Price: $89.62
Tests/Topics:
- K2 200M
- Panic in the Water
- Inflate/Deflate
- Tracking
- Paddle Power
Monday: K2 200M
For those who may not be canoe and kayak competition super-fans, the K2 200M looks a little bit like this…
What does this have to do with a ninety-dollar inflatable kayak, you ask? Well, if you want to someday rise to kayaking fame and fortune, you have to start somewhere. Racecar drivers don’t start by racing $150,000 ultra-performance race-cars. Tour de France bikers may not have access to a $10,000 Trek to start their careers. Before they reached fame in their respective sports, Jeff Gordon probably raced a go-cart and Lance Armstrong probably cruised a Huffy. The point is this: believe in yourself throughout your trials and challenges, and someday you may be a world class paddler, complete with your highly sophisticated Super Kayak, reasonably priced around $3100. For comparison purposes, a recent national championship had the following results (in seconds)…
| K2 200M Men’s | 1st: 32.229 |
| 2nd: 32.231 | |
| 3rd: 32.653 | |
| K2 200M Women’s | 1st: 37.508 |
| 2nd: 37.682 | |
| 3rd: 37.774 | |
With our goal being to come somewhere close to these times with the Sevylor inflatable, we headed to the water. Knowing that the combination of a flat-bottom boat and absolutely zero kayaking skills would probably have an adverse effect on our times, we decided that we would reduce the distance by 50%. That seems fair enough, right? Here are the times for our 3 time trials…
- Run 1: 0:58
- Run 2: 0:54
- Run 3: 1:00
As evident in this photo, our times may partially be a reflection of our overall kayaking skill level. The experts in the video (above) seem to be paddling in unison whereas we seem to be fighting against one another.
In order to avoid leading you to conclusions, we will simply state the facts: championship kayaking 200M time (experts in a fancy boat): roughly 30 seconds; beginner kayaking 100M time (clueless in a $90 inflatable): roughly 1 minute.
After returning from the lake (in a state of utter defeat), a quick search produced another set of competition-grade times worthy of comparison. In another national kayaking championship, the 250M race resulted in a first place of 2:10 and second place of 2:19. Based on our 100M times, this is something we could certainly compete with. Of course, we would have to be in the appropriate age group. These times happened to be listed under the 5-7 juniors division. Sorry kids, but we could totally beat those lousy times of yours - we'll see you out on the lake.
Do these results tell us that you can't use this kayak to launch your lucrative career into professional kayaking stardom? We'll just have to let you know after several years of dedicated training (that is, if you haven't already seen us on ESPN8 by then). The one conclusion that can be made here is that you certainly could race this kayak and you would probably lose, depending on the age group of your competitors.
Stay tuned! More to come throughout the week.
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