Here’s a new’ish painting inspired by Shaun Payne in Indo, his father’s awesome surf coaching and the nice people at the beach resort.
It is oil on canvas with wild garlic and rosemary olive oil with marker pen and is small to medium size.
Thank You
Archive for the 'Surfing' Category
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After hitting a peak fitness level and taking some time off to rest I’m now back into my regular training again.
I took about two weeks break from all my sea sports and even from swimming.
I just did light gym and stretching.
The last couple of days I did a mix of training: swimming, surf paddling, running, cycling with some short and light kitesurfing and surfing sessions.
This felt good – mostly taking it at about 10 – 50% and relaxing into a moderate endurance groove.
Yesterday I stepped up the endurance a bit as an experiment. I did lots of little sessions with lots of resting and eating between. The total training time probably worked out to about 6 hours but most of this was little more than walking exertion. It felt good. But by the end of the day I really felt nicely tired and needed to eat quite a lot.
I slept really well in the night.
This morning I feel a fair bit of that lactic acid fatigue. After training most days for two years it takes quite a lot to get this feeling so it feels like an achievement. I quite like this kind of mild pain as I feel that I have earned it and that I am improving. After a few slow days I’ll be able to take it further and this feels inspiring.
Enjoy the African Summer 🙂
I’ve taken a few weeks break from kiting. I took some time to surf full time around JBay in South Africa. There is something magical about this area. This history, the people, the culture, the vibe. I love it. I did score some dream sessions and had a couple of magic dolphin rainy sunrise dawny experiences with a good friend from my local break.
I got some really good new surf gear after riding really old knackered stuff for some years and this felt pretty good too. Then I over did things and surfed myself out a bit. After this I took two weeks off and didn’t surf at all. I just chilled out, played some music, did a little painting and some light gym and talked a hell of a lot of crap. I had lost a bit of weight following the overtraining and the crash following it. So I made sure that I got enough to eat and I’ve mostly got the weight back to what it was before. Now I feel pretty good again.
A couple of days ago I went for a walk with my mother and her dog near my parents home. There was a light breeze blowing and I had a new super cheap one line kite from a little toy shop to try. It was fun but proved really tricky. One line kiting is a real art. It’s like a zen thing. It reminds me of my childhood flying kites on beach holidays with cousins and friends. The last time I flew a one line kite was with a friend in Finland quite a few years back. He’s a bit older than me and has a kind of real Finnish man thing about him – extreme but strong and calm. I was just getting into kitesurfing and found his zen meditation approach to kite flying really refreshing compared to a lot of the power crazy jumpy kids and typical blokes that usually seem to be attracted to the sport.
Rock on Ilka. Maybe we fly a kite somewhere again some time soon’ish.
Have fun
This is a painting I made in high school, way back – must have been about 15 or so years ago. It is acrylic on calico stretched over cardboard and is quite small. This painting is in the Alexander Shafinsky Collection, a London based Russian collection.
Since I like making pictures like this and I need money (being a starving artist) I’ve decided to start taking commissions. If you would like a surf and/ or other related painting, big or small, mural or miniature, seascape, sea sport thing, etc, feel free to get in touch. I’m always happy to talk about art and sport and love making pictures.
Thank You
I’ve mentioned my recurring rib injury before. It bothered me a lot last year. This was my first year since childhood of surfing daily again. I never had this issue as a kid. I think it had a lot to do with my body aging badly due to being very inactive for many years.
Now it’s fine. I take some quite heavy wipeouts both surfing and kitesurfing and it feels fine so far (of course there are other things that hurt but hopefully I’ll figure out how to deal with these things over time). I noticed while talking to quite a few friends that quite a few of them are suffering from the same thing – both surfers and kitesurfers. Ages range from 20’s to 40’s. When I talked to a GP a while ago he said there was not much that could be done and that it would recover naturally. I think that this is pretty much true but I do believe there are some things that can be done. I’ve tried them and they worked for me.
I think that it’s irrelevant whether it is broken or not as it cannot really be be immobilised anyway. But the pain can be quite severe and will likely do this job for you if you’re not stupid enough to take pain killers.
Anyway, this is the cure that worked for me:
1. Rest
2. Chill out and have fun doing something that is not painful. Maybe bowling or darts or ping pong or drinking tea could be good. This will help you forget about it which is absolutely crucial.
after the pain has subsided a bit…
3. Stretch. Long stretches up towards the sky are good. Torso rotations are also excellent. General yoga is great. (I’ll post more about stretches soon)
4. Swim. Swimming fixes everything. All strokes are good but freestyle is particularly good. Try doing long slow strokes, stretching forwards as much as possible and gliding a lot. Bodysurfing is also excellent. I’ve written more about swimming before here.
I’ll post some more of my thoughts on prevention soon.
If you have a rib injury, I hope this helps you get back out there soon.
Thank you
 
Today I had a really nice long chilled kiting session with a friend. It was flat water for a change. Usually I’m too lazy to venture into flat water as the beach is closer to where I live most of the time. When I got there I was so lazy I didn’t even feel like going out. But the conditions with the tide and wind were close to perfect – nice and gusty, on and off with quite a fair bit of chop. Unfortunately there was no current and only one or two poles and hidden hazards. Last time I kited there I hit a submerged bridge at low speed as the wind was dying and I was negotiating a route in near a messed up fence with lots of trash around it. Today I managed to avoid this dark corner and it looked cleaner. Or maybe that’s because I was looking more at the sky and the horizon.
