2004-07-19 Joan and Kirby and my cup runneth over...

Very warm and humid weather made Monday night muggy.  There was one more rookie than there were experienced paddlers with canoes because a lot of the paddlers had left town to go to the Ausable Canoe Race in Michigan.  We decided to leave one team on shore and come back for them after reaching the first bridge downstream.  Then we would switch partners and leave someone else on shore. 

My first rookie tonight was Joan; a cross country skier my age who wanted to learn technique.  I let her keep paddling on each side as long as she wanted so she could think about her stroke.  She paid very close attention and tried very hard to do everything I said with her paddle stroke.  It was a gratifying teaching experience for me and it helped me remind myself how I should be paddling each stroke.  It’s very hard to work on technique and programming your muscles when you are competing with other canoes.  These technique nights can be of benefit to both teachers and students and both can get a good workout if they want. 

Joan and I stayed away from the other canoes and practiced technique for thirty minutes before circling back upstream.  Then I dropped her off and picked up Kirby, a strong ex-military man with a 26 year-old son who wanted to do the Great Rivers Marathon Race in September.  I tried to explain the most efficient racing stroke technique to Kirby, as I had been to Joan, but I found out that Kirby just wanted to work hard and be competitive with the other canoes. He said he thought my canoe was slower than the others, but it was just that I was not paddling hard while I was talking.  He also said he figured out that he was bringing his paddle too far back because the only time I wasn’t “chirping at him” was when he pulled his paddle out sooner.   I slowly realized that this was a case of the cup being too full. 

There is an old Zen story about a very knowledgeable person who came to a Zen master for teaching.  After the person explained how much knowledge he had, the Zen master offered the person tea. The Zen master poured tea until it overflowed the cup. The very knowledgeable person said: "Stop! What are you doing?" The master said: "Your cup is already full. How can you receive any teaching?"  Now I’m not saying that I’m a Zen master, or that any of us volunteer canoe racing teachers at Monday nights are Zen masters, but we do have many years of experience and hard earned learning to share with new canoe racers.  We each have different ways of teaching and explaining what we have come to understand about canoe racing.  New paddlers get to listen to each one of us if they come back because we try to pair people up with different partners each time.  That way they can decide for themselves which way works best.

I hope that Kirby comes back and brings his son because I believe he would really enjoy canoe racing and will have be able to get many years of healthy exercise from it.  He said that he might do a Thursday night Hoigaards Derby Canoe Race on Lake Calhoun.   However, I’m afraid that he will become discouraged quickly if he is not able to win in the first few races.  That’s a difficult challenge with all the good local canoe racers.