fitness paddling: exercise, train, race by kayak & canoe

Even more about Texas Water Safari!

After writing her retrospective story on Adventures of a Team Captain, Connie prepared some tips for Safari Team Captains. She also added tips what paddlers should remember when dealing with their TCs.

If any other safari Team Captain would like to share her/his experiences or tips I would be happy to post them here.

List of Things for TCs to Know by Connie Uliasz

1. Drive around as little as possible and get to the checkpoints so you can rest when you have time.

2. Keep your camping equipment in your car and easily accessible. Be able to set up your camp with a minimum of effort.

3. Keep a reliable alarm clock accessible. Make sure it’s easy enough to use that you can program it even when you’re 80% asleep.

4.Keep your first aid kit and spare set of keys accessible.

5. Drink water and Gatoraide and all those nice things – don’t let yourself get dehydrated. Keep reminding both yourself and your paddler to drink.

6. Take advantage of the friendliness of the people you meet. Enjoy it. You can also let people know that you’re with a particular boat and they will wake you up if you oversleep.

7. Don’t worry about snakes, etc. very much. In my experience, they do whatever they can to keep out of your way.

8. Expect to get lost sometimes. Remember that all roads down to the river in Texas have about 5 different names. Don’t stress yourself out about it.

9. Be careful driving when you’re sleepy.

10. Always tell your paddler how great he or she is doing, and that they’re looking absolutely fabulous.

11. Try to get information from other folks about what problems your paddler might run into as they paddle from where you are meeting now until they get to the next checkpoint – logjams, sweepers, etc.

12. Cheer for everybody, loudly and often. It’s part of the fun.

List of Things for Safari Paddlers to Remember
when Dealing with Their TCs by Connie Uliasz

1. Don’t tell your TC about how easy they have it – this is guaranteed to make them angry. This includes such innocent comments such as “Well, at least you don’t need to deal with logjams”.

2.Before you start, share your MREs and other food items purchased for the race. Oddly enough, these can make a very welcome TC dinner. You won’t want to eat that much anyway.

3. Make sure everyone understands which responsibilities belong to the paddler and which belong to the TC, before, during and after the race. Stick to this.

4. Help with obtaining maps. For some reason, this seems to be much easier for paddlers than for TCs.

5. Be honest with your TC about how you’re feeling, physically, during the race. They need to know your health status in order to take care of you.

6. Don’t dawdle at checkpoints. This adds a significant amount of time to your race and can be hard and frustrating for TCs.

7. Try to communicate your plans to your TC. This includes if you expect that a portage may go slowly, if there are a lot of logjams ahead, if you plan to try to step up the pace, but especially if you plan to pull over to sleep for a while. It is extremely difficult to be a TC staring upstream, looking and worrying for a paddler for hours at a time while the paddler is sound asleep somewhere on a bank. Don’t fool yourself – this happens a lot, especially with kids whose parents are TCing for them.

8. Share the fun stories you have while paddling. I always really enjoy hearing about how the other paddlers are doing, what weird things Marek saw, what someone said to him, and all sorts of things like that. It’s really nice.

9. Try to remember that if something goes wrong, it’s not your TC’s fault – even if it is your TC’s fault.

10. Show your appreciation for your TC. My favorite expression of appreciation is when Marek buys me dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack in San Marcos.

• Adventures of a Team Captain - 4 Years of Texas Water Safari in Retrospect
• Texas Water Safari: First-Time Team Captain Story
• Texas Water Safari 2005