It is always tough striking a balance between wants and needs, plans and actions, business and fun.  It's even tougher when your business is other people's fun (and your own).  Sometimes the balance point is to make a compromise that you acknowledge that 'for this season I'm going to be competitive and then take time off sport' or "I'm going to back off racing this year" and focus on business/family/golf or whatever. 

And sometimes, just sometimes, the balance is literal - being able to keep your boat underneath you even when the conditions get wild.  It's fun watching Devin or Jason or Kjell in a C1 (solo racing canoe) when the waves get big and everyone else is hanging on for dear life.  Watching them swivel and continue to drive is poetry in motion.  And it's fun watching Erik Borgnes or Andrew Folpe in a surfski as they catch ride after ride on Superior, picking up speed on every wave, and moving easily to catch the next one. 

Balance is something that works in all boats - it's all about core strength and muscle memory.  One of our 'rookie' paddlers hopped into a moderately unstable kayak the other night - first time in years she'd paddled a racing kayak, and was instantly at home.  Of course, that's all she paddled growing up in Europe.  Very fit canoe paddlers usually have problems hopping into racing kayaks for the first few minutes - it's a different balance and takes a slightly different set of muscles.  The same is usually true going from a 30" wide recreational kayak to a sea kayak - just takes a little muscle time for your body to tell you what it already knows...

I picked up a 'good used' two person flatwater kayak this summer, and one of my partners and I have been learning to paddle it.  There are a bunch of things that have to happen at the same time - it's fairly tippy, it requires paddling in sync, which done well looks really neat, and it really requires balancing together - something that requires a lot of trust from both of you.  We haven't been brave enough to race it yet - still working the bugs out, but maybe by this week's Hoigaards race...