Taking A Blog Break

New Video Podcast - Kayakers Guide to Sea States

Weather forecasts and BCU awards make reference to sea states. Calum McKerral has produced a video guide to sea states as seen from a sea kayaker's perspective.  I interviewed Calum to turn this into a video podcast.  Download the handy PDF guide here.

Mini Sea Kayak Key Rings - Wonderful!

Tiny replica sea kayaks used a key rings - what a great idea - Keyaks!

Imagine what an excellent promotional device they could be for a sea kayaking business too.

I was sent these as a gift by Marin Medak from Slovenia, who recently started making and selling them online.  Thanks again Marin.

Check out his HobKey website for more.

Volume 3 - Done. All Eight Films.

Volume 3, Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown is done.  Sort of.  At least, my bit is done.

The production will be released 1st October 2013.

Eight films comprise Volume-3 but unusually they will not all be on the DVD.  There simply isn't room.

So three of the main coaching films will be on the DVD, each running slightly over 45mins.  A fourth 20min film will be available as an HD download - I've yet to sort out the price for this.

[Edit - we're now trying to squeeze all four onto the DVD without loosing quality]

Four more shorter films, including a cut-down of one of the main films, will be available as free downloads.  

Yes, free.  We'll give them away gratis.  

This is part of an agreement we've made with the UK authorities with whom we've worked closely.  

All this free footage will be available on SeaKayakWithGordonBrown.com and will also be released as Podcasts through SeaKayakPodcasts.com

So if it's "done" why wait until October to release it? 

Well, just because I've done my bit doesn't mean the DVD is ready to go.  

I have sent the films to Stable Recordings, a production company with far more technical knowledge and equipment than me.  They will grade the colour, mix the sound and generally run a polishing cloth over my edit.  

It helps that they're sea kayakers too, because they night spot things I may have missed.  Such additional work does not come cheap but I think it's worth it because it shows in the final films.  

It's particularly important in this production because we have used lots of cameras and quite a few camera operators.

The photo alongside was taken on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, just before the team put to sea to shoot a rather complex sequence at night.

I'm trying the brief the team and in particular the camera three extra kayaking camera operators.  

We had to ensure everyone was safe, knew what they were meant to be filming at different times, and that their sequences would all come together when it counted.

Different video cameras produce different looking pictures.  Throw in the inevitable GoPro footage (we were using five GoPro cameras), and colour grading becomes essential to ensure the shots match.  Or at least are similar enough so as not to be distracting when I cut between them. 

Then there's still more to do.

Stable Recordings have to code and author two entirely separate master DVDs, one for PAL and one for  NTSC, plus a full set of QuickTime files. All of which takes time.

Then there's the artwork.  The previews.  Oh, and a summer holiday to squeeze in somewhere.

Expect to see the first trailer for the new production sometime in July.  

That will be after our holiday...

Is News Bad For You?

I was a television news reporter with the BBC from June 1983 to December 2008.  Twenty five years.

Now I'm a consumer not a producer.  Guess what?  I struggle to watch an entire TV news bulletin.  I find it trite, irrelevant and, as my old Mum would have said, "a lot about nowt".

There's a good comment piece in the Guardian online, making the point that news is bad for you.  OK it's exaggerated to make a point.  But I find myself nodding in agreement more than shaking my head.  It's worth a read.

I still want to know what's going on in the world.  But news online is faster and I can select stories relevant to me and the country in which I live.  The notion of a 'Scottish Six', a six o'clock news bringing the world's news to Scotland, seems almost quaint, it's that out dated.

I still make television programmes but I concentrate on factual documentary and adventure travel, avoiding news or current affairs.  You know what?  I don't miss news at all.

Expert Nutrition Advice for New Training Prorgamme

A huge benefit of being part of the Science in Sport Winter Academy is the ability to ask questions of some of the country's top nutrition experts.  

Right at the start I promised to pass on all the expert advice I received, so here goes.  And frankly, if you've ever been sceptical of the benefits of nutrition advice, please keep reading.  

I recently wrote about my second fitness assessment - Junking the Junk Training Miles.  By the number of hits it received, it interested a lot of people.

The training programme I have followed since August has succeeded in increasing my body's ability to use fat as fuel, exactly as I need for endurance events.  However, I was slightly concerned at what appeared to be some loss of muscle and top end power.

My new training programme, set by Dr Garry Palmer of Sportstest, adds many more miles each week with greater emphasis on threshold training for power.  If you'd like to know more about this, check out his excellent book on Sportive riding.

How should I change my nutrition to tackle this increased workload and not loose more muscle or power?

A few months ago, Science in Sport put me in touch with Dr James Morton, senior lecturer in exercise and metabolism at Liverpool John Moores University, and nutrition adviser to Science in Sport.  

I wrote about that initial conversation here.

So I contacted Dr Morton again, seeking his advice on how to tackle the extra workload.  His reply was hugely encouraging and practically very helpful, so I'll reproduce most of it here:

"First of all, this is great! Your fat mass loss and increased ability to use fat as a fuel is exactly what I was hoping for!" he wrote.  

Apparently I shouldn't be too concerned about the lean loss as the measurement based on skin-folds.  Just in case Dr Morton suggests increasing my protein intake, in and around training.

"So, I would consume 30 grams of protein 45 min before your rides such as a Rego Protein shake (not Rapid Recovery) or scrambled eggs and smoked salmon etc. When you finish, consume 2 servings of Rego Rapid as opposed to one, this will result in increased protein intake.  I would also consume protein right before bed either as a meal or as Rego Night". 

All of which is hugely helpful.  Then comes the hard work...  

"If you want to maintain or increase lean mass, then you should also do relevant resistance training as well, perhaps 3 times a week". (Oh dear - more weights!)  "If your power is down then it sounds like you need to start training more for this (in conjunction with more endurance type work)".

Which is exactly what's programmed into the new training programme.  I hope that has been helpful, as the longer days arrive and the miles increase, so does the protein.

(All that said - I haven't been on the bike for a week because I've had a stinking head cold!)

All Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown Films As Downloads

I'm delighted to say all three films we've produced to date, linked to the Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown series, are available as digital downloads from

Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown.com

Volume 2, our multi-award winning Rescues video, is the newest addition.  It has not been easy compressing this to fit into a file which can be downloaded.  At 2.9 GB it's under the 3GB limit, over which many customers won't tolerate because the files can still take over two hours to download.

Compression is about compromise.  To achieve that file size it has been compressed at 3000 kbits/sec.  That is higher than the 5000 kbits/sec I prefer to use, but the file that compression produced was 4.8GB, so way too large for most people's bandwidth.

Sea kayaking video is difficult to compress.  Almost every pixel in each frame changes, as the sea is constantly on the move.  So I hope people will be happy with the results.

Quite how we do Volume 3 is still to be decided.