By The Hair Of My Chiney Chin Chin

I was up in Vancouver, BC at False Creek for the 5th in the winter race series. Diane and I loaded the boats Friday night, an OC1 for me and the OC2 for her and Minnie. She arrived a few minutes late to my place Saturday morning, then we were off to collect Ed who would paddle on an OC2 with Clem. When we were north of Bellingham we passed Minnie and Ernie. We took a chance and went through the Peace Arch crossing, bad idea. The last time we'd gone that way we crossed pretty quickly, figured our luck would hold, ya, not so much actually. Thankfully there was another racer who kindly let us pull in front of him, his line was moving considerably faster. As it turns out that was a saving grace in more ways than one, seems Diane had forgotten her passport, d'oh! The Canadian customs agent was a kindly fellow and accepted Ed and me saying we knew her well and could vouch for her! Off we go, with the fellow who let us in hot on our tail, I guess he was hoping I had good directions and would get us all there in a timely manner. I did and we did.

We arrived, got registered, got rigged, got changed, and went to the pre-race meeting to learn the course. Then into the water for a bit of a warm up and get to the start. We're off, I tried to sprint at the start hoping to stick with the back of the pack, and I did, sort of. Minnie and Diane were even to slightly behind me. Darcy, my main competition was a ways ahead of me. I tried to settle into a good pace, but I wasn't feeling quite right. It was about 2 miles to the first turn, turn right down to the flag bouy, back to the first bouy, and then back in. The total distance was 6.2 miles. There was very little wind, but there was a fair amount of ground swell which gave me some difficulty. I was able to pull in front of Minnie and Diane, but not as far as I would have liked. I could here Diane calling the changes and giving Minnie steering advice, helping alter their course so the swells wouldn't cause them to huli. There were a number of instances where I was certain I was going over, hand waving, heart pounding moments. Afterwards Diane told me she saw a few of those moments and was on the ready to help me back onto my OC1. I guess they had some of those moments, too. After the second turn I saw there was another paddler behind Minnie and Diane! After the third turn I just didn't have much left in me, Minnie and Diane were able to pull ahead of me. Those last two miles were so hard, the swells, my feet were cramping up, sweat kept dripping into my eyes and burning, and I just didn't have the energy to keep up the pace. As I neared the finish I realized that other woman was gaining some ground on me, f@&k that, I'm not finishing last! I dug in a paddled for all I was worth, I was on the verge of vomiting, I was working so hard. They didn't have a horn so I couldn't be certain that I'd actually stayed in front of her. As I coasted along I could just feel my toes/feet cramping, I felt like I'd been put through the wringer.

Very slowly I carried the OC1 up to the car, I felt just nasty. Hungry, thirsty, crampy, sweaty, damp, generally not so good. First thing I did back at the car was change out of my nasty wet clothes and then started to take apart the boat and load up the car. Rather a bad idea, I was feeling yucky and not able to explain to the others how I wanted things loaded and tied down. I should have found some food before we loaded up. Once we got everything loaded we all wandered over to the registration to see how everyone finished and get some prizes. I took third in Master Women, Darcy took second. I was six seconds away from dfl (dead f@&king last) at 1:09:02, but I wasn't last! They had some nice, hot split pea soup in desperate need of some salt, with crusty rolls. It was good to get something into my tummy, the sodium from the salt would have helped my cramping issues, though.

Loaded up and ready to go Diane, Ed, