More marathon day pics...

Just because they're so beautiful.. thanks R for taking them!!

G crossing the finish line - whoop whoop girl!

Yes it's an ambulance, no we didn't need it.. just posing with our pal Sully :)

And here with the Chief :)

Could our smiles be any bigger? Such an amazing day!

Four happy runners ready to eat and drink!

What a weekend!!

a little nap pre-races

Saturday started around 4am for us.. I think G might have gotten a little more sleep than me.. but not much. First the crazy thunderstorm woke us up and lit up our respective bedrooms with all the flashes of lightning.. then the incessant rain just pounded and pounded, giving us no respite at all. Then on my end, the dog got scared, the cat began yowling, and well, call the night pretty much over.

We hooked up at 5:30am and began our drive north. Butterflies in our stomachs... the first race of the season. Woohoo. Got to the border, and saw something we'd never seen before. No cars and and an orange traffic cone in the one open crossing lane. What, the customs guy chose NOW to have his breakfast break? We sat there for about 5 minutes .. then finally saw signs of life in the little booth. An officer lumbered out, grabbed the cone, and lumbered back in, motioning us forward with an impatient flick of the wrist. We moved up, gave him our cards.. he looked at them, barked a quick question at us, and sent us packing...into torrential rain.. oh great. This was gonna be a GREAT racing day.

We got to the races early, and decided to just sit in the parking lot and nap for a little while.(Not to mention stay warm and dry for as long as we could!) Eventually it was time to get on out and hook up with our team.

First up: 1000m. No easing into the day here. We warmed up, lined up, and smashed it. Our competition in the first heat were 3 elite women's teams in a younger age bracket. We stayed neck and neck with two of them for the first 500m... oh it was beautiful... and then got tired and slumped back taking third place. 4:38 - 6 seconds behind the winning team and 10 seconds ahead of the 4th place finisher. We knew what we needed to fix, but overall it was a pretty beautiful race. Next up would be the 500m... followed by a 200m.

Blah blah blah (i'm tired.. keep reading you'll understand why).. the rain cleared for each of our races and we went home with the bronze.. awesome! (I decided that I'm not leaving any more competitions without medals. Nuh uh. We're 2 for 2 now.. let's keep it rolling!!)

And today, the day after ... we could have rested but... we ran in the Vermont City Marathon instead. 13.1 miles (21.1 km) each.. oh it was AWESOME. Despite starting in soggy nasty rain (which eventually cleared, thank goodness) I felt like it was my strongest attempt yet.. i ran the whole course (where the first time i had walked part of it) and even found enough in me to speed up the last 3 miles and then sprint the last 10th of a mile to the exchange with G. She took off like nobody's business and, despite crazy heat and sun, bested her last time on this course too. Official results aren't in yet.. we have our own unofficial ones but we'll wait and see what the marathon clock logged.


Time to ice my knees and take my sore feet out of their delicious soak and put them up now. And then.... oh my heavenly BED!

so much good...

Driving back from practice yesterday, we were quietly excited, for want of a better description. Busting at the seams with emotions and simultaneously in suspended disbelief. Tomorrow we'll be one step closer to THE DREAM. When I went to the 2009 Nationals (as a spectator of course) i was just blown away by the beauty of the races and the athletes. I never imagined that I'd actually have a chance to be among the competitors just 2 years later.. it continues to surprise me just how far we've come on this whirlwind journey. Tomorrow is our first official competition.. yesterday we got our Dragon Boat Canada IDs. We were like two little girls who'd just gotten Valentine's day cards from their kindergarten crushes... we kept taking them out, looking at them, turning them this way and that.. relishing the feeling of being part of something so freakin cool... Neither one of us has ever worked so hard for anything in our entire lives (that we can recall anyway).. and had it feel SO GOOD. Love this life :)

excitement is building...

Kickass training week - on the water and off. The return of the big yellow thing in the sky has improved our mood and morale tremendously. And we feel like we've done a full season of paddling already, between  the two training camps and getting out on the water in Montreal earlier this month. It's been such a huge difference from last year... i don't think we even dipped our toes in the water until early June! Our trips to Canada are much more frequent now (twice weekly) and we're getting extra chummy with (most of) the border guards. We've been thinking about getting our NEXUS travel cards.. but then we'd lose that personal interaction bit! Case in point.. coming back over into the USA yesterday - a middle-aged (oh hey, that's our age!) freckle-faced, border agent with slightly disheveled red hair and mustache greeted us with a smile:

"What was the purpose of your trip to Canada?"
"Dragonboat practice."
"OH! I haven't been here in about a month - I should remember these things. You go up what now, once, twice a week?"
"Yes!"
"Do you have anything to declare?"
"Just a bottle of scotch from the duty free shop."
"Just ONE?" (apparently they know us REALLY well up there now)
"Whaddaya mean just one? We're ATHLETES!"
"So what?" ... much laughter was had all around. Very cool.

We're making great strides to our weight goals too. This weekend will be a huge help - racing on Saturday in our first outdoor competition and then running in the marathon on Sunday (half each). We've been joking that we might meet ALL our weight goals this weekend, we'll have been working so hard, not to mention all the medals we'll be weighed down with! HA!

cold wet weekend of training...

