The spot guide

It was an unusual day in Finland yesterday. It was sunny, very warm and on top of it all, it was windy. Kiteboarders were enjoying the wind all over Finland. After a windy daytime session I took my kite to another spin at sunset.  I had started the day on one spot and after the wind shifted, I had to change to another spot. After I had enjoyed the windy sunset, it resulted in one of the best days this summer.

When living in an area that does not have constant winds nor constant wind direction, it is always the game of weather forecasts and the actual weather. When weather forecast is speculated enough, the next thing is the fact which beach is most suitable for  the wind direction. It is usual that wind direction changes by 20-45 degrees within hours due to the moving low pressure area that creates the wind. That kind of change may make another spot work better and others to be unsuitably gusty and may cause long kitewalks after dropping a kite in offshore wind.

Even though Finland is a land of a thousand lakes, there are still a limited number of kiteable spots where you can launch from the beach. Mostly trees are limiting the launch area. In addition, most of the waterfronts are conserved areas that people cannot freely modify or cut down the trees.  Many of the bigger lakes have a lot of islands which block the wind and make the usable wind sector smaller. Personally I am not too worried though, there are about ten beaches that work in different wind directions within a 30 minute drive by car. That's not too bad even though the launch areas may be far from perfect.

At seaside we have four major places with big sandy beaches. Hanko, Yyteri at Pori, Lohtaja and Kalajoki. Especially the latter three are very nice with sand dunes and shallow waters. If we were in the constant wind area, these would be world class places.

As elsewhere in the world, there are beaches that have certain rules that need to be obeyed. Some may have launch zone restrictions or some may have restricted times. Moreover, it is up to us to give room to other beach users as our sport is still relatively new in Finland and some people may see kiteboarding for the first time. If you plan to kite at any new beach, contact the local kiteboarders and ask about spots.

To find a spot in Finland, there is a great service from a kiteboarding enthusiast. He created the tool just for us to list the known places and help others to find them. The tool is called Navakka, meaning strongish wind, and can be found from http://www.navakka.com/. The tool shows the places on a map and gives some basic information and weather forecasts on the spot. You can also leave messages to other users through the tool.  It is great that kiteaboarding encourages people to do these kind of cool things and people use their free time to help other kiteboarders.

The exercise

Last autumn and winter I had to stay out of the water and snow for months due to injured back. Most probably the reason was years of working in the office and sitting in a bit too comfortable and a little incorrect posture. Even though I thought I was in shape and that I do exercise just enough, it didn't seem to help too much.

Anyway, after months of not being able to do almost anything, I had to activate the supporting muscles again and start training from scratch. To activate the whole body I had to exercise regularily and keep the volume of the exercise on a certain level. This got me thinking about kiteboarding as exercise and not just as a fun thing to do.  What are the benefits of the sport from an exercise point of view? To get more information I wore a heart rate monitor and headed out to water. I had some initial thoughts where the heart rate might be but  I was also surprised.

I had three different kinds of sessions a couple of times. The first one was just cruising, the second was throwing some jumps and riding more actively and the third was really pushing the speed to the limit, getting harder upwind and downwind and trying to do everything at maximum effort. This also clearly separated the heart rate areas in each  session as you can guess.

Just cruising. This was the easiest one. I enjoyed a nice and warm day, easy speed in medium winds, reasonable upwind and downwind angles and threw some hooked oldschool jumps and transitions every now and then. The result was that the heart rate was about  62% to 70% of the maximum heart rate, the average being a little more on the lower part of the area. It feels that you could do this all day and it is not only wearing out some specific muscles.

Active riding. I added trials of basic unhooked tricks and hooked in jumps to every second or third run in medium wind and in stronger wind I really tried to launch the hooked in jumps from good speed to get air time. This was showing in heart rate right away. The total area was from about 70% to close to 80% of maximum heart rate. The heart rate was peaking higher in the first attemps to jump and also every time I got really high air or close to crashing massively but still somehow recovered. It was also clear that this riding burns energy faster but still feels all over the body.

Speed and air demon. Finally there was a strong wind to really go speeding and boosting with my 8m2. I started to push it hard right away. I rode full speed through the chop and tried to get as quickly upwind as possible. Then I was trying to find ramps to get good airs and throw  kiteloops to get them down. I rode back downwind with as much speed as I could get or let's say was able to stand since I still need to worry about my back a little and try to avoid the worst crashes. Pushing hard upwind starts to burn your leg muscles and make you breath harder quickly. Coming down from a kiteloop with speed makes you gasp for air from excitement. Heart is really pounding when you bear downwind with burning leg muscles and get close to speed where you may crash after the next wave if not fully committed. I thought the heart rate would be a little higher and it really was. It was ranging from 78% to close to 88% and peaking even higher just after the kiteloops.

There are defined values for correct exercise levels depending on what you want to gain. 50-60% is light exercise to start training for the first time or recovering after an injury and burning fat. 60-70% is medium training to get the best excercise for your heart. On this level it is still easy to work for a long time and you are still mostly burning fat but in the upper range you start to use the carbohydrates as the main energy source. 70-80% is the aerobic area that is good for your heart and lungs. This area is used to train harder and get quicker into shape. In this area you  get the energy mostly from carbohydrates. 80-90% is the anaerobic area and this is used to train hard and make the body cope with lactic acids which are created when the muscles cannot get enough oxygen anymore.

In kiteboarding you can find all levels of exercise if you want. You can cruise and stay out there for hours to get basic training and burn fat. Conversely, you can change to high peak riding and try to learn new tricks actively. This will make you burn all your energy in less than an hour and have a high intensity workout. So to summarise, kiteboarding is good exercise so let's go where the wind blows.

The blog

It has been less than a windy summer so far in Finland and especially inland. There has been too much time to just wait for the wind and talk with other kitesurfers about the past sessions and think about what else to do. For some time now I have been planning to write things down about the experiences kiteboarding gives us everyday. Now it seems that I have the time when waiting for the wind.

I did not just want to create another diary about the windy days when I am out there but I also try to find something more about the wide world of kiteboarding. For sure everything is seen through my eyes and processed into my personal thoughts. I hope these texts will give you something to spend a couple of minutes on before you are heading out again.

Now it seems that I should have started this months ago because as soon as I started to write this, trees finally started to move, showing the wind is picking up. It is time to head out to where the wind blows. See you there.