing relatively cautiously but by the second half got pretty competitive to post what I'm pretty...
So I'm somewhere called Sloten in Friesland, beautiful place, having survived the first day of the SUP 11 City Tour – which has been amazing so far. Got a decent enough start, maybe pushed a bit hard but was feeling good for the first 38k, then got across the lake a little slower but without incident,...
Naturally, after the sort of weather we've had all summer, the late August bank holiday was bound to deliver something altogether more British! But everyone saw it coming and a bit of wind and rain certainly didn't spoil our week – in fact, it might have added an extra frisson to SUPstock at Fambridge on Sunday...
