Kayaking isn't always about pushing yourself to run harder whitewater or big drops/rapids.  There have been numberous examples of amazing endurance feets in our sport most notably in the past 5 or so years are Tommy hilike and John grace running the middle fork of the kings in a single day.  This feat was repeated 2 seasons ago by ben stookesbery and chris korbulic, I was on a 5 day trip down the run when chris and ben passed us at the end of the bottom 9.  The two seemed as fresh and calm as if they had just paddled a few miles of their backyard run. 

This experience along with a few other experiences have made me want to push my own personal limits physically and mentally.  I'm not game to do something like the middle kings in a day but I had been throwing around the idea with Milo Wynn (local black canyon of the gunnison legand with 50+ decents of the canyon under his belt) of doing 2 trips down the black canyon in a day. 

The day finally came earlier this summer where we had a good crew and plenty of daylight to give it a go.  On lap number one we took playboats down the class 5 sieved out canyon to make the mile long portage in the middle of the run easier (and it was we all skipped through the partage in around 30 minutes).  We opted to hike out werner trail to save on shuttle and according to Milo "to see how much we can take!"  The trail climbs 3000ft in 3 miles with 2500 of that coming in a mile and a half, it took us 3 hours in the 100 degree heat to make it to the gorge rim.

Driving back to the putin we had a decision to make, do we put on for lap #2?  I felt good and had been staying hydrated but mil and jakub nemic were cramping bad.  Milo decided he wouldn't make it but Jakub gave a few screams of pain and excitment and said lets do it!  It was a strange feeling putting on to a run that normally takes 2 days at 3pm.  Jakub and I routed most of the rapids without eddies and made it to chukar trail in 4.5 hours.  After a long slog up the hill to the car, we had made it and a long goal of mine was achieved. 

I hadn't suffered that bad for that long since my days of playing 3 hiockey games in a day back in high school.  It was great to push myself like that and great preperation for bull lake creek, but thats another story

-Tom