Seekajaktour: Umrundung Irlands im Seekajak 2015

Mindset (Going-on-attitude)
This building block proved to be vital on the trip. Although I did not
especially train it as I train it every day automatically (as mentioned
before). i.e:
At first the weather conditions we had to face “spoiled” our
expectations of experiencing and exploring a fascinating shoreline.
We therefore had to find another motivation and attitude to go on in
spite these conditions. In fact, the first two thirds of the trip was
mostly creeping from headland to headland in force 4+ headwinds,
combined with the effort of getting dry and warm at least once a
day. Apart from the project – and target mentality I need for my job,
I assume that I developed this attitude as a teenager, when I did
long distance running on a competitive basis (mostly marathons).
The fascinating thing about marathon is, that you can cover a long
distance on a rather fast pace. That implies, that the body needs to
start burning it´s fat reserves after about 30 km. Of course, the body wants to prevent using
up it´s ultimate reserves. Therefore it “initiates” a mental crisis with questions and internal
dialogues like “why on earth am I doing this? – Why don’t I stop? …” So a runner´s saying is
“the marathon starts after having run 30 km”. So, mentally dealing with this and finding a
motivation to keep going on “in spite …”, is one of the main issues of a long-distance runner.
This ability of self-motivation helped me a lot to go on.
Moreover the area I am sea kayaking in proved to be a good mental training as well: The
shallow rather featureless waters and mudflats of Eastern Frisia (some call it watery desert)
make you to cover long distances to get somewhere. So you learn to focus on a wee dot on
the horizon for hours, without having play times in any rocky conditions. This helped me in
dealing with the long crossings and not getting nervous paddling on a compass course for
hours in visibility less than 100 m.
Last but not least, the DVD´s of Simeon Osborne and Jeff Allan / Harry Wheelan as well as
the seakayak-podcasts by Simon Willis about expeditions helped preparing me mentally how
to cope with an expedition from the couch potato-perspective. Apart from different
perspectives and conditions, all had some things in common:
o Start slow: daily distances of 30km for the beginnings help getting you in the
“expedition-mode”
o Be prepared (coping mentally with) being weather bound: this really did not work in
the beginning with me – at least I took a book for reading.
o Eat what you get and what you like: cheese, salami and tuna turned out to be a
perfect diet for me.
© Christian Dingenotto 2015
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