We just spent an active, for want of a better word (I'm only on coffee cup #2, so the words aren't flowing smoothly quite yet) weekend in Mont Tremblant. It was cold and rainy, but glorious - though we sorely missed four of our crew who are on national teams preparing for the world championships this summer. Part of our training involved watching and analyzing footage of the Canadian senior women's team... We sat there mesmerized and pretty much in awe of how easy they make it look. Can we make our boat look like theirs..... ?? Very inspiring.

It's raining and raining and raining... getting extremely depressing. Beginning to forget what the sun looks and feels like. Weather forecast doesn't even mention a hint of the big yellow thing for another 6 days at least :( Boo.

Levels in Lake Champlain are so high... not likely to see any dragonboats in here for a while. Which totally stinks.. even tho we are on the water in Montreal already (who'd have thunk we'd be saying thank goodness for that canal!!??), we love paddling in our own backyard. But I shouldn't complain - others have flooded homes and fields to contend with.

Fingers crossed it recedes enough soon!

out on the (cold!) northern water...

Yesterday we were out on the canal ... though the sun was shining and it was much warmer than last week's miserable, rainy, raw practices, it was still enough to make us wince when our hands dipped into the water. There's a sure-fire way to stop immersing our hands too far though.. coach M would have been pleased! Farted around with different length paddles a bit.. last week i brought my 50" just to make sure i really DO want to shorten it and the verdict was.. HECK YEAH. I was decidedly uncomfortable and it showed. G and I both have new paddles on order (check 'em out... http://www.kialoa.com) but they won't be here for a few more days. So yesterday I used my old 47" and G her 45"...yuck. Then I tried a club paddle.. like paddling with a cement block! One of my teamies graciously lent me hers for a good 1/4 of the practice though, which was fabulous - and reassured me that I've ordered a good length (48.5 in case you're wondering and yes, i can definitely feel the 1/2 inch difference) - fingers crossed that it gets here before we leave for our weekend training camp.

Today: 6 mile runs. Our half-marathon is in just over 2 weeks! Tomorrow: gym and rowing machine. Whoop whoop!

back at the gym

The routine has switched up a bit and now that we're on the water during the week, Saturday morning has become a gym day. It was nice and quiet there today, and a few new faces - well, new to us at least. Since our schedules this week were a bit chaotic, we had a bit of makeup work to do. So we did two weight routines, and a little bit of rowing until finally we were shaking so much we had to stop. Not sure which one of us had the brilliant idea to do a few pushups to cap it all off - ha. I went down for my first one and collapsed. A fraction of a second later G was face down in fits of giggles herself. Somehow we managed to squeeze out 10 suckers and called it quits.

In the parking lot, as we were trading equipment between cars.. we heard a man's voice calling out to us across the parking lot. "Thanks for the inspiration! You guys are awesome!!" How can you top that?

Where did the time go??

2 very tired, very happy and sunkissed dragons (pic by R)

The rest of camp whizzed by in a total blur. It was an amazing experience - one in which  we learned a lot about paddling, our teammates and ourselves. We paddled, were videotaped and photographed, evaluated, critiqued, revved up, pushed to max and congratulated on our accomplishments. We started out less than perfect (coach, bless him, pulls no punches) and finished stronger than I think any one of us dared hope. Several hot-tub sessions and healing ocean swims later it was time to bid goodbye to the sunny south and head back home. And endure a nail-biting week or so of waiting for the final roster to come out. Would we make it? Would we survive the final round of cuts? What if we didn't? The thought of the dream ending right here was awful. Our stomachs developed knots as big as basketballs and nausea came in waves. (Or was that just the after-effects of being on a boat all week?)

We texted each other incessantly. Did you get anything yet? No, you? No. Is the list out? No, just the week 29 training plan. Balls. WTF, where is it? Bah, I feel sick.

So,what did we have to do with ourselves but wait and continue with the program until we heard? I opened it up to see what it looked like and about fainted when I saw the first line: "If you are receiving this program that means you are officially on the senior women’s roster for the 2011 racing season."

HOLY FREAKING SHIT. I reread it three times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating and then dialed G's number.

"Dude, did you get the week 29 program?" I screeched.
"Yeah, but I haven't looked at it yet."
"You're an idiot. We both are.." and I read her that first line.
Silence. And then she started weeping.
"Oh my god, I need to sit down," and the tears began to mix with laughter.

When she was calm enough to listen again I read her the next line: "We are not easing into our outdoor season. We are jumping in head first. Our season is short and nationals are nine weeks from now."

just look at this fine fine crew! whoop whoop! (pic by R)

Wow. 9 weeks to nationals. Well, 8 now. 1 week to another, 2-day, training camp in Canada's chilly waters. 3 weeks to our first competition. 5 weeks to our second. And then nationals. Time to hit the gym hard, run fast and long, and paddle with extreme purpose. If this boat wants to get to Hong Kong, these next few weeks are going to be critical. And we're going to get ourselves into the best possible shape to help make this boat leaner, faster and stronger. BRING IT ON.