Words on the Whey-ah-wichen Whipper

Saturday, September 16, 12023 Human Era (HE)

The Way to Whey-ah-wichen

I recently completed my first full stand up paddleboard (SUP) racing season. To read my year-in-review post, click here. Be warned, it is more of a post-season pontification on the pros and cons of participation versus competition. I sided with competition, which is where the Whey-ah-wichen Whipper enters the picture.

During the pandemic, some friends put me onto the virtual Tuesday Night Race (vTNR) for the 12021 HE season, hosted by Coast Outdoors through Deep Cove Kayak. Nearly a year later (12022 HE), a conversation with a client put me on to the Jericho Sailing Centre‘s Wavechaser Series, which was a much closer-to-home alternative to Səl̓ilw̓ət (Indian Arm/Deep Cove) for me. One year later, I found myself participating in the majority of the Wavechaser Series out of Jericho Beach. With the Wavechaser race season coming to a close, a few of my fellow race foes suggested participating in the Whey-ah-wichen Whipper as a season finale event.

The Whipper

At first, I was not sold on the idea of doing the Whipper. My contrarian nature had consternation. For some strange reason, I have historically opposed participation in organized races. I suppose some of my aversion to organized competition stems from my youth participation in basketball. In my formative years, we would play pick-up basketball amongst friends without formal organization apart from a few phone calls to rally the troops. So I’ve always had a soft spot for the spontaneity of sport in a form that is less organized.

Somewhere, somehow, I must have extended this rationale to the registration and payment to complete a race course that you can technically complete at any given point on your own accord, and for free, as being preposterous. I feel like my race rules resulted from friends registering to run the Sun Run (or some other organized Vancouver run) in my university days. Bear in mind there was likely an aspect of a struggling student budget at play in my decision-making tree. My logic would have been: Why would you pay to run a 10-kilometre race with a bunch of people when you could go out and do a 10k alone for free. With said friends replying, so that you can see how you stack up or for the extra motivation. To which I would reply: You could compare yourself to yourself over time or look up normative data or check the Sun Run stats to compare and that you should be motivated intrinsically, not extrinsically.

While I still mostly agree with all of my collegiate contentions, I am not as committed to my past convictions. For example, I am much more aware of the role that municipal infrastructure and societal organizations had in facilitating what felt like free-form fun from pick-up basketball. I am much more aware of the hidden costs behind things at present. My motto is nothing in life is free. Whether the cost is monetary, environmental, or energy, etc., it exists and must be borne. The bigger question is whether you are consciously aware of the cost and whether the repayment is immediate or delayed.

Part of my previous lack of awareness of some cultural costs (as I am sure is the case for many people) is the result of what I perceive to be deliberate attempts to subterfuge who pays for what in North American culture. In any case, I had already overcome my aversion to participation in organized racing as per my participation in the Jericho Wavechaser series, so the extension to the Whipper was not a far stretch.

History. As Far As I Can See.

From what I can gather, the Whey-ah-wichen Whipper (previously known as The Whipper Snapper) has run for at least three seasons. Last year’s race was a multiday event, hence the different historical name, with both a short ‘technical’ course and a longer ‘distance’ course, and also served as the SUP nationals. This year’s race was a single-day event with mixed paddle craft, with only the ‘distance’ course option. There were however three different distances available.

Preparation and Planning

The three distances available for The Whipper this year were a short, 7-kilometre, a 12-kilometre mid-distance, and a long distance 18-kilometre. I was persuaded by my peers to participate in the long-distance course (though a more accurate depiction is I just assumed that they would all do the longer distance). Eighteen kilometres was an intimidating feat. Previously, I have paddled further than 18 kilometres in a single session but I had never attempted that distance for speed. It is one thing to paddle far at a leisurely pace and another to do so at tempo.

The image below shows the various course length routes.

Long Lengths and Libations

There was not much else to do in preparation for the event from a training perspective. The timeline was too short. However, I could plan a pre-race strategy with a focus on hydration and nutrition to maintain my power output.

Given the duration and intensity of the event, I assumed the other SUPers would wear hydration packs. But when I revisited the website registration page, I was surprised that the photos from last year’s event showed nearly all SUP racers without hydration packs. This finding echoed my wife’s sentiments regarding her experience preparing for half-marathons. During her longer training runs, she was quick to highlight that she did not pack water. Nor did she drink that much during the event itself. Hmm, I thought, but I wasn’t convinced. An “n” of one is never a good starting point to make meaningful conclusions. Knowing that my past self, as well as many others, was/are notorious for hypo-hydrating gave me more pause. But the additional “n’s” from the archival images left me confused. Perhaps the additional water weight was not worth the effort/speed trade-off? I was left confused after my internet query.

Furthermore, my recent listen to some of the episodes featuring Andy Galpin on Andrew Huberman’s podcast covered some aspects of hydration and suggested that the drop in blood volume that accompanies fluid loss is detrimental to cardiac output. This resonated much more with what I knew of sports sciences from my undergraduate training and emphasized the need to hydrate over an event that would be longer than two hours at a relatively high intensity (though it is worth noting that the field of sports hydration is far from uniform in the view that dehydration is necessarily detrimental to performance as is highlighted in Alex Hutchinson’s “Thirst” chapter in his book, Endure: Mind, Body, And The Curiously Elastic Limits Of Human Performance and this article, “Does Hypohydration Really Impair Endurance Performance? Methodological Considerations for Interpreting Hydration Research.”).

