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

Jeremy Rodgers, Front Range paddler and Clifbar/KEEN athlete from Boulder, Colorado, earns berth for US Canoe and Kayak Team at national wildwater team trials held on Cheat River, West Virginia April 4-5, 2008. Jeremy will be heading to Europe with his teammates in June for World Championships to be held in Ivrea, Italy. Last years race footage (in a nice slow motion) can be seen on youtube.

winter paddling on the South Platte River near Greeley

I raced with Jeremy (i.e., I followed his wake) in two events last year: Wyoming Outback Challenge and Colorado River Race in Glenwood Canyon.

In February and March of this year, we trained together on the icy South Platte River near Greeley paddling upstream and downstream. Jeremy even felt the need to run a few diversion dams with mixed results. That drop at the Union Ditch dam is pretty steep at low water!

Unfortunately, Jeremy didn't come to our races on the South Platte in March: 9 mile upstream Rotten Egg Race and 32 mile South Platte River Marathon. He was already focusing on shorter wildwater runs.

Good luck to Jeremy in Europe this summer.

At the finish of 2007 Colorado River Race in Glenwood Canyon

Related posts:

• 2007 Canoe Colorado Race in Glenwood Canyon - More Rapids with Opened Shoshone Dam
• Wyoming Outback Challenge on the North Platte River - Strong Current and Head Wind
• JKK Supernova, a Multisport Racing Sea Kayak from New Zealand - Review by Jeremy Rodgers
• Weekly Upstream and Downstream Paddling Workout on the South Platte River

It is about Stephen Foster who was an obsessive, successful endurance runner and kayaker. As a two-time state flatwater kayaking champion, Foster used to kayak all the time. He ran even more, once finishing the 15K Gasparilla Distance Classic in just over 55 minutes, a pace of under 6 minutes per mile.

Like many athletes, he felt invincible. But his heart told him otherwise. Two years ago, at 51, he narrowly averted a stroke and had open heart surgery to fix a defective heart valve.

Stephen Foster wrote a book under the pen name of Stephen McQueen: On the Precipice: A Story of Running, Kayaking and Heart Surgery. The book is available from Amazon.com.

On the Precipice is Stephen McQueen’s chronicle of a twenty-year period in his life beginning shortly after his return from two years of graduate studies in Mississippi in 1985. He becomes heavily involved in running and kayaking competition after he returns to his home in Florida, competes in kayak races sanctioned by the Florida Competition Paddlers Association, and wins the 1988 State Downriver Kayak Championship, and the 1991 and 1992 State Olympic Flatwater Kayak Championships. He also races in many local road races, such as the Flatlander Challenge 10k, the Gasparilla Distance Classic 15k, and the Strawberry Festival Classic 10k. But shortly after he reaches the height of his success in competitive running and kayak racing, he falls victim to health problems that ultimately lead to heart valve disease. This is his story of how he rises from the ashes.