3 more hours of practice and then....

NATIONALS! We're so excited we can barely sit still. Personally, even when I'm sitting I can't stop fidgeting... that could be because I've got great music blaring through my earbuds and I'm dancing in my office chair but that's beside the point. We are soooooooo excited-scared-amazed-crazy happy-thrilled to be going off to Welland, Ontario to deliver on the promises we made to ourselves, each other and our team last October. The butterflies have been in my stomach at least a week, I can't walk past a mirror without stopping and quickly practicing my drive or my exit or some other aspect of the stroke. And we both still catch our breath when we realize that the girls looking back at us are.. US... how much our bodies have changed... :)

Gorgeous gorgeous day outside.. can't wait to swap the office clothes for shorts and a tank, hit the road north and get out on the water...

How we prepare for practice...

a double espresso and two iced coffees... each!

That was on Thursday.. poor G suffered the consequences of all that caffeine and was in such bloated pain by the time we arrived at the gym... seriously, it got so bad that during the traffic jam on the Champlain Bridge (let me make it clear in case you don't quite understand: NO WAY OFF OR OUT) that the empty paper cup was considered as an option. Thankfully I (for once) did not have the same problem, so, supportive team-mate that I am, I found great entertainment in the whole episode.

But silly toilet jokes aside, practice was AMAZING.. we felt strong, powerful and hammered ths CRAP out of the water that day. As our pacer extraordinaire likes to say, BANG! BANG! BANG! It was the perfect prelude to Saturday's races... which went very well. We performed well, and got to watch (more like drool over) the national teams in attendance. So inspiring!

Next: 3 weeks of hardcore hell and then... NATIONALS. WHOOP!

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.