The Mighty Waikato

I got roped into a 11km kayak race (actually it wasn't a race - its was a "Members Training Session" and you could join the club on the day for $30) late the night before, and roped my support crew into the race a short while after midnight.
Rochelle and I drove down to Mercer after getting about 5 hours of sleep after the decision had been made.
We turned up to see most people unpacking their gear, and I unloaded my kayak and then waited for the race briefing. The race briefing was pretty standard and after I joined the Sunset Multisport Club, I took a look to see most people sitting in their kayaks in the river.
Crap, so I scampered to my car, and started wildly throwing on kayak gear and barking instructions to Rochelle, then ran to the start line, with kayak under my arm. By now, everybody was in the water waiting for the race to start. Even the starter was holding the horn, looking at me, just waiting for me to get into my kayak. No sooner had he seen me dive into my kayak (and nearly fall straight out - due to the pressure of trying to do it quickly and trying to explain to my support how to help), he then blew the horn, and the "race" was under way.
Herein lies a lesson: Turn up early and allow plenty of time to get into your kayak. A last minute rush, is not good for your mental state, and could cause you to forget something.
Anyway, some 2km of kayaking later, my arms were so tired, I considered cutting them off to avoid feeling anything. I had been told by plenty of people that this would happen, and that you have to engage your stronger muscles (core & upper body) to be an endurance paddler. I appreciated the advice, but its pretty easy to tell someone to just "use perfect technique".
Your arms will give out very quickly no matter how strong you are. So I tried to figure out how to engage my core muscles and paddle using a rotational figure-of-8 style. I had mixed success, but couldn't manage to hold any decent form for more than a minute. Practice makes perfect I guess.
I got the the end of the paddle, and decided not to do the next leg as I had to get my kayak back onto my car. Its far too cruel to ask a first time support person to strap a brand new $4000 kayak on the roof by themselves, with no advice and then just tear off.
It took quite a while to pack things up (even with two people) and we had a long drive to the next transition. We had to stop to check the map a few times, but found the roads ok. When we got near to the transition, the road split into 3 roads, and the obvious road to take was blocked by a farmers truck. We guessed one of the others and 200m later came to a dead end. The stupid farmer asked us what we were doing, and when I pointed out that his truck was blocking the (public) road of an event for 50 people, he apologized and said he would move it (apparently he didn't want the bobby calves escaping - whatever!). Idiot.
By this stage, the other teams had transitioned, and we arrived about 15minutes after our team had got to transition - they were understandably rather annoyed about waiting.
I wanted to do the mountain bike, but we were now holding them up, so let the rest of the team go, and made an executive decision. We had to call it a day after being totally disorganized. So on our way home I treated my support crew to an all day breakfast at Bombay, and then headed home.

More lessons had been learned, and I'm sure more will be learned over the coming months.