GOING TO WORLDS!!!

A bronze medal & confirmation that the team is Hong Kong bound!

Incredible weekend in Welland. Saw a lot of amazing paddling. The divisions were so close, I think all 85 teams racing got quite a reality check. I know we did. The time differences between us and our competition really came down to one or two strokes for the most part. CRAZY!

Friday morning we walked from our hotel down to the course for practice. The water was calm, deep and a gorgeous green color. We'd heard so much about this course we couldn't wait to get out on it and see if it truly was as good as we'd been led to believe. We found our team, helped raise the tents and get settled and then it was time to load up. The boat we got was so new, they hadn't finished taking the bubble wrap off the seats!

The practice was short, but delicious. The water warm and oh soooo fast. Perfection! We stayed out there just long enough to whet our competitive appetites and came back in. A few hours of meditation and focus were now in order before our 500m heat - the time we registered strangely eludes me at present. The final would be the next morning.. and we knocked that out at 2:12.81. A great time, and four seconds faster than our goal, but not quite enough for first place... which was logged at 2:12.64. CENTISECONDS!  We had a screaming start and held everyone at bay for at least 480 of the 500m, but they crept up on us at the end and slid in by a dragon's nose hair. Silver was to be our color for the day. Grr.

Saturday afternoon it was the 2000m that would torture us. You generally either love or hate this race. Personally, it's one of my favorites. (Then again, I don't think I've ever met a race I DIDN'T like. I just love this stuff top to bottom and sideways.) And OMG it was hellish and brilliant all at once. Hopefully there'll be video available at some point.. i'd love to actually see how it looked from a spectator's vantage point. It was mad crazy, and our boat was so SOLID. Sitting in seat 5, smack in the middle of the boat, I felt the power all around me. I was barely aware of anything else... and by the time we crossed the finish line my right foot and hand were visibly mottled with the sheer effort of it. Despite losing ground on a few turns, we finished with a respectable (but, sadly, 4th place) time of 9:56, ready to puke our guts out.

Sunday morning we walked to the course again. Already at 9am it was scorchingly hot. We passed a gaggle of the biggest, fattest Canada geese we'd ever seen and immediately envied them their cooling swim. By the time we were up to race our first 200m heat, we were ready to melt. But a little cool race water on the backs of our necks and we were ready to rip it. Just before we headed to the starting blocks, we were stopped in the water, focusing. Our boat is stunning. We sit there and just breathe. 22 women sitting still, totally focused, breathing in and out deeply... it is powerful and calming and so much more. As I was breathing I felt a strong need to turn around and look back, look for G, my partner through all this. I turned and she was looking right at me...it was uncanny really - our eyes just locked for a second, and that's all we needed.

Boy did we rip it. We screamed down that bloody course in 53:67 - ahead of all the other crews. Again.. it was centiseconds. Might as well have been nanoseconds tho. Of the five boats in the heat, four were bang on top of each other: our 53:67, then 53:77, 53:88 and 53:90. We had some serious company here!

We knew we would have a run for our money in the final. Again we hammered it out at the start.. quite possibly that was our best start ever. All boats fought extra hard for that race... and again the top times were a hair off from one another. 53:66; 53:68 (ours, another silver race); 53:87. The difference of one hard stroke... UGH!!

We took bronze for the competition as a whole, and are secure in the knowledge that we have fully and unequivocally earned our berth for the World Club Crew Championships next summer. Still, despite setting off for home without that coveted and elusive gold, we left with something much more valuable. The fire that is now in our bellies is going to keep us roaring hungry over the next 12 months as we step up our game and prepare for Hong Kong. And hungry is what we need to be... so that we may grab the gold where it REALLY counts: on the WORLD course.

Celebrating the end of a fantastic racing weekend (holy crap we're going to Hong Kong!)