Last Saturday, I raced my first ever 15km OC6 race. My shoulders were tired, my butt was sore, my legs felt like jello, and my mind went numb. I kinda wondered why people do this! In a weird, sadistic, painful way, it was fun. How far can you paddle before your body gives you the boot?
It was a little cool and cloudy but the water was fairly calm and the wind just slight. Good paddling conditions. I always feel nervous before a race and that morning was no different. I did my yoga stretches before I left the house and I did a quick jog to get the blood flowing once I got to Burrard marina. Met up with the other paddlers and we made our way to Jericho. Just before 12:30, we boarded our OC6 and made our way to the start line. Except that nobody seemed to know where the start line was. We were moving up the boat to where we thought it was when we heard the start gun go off. Oh shoot! We’re going? I was on my off-side but what the heck, let’s do a start, shall we? So off we went and we actually did a pretty decent start. Ready and reach, I heard, and I settled in to our race pace. It’s a long race and I wanted the rate to be low and steady so we don’t burn out and fizzle midway. I was sitting in the first seat and my job was to set the pace for the rest of the team.
All the mens teams sprinted off ahead of us and behind us was a pack of the mixed teams. We were in the middle of the two packs, basically by ourselves all the way through. It was hard to gauge how fast we were going or if we were holding up our pace. I just kept the rhythm pretty steady and hoped that we were doing okay.
We finished third out of eight mixed teams, clocking in at 1 hour 28 mins. This was a very good result for us and we were all pretty happy with how we did. We could hard walk after all that paddling but we were happy.
Results:
Mixed
1 Lotus Mixed Open 1:19:33 1
2 Pacific Reach Mixed Masters 1:24:35 1
3 FCRCC Ke Kumu O Ka La Mixed Open 1:28:49 2 <- that’s us!
4 Ocean River Mixed Masters 1:34:00 2
5 Powell River Mixed Snr Masters 1:37:45 3
6 FCRCC Mixed Masters 1:39:54 4
7 FCRCC Mixed Open 1:40:19 3
It was a little cool and cloudy but the water was fairly calm and the wind just slight. Good paddling conditions. I always feel nervous before a race and that morning was no different. I did my yoga stretches before I left the house and I did a quick jog to get the blood flowing once I got to Burrard marina. Met up with the other paddlers and we made our way to Jericho. Just before 12:30, we boarded our OC6 and made our way to the start line. Except that nobody seemed to know where the start line was. We were moving up the boat to where we thought it was when we heard the start gun go off. Oh shoot! We’re going? I was on my off-side but what the heck, let’s do a start, shall we? So off we went and we actually did a pretty decent start. Ready and reach, I heard, and I settled in to our race pace. It’s a long race and I wanted the rate to be low and steady so we don’t burn out and fizzle midway. I was sitting in the first seat and my job was to set the pace for the rest of the team.
All the mens teams sprinted off ahead of us and behind us was a pack of the mixed teams. We were in the middle of the two packs, basically by ourselves all the way through. It was hard to gauge how fast we were going or if we were holding up our pace. I just kept the rhythm pretty steady and hoped that we were doing okay.
We finished third out of eight mixed teams, clocking in at 1 hour 28 mins. This was a very good result for us and we were all pretty happy with how we did. We could hard walk after all that paddling but we were happy.
Results:
Mixed
1 Lotus Mixed Open 1:19:33 1
2 Pacific Reach Mixed Masters 1:24:35 1
3 FCRCC Ke Kumu O Ka La Mixed Open 1:28:49 2 <- that’s us!
4 Ocean River Mixed Masters 1:34:00 2
5 Powell River Mixed Snr Masters 1:37:45 3
6 FCRCC Mixed Masters 1:39:54 4
7 FCRCC Mixed Open 1:40:19 3
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