A quick internet search for a recap on Galpin’s hydration views revealed this video, “3 Steps to Optimizing Hydration : 25 Min Phys.” It definitely came down on the side of fluid intake. With the extent of my previous sports drink hydration experience in shorter duration, higher intensity events, only venturing as far as Gatorade, my takeaway from the Galpin mini-lecture was that I needed more salt intake to match sweat composition, a four-to-one sodium-to-potassium ratio, some simple sugar, and possibly some magnesium.

But I was still left with the question of why the other riders had not packed water with them? I knew they were all knowledgeable in sports sciences, so this seemingly skipped solution strategy slip seemed strange. At the advice of my wife, I did the simple solution (problem-solving type) to this solution (fluid type) mystery. I reached out to ask. It turns out they all had packed water in hydration packs for the previous year’s event. It was just that the race last year had a short course, and that was what the photos online showed. The mysterious lack of photographic evidence for hydration packs was solved. Despite the historic use of hydration packs, I still decided to forward the Galpin video to the Wavechaser’s chat group in case the other competitors were curious or could benefit from the content.

Searching for Solution Solutions

After an online search for the content of various hydration supplements, I concluded I would put my Costco membership to use and try their products. I also looked at MEC but found that the electrolyte concentrations of the available products did not match Galpin’s recommendations. At Costco, I settled on a mix that had higher carbohydrate concentration but lacked magnesium and then bought a separate source of magnesium to add. I trialled both the hydration pack and the electrolyte mix for taste and comfort on a short paddle the week prior to the race. Physical and gastrointestinal comfort for the pack and electrolyte concoction checked out (at least for a shorter distance/duration). Hydration solution solution solved.

Location: Whey-ah-wichen (Cates Park)

The Whipper took place out of Whey-ah-wichen (Cates Park) in North Vancouver. Whey-ah-wichen translates to “facing the wind.” I can only assume this is a historic indigenous reference to the predominant weather patterns that pop into the point.

Historic Cycles

It is often said that history repeats itself. While I used to subscribe to that adage, I now am much more of a proponent of a cyclic view of history. Much like the cycles of the seasons or the orbit of the Earth, the pattern repeats, but the arrow of time ensures that they are never the same.

Taking this view of history, I found it ironic to find myself at Whey-ah-wichen (Cates Park) about to embark on my longest SUP race to date, since, way back in 12012 HE, I set out on a qajaq trip heading up Səl̓ilw̓ət (Indian Arm) en route for the Granite Falls Campsite, also launching from Whey-ah-wichen. That qajaq trip was my first qajaq trip, and in hindsight, it was an ambitious endeavour. Leading into the voyage, I had plenty of camping experience, some canoeing experience, and one multiday canoe camping experience. My partner had qajaqed before, but I don’t think she had qajaq camped. In fairness, we had hoped to launch from Deep Cove, which would have made the trip a few kilometres shorter, but based on boat rental availability, we were stuck sailing Səl̓ilw̓ət from Whey-ah-wichen.

It was the parallels to past-life experience that I found ironic given the pseudo-cyclic nature of my present paddle situation. Here I was once again at Whey-ah-wichen about to embark on a long watercraft journey somewhat ill-prepared for the undertaking.

As I stood listening to the pre-race debriefing, I found myself reflecting on this fact. But I am getting ahead of myself… let’s bring it back to before the beginning of the Whipper.

Registration/Check-In

The race registration had an option for an online digital check-in, but you needed to have a bib number. Since I had not participated in any of the live TNR events, I did not have a bib number on my board. The other options were to pick up a race package ahead of time at Coast Outdoors or check in on the day of the event. I went with the latter option to save an additional trip to Deep Cove.

I arrived approximately 90 minutes ahead of race time to have enough time to check in and not feel rushed. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a familiar face, another one of the Jericho Wavechaser racers was there. I quickly picked his brain for the lay of the land and the best way to sign in and set up my kit. His advice was to do the sign-in and then grab my kit afterwards, as the registration kiosk was close by.

The check-in process was simple, and after receiving my bib sticker and meal ticket, I made my way back to my vehicle. En route, I passed my fellow Wavechasee, and we chatted briefly about the course set-up. He clarified the course direction, as up until this point, I wasn’t sure if we would be doing a clockwise or counter-clockwise circuit. Turns out it would be counter-clockwise, with the odd peculiarity of passing Racoon Island on the west side, rather than the east side as depicted in the online course map. Just to be certain, I decided to vee back (as in veer back, not VBAC) to check the map, which I had forgotten to do when checking in. Sure enough, it was a west-side passing of Racoon Island.

Back at my vehicle setting up my kit, another SUPer pulled in behind me. We exchanged pleasantries as we prepared, and I found out he was visiting from Victoria. He was registered in the 12-km race, and we briefly bonded over our commonality of competing in character claiming ceiling course lengths. He had never competed in a 12-km race, and I had never competed in an 18-km race. We then went on to compare our boards. He was curious about my NSP Carolina and how stable I found it, while I confirmed the model year and width of his Starboard Allstar (I believe he said it was the 25″ width 2020 model).

With my kit in order, I made my way down to the race base to survey the water and wait for the pre-race debrief. The check-in process had been quick, as expected, so I had time to kill. I spent the extra time surveying the water and trying to spot the first buoys (i.e., dolphins in this case) that marked the first turn across the mouth of the inlet arm at Maple Beach near Admiralty Point.

To be continued…

Words on the Whey-ah-wichen Whipper

The Way to Whey-ah-wichen