My main goal for the session was to relax. But I also experimented with going as slow and as fast as possible. Slow is definitely harder. I usually use a green kite but my kite buddy had a blue one in the same style that was partially rigged already. He wasn’t using it so I just went with that. I try not to look much at the kite or even think about it but the blue against the sky has a very different feel. And it’s definitely the fastest I’ve ever been so it has to be the colour. I only really need one kite so I’m thinking of getting a few different colours in the same style. Or maybe I’ll just paint mine when if I get sick of it.
Everything was becoming more and more boring. Totally dull. I got the occasional bit of a buzz from cycling and enjoyed swimming. But something was seriously lacking.
Over the past week I started easing back into my addictions. Surfing and kitesurfing again. But carefully. This felt good. My injury was holding up ok. Not much discomfort. But keeping to very small waves surfing carefully and kitesurfing lightly in underpowered conditions felt depressing. It was good to be on the water again, building up the next expressive session, but it was just dull. There was no rush, no buzz, no fear.
A good summer SE was forecast yesterday and the morning saw it coming through nicely. Eager to hit it, I rushed out early with my biggest kite. Too early. Gusty and underpowered. It was a good warm up and I took a break for lunch while I waited for it to gather momentum. In the late afternoon it looked solid. There were a few other kiters out. I went out with my regular kite. The swell had jacked up pretty solid. Still gusty but perfectly rideable. I did a few easy runs to warm up. It was tricky to make it out the back through quite consistent swells running close together. Realising that I would not make it over a wave I turned. As I did this I hit a dead patch. The water was glassy. No wind. I looked back to see it baring down on me. It’s one of those moments where you wish you could blow into your kite like a cartoon character to make it power you out of there. I took a breath as it hit me and tried to hang on and somehow get enough power into the kite but got swallowed by the white water. The turbulence felt a bit much to hold onto my board with a dodgy ankle so I booted it free.
What followed was very frustrating. When I surfaced I came within a metre of my board a couple of times. Body dragging upwind in waves for a board in currents can be a fruitless task. Fortunately boards always end up on the beach at my local spot. Usually they go one way but the direction can sometimes be a mystery. I started walking the beach the usual way until another kiter told me his board had gone the other way. As I headed back up the beach some Sunday strollers found it for me. They asked why I did not wear a leash. I explained that it’s too dangerous and I seldom lose my board anyway.
Leashes in my opinion are very stupid and should be banned from our sport. They make sense for surfing. But it’s simply overcomplicated to be attached to a kite and a board simultaneously. It’s impossible to do serious freestyle or even jump safely with a leash. The risk of it shooting back at you are high enough on flat water. In waves this increases dramatically. If you’re using the kite to pull you through a wave and the board is being pulled in the other direction the recoil from a leash can be immense. A leash without stretch could tear your leg off. Unlike surfing it’s also not so easy to swim under water and wait for the board to recoil over your head. Generally the kite keeps you on the surface like a sitting duck. Wearing a helmet is simply not sufficient protection. There have been a number of leash-related fatalities even with helmets.
Eternally grateful that my session could resume I charged out again. This time with some anger and frustration at having an unwanted search mission thrown in. Since I was landing on my healthy back foot I felt free to boost a couple of airs off the waves on the way out. Some nice little bits of hang time fueled my addiction and restored my endorphin balance. This morning my boredom is dead and buried and I’m feeling inspired.
I was watching a DVD a while ago where instructors were talking about the ideal sports background for kitesurfing. Naturally surfing, windsurfing, sailing, board sports and water sports in general came up as good. The more the better.
But one instructor felt really strongly about swimming. Without strong swimming ability it’s difficult to have confidence and feel comfortable learning or progressing in any water sport. It’s fundamental. I’ve seen people in the UK kitesurfing with life jackets. To me this feels as ridiculous as surfing with a buoyancy aid. I suppose that they view it like water skiing where fear of a head impact inspires the wearing of such things. I mostly ride in waves so it’s important to be able to swim down to get under waves after a wipeout or crash. Riding in crowds, I would be terrified to wear anything that made me float. I like to feel the freedom to swim under the water to avoid collisions if anything goes pear shaped.
Whilst injured over the last month I’ve been swimming just about every day. I’ve still got at least 2 weeks to go before I can get back to my board sports. The injury has been a good opportunity to focus on my swimming more regularly. For at least the first week I felt quite uncomfortable with my stroke. Slowly it started to feel better and more relaxed. I spent the past week in Cape Town with my friend Nikola Tosic, an ironman triathlete. He’s spent quite a bit of time working on his technique with his coach recently and offered some tips.
He pointed out some areas where I can improve my rather dodgy freestyle technique. It’s going to take a bit of time and concentration to adjust and break some of the bad old habits but I can already start to feel improvements in easier speed and gliding when I manage to string some of the tips together. Alexander Popov has a beautiful technique and is a great inspiration to watch.
The pure simplicity of swimming is refreshing. The perspective is completely different to my regular sports. It’s closer to diving than surface board sports. The total immersion in water and the regular repetition of breathing make it like a meditation.
As my swimming improves, when I do get back to my beloved sports, I’m sure I’ll feel more confident in the water. Until then it just feels great.
