This morning a felt rough. I got real late after the scratch meeting at Green Lake Kayak Centre, and did not get a lot of sleep. So getting up was a real chore, and I ended up sleeping longer than I was suppose to. Now I had to hustle because racing was going to start at 8am sharp, and the Open / Masters K1 1000m was going to be one of the first races. They decided to combine the two groups, which basically cut my racing in half.
There was enough racers to make three heats, and I ended up in the third heat. So when I got at the lake, I could not take my time, and had to get my boat ready to race. I am racing the Super Lancer this weekend. It is such a nice boat to use. I got the boat off the trailer and found my number,then headed off to the start line, which is at the other end of the lake.
As I was paddling, I was just not feeling right. Humm the sign of things to come. Our race was called to the line, to get ready to start. I was in lane 7, which was close to the starter. I had only one racer on my left and no one on my right. this was good, only wash from one side. the starter lined us up, but he kept calling racers up to the line. this makes starting very long. the tarter is only suppose to call the racers back, if they go over the line. It i the racers responsibility to get the bow up to the line. Normally we put the nose over the line and wait for the starter to call us back. Waiting for paddlers to get to line is time consuming.
After a couple of races getting caught way back, will get them to get to the line faster. We finally got lined up, and the starter said “start with in ten seconds” go. Well let me tell you, the wash from the left was pretty big, and had the boat going all over the place. the first 500 meter of my race was bad. Nothing was working, my breathing was going nuts, steering was areal chore, and I felt bad.
Once I got to the 500 meter mark, everything all of a sudden started to click. The wash was gone, I could ease up on my out of control breathing, and concentrate on my technique. In the last 100 meter I was able to crank up the stroke rate and keep it there. In the end I ended up coming in 4th place. The top two from each heat and the next three fastest times moved on to the final. This was not I good race, and I did not think I had a chance to make the final. So off I went to test paddle a Think Carbon Legend.
After about 30 minute of paddling the Legend, Steve came up to me and said I had made the final. I checked the time, and I had only 20 minutes to get ready and to the line. I grabbed my number and my boat, and off I went. Made it to the start line with a little time to stretch on the shore, and think about what kind of strategy I was going to use. I had two very fast paddlers on the left of me, so the strategy was fairly easy. I only had two choices, either start fast and try to stay ahead of the wake for as long as I could (which would not be long) or start easy and let the wash go in front of me. I picked the first choice.
Soon as the starter said go, these two were off like rockets. I managed to get on the wake on the guy next to me, and rode it for as long as I could. I managed to go about 100 meters on his wake, then I slipped back into the mixed waves. This was hard to steer in, and I kept turning all over the place. After a while, I managed to get it together, but by that time I was fighting just not to be last. It was close but I got beat right at the line.
Next up for me was the Open / Masters K4 1000 meters. Our boat comprised of: Jim, Brent, Daryl, and myself. As we were warming up, Daryl was having problems sliding around on his seat. This resulted in some amazing bracing on Daryl's part. This is where Daryl's whitewater skills came in handy, and we managed to stay dry. Since we had time before the start, we went over to the swim area, to sort it out. After some fiddling with the foot board we were off to the start area. We had to wait a couple of races in front of us to go, before we were told to go to the line.
The start was ok. We powered it up, and managed to get off to a decent start. As we were heading down the course, Daryl started to brace again, as he was starting to slide around again. Jim realizing that we were not going to compete for 1st, or even second, he backed down the stroke rate only to have everyone behind him crank it back up again. He tried this a couple of times but we kept increasing the rate. I guess we need to follow the driver a little better. Anyways, it was a fun race.
Thats was it for day one. Tomorrow was the 500 meter and the 5000 meter races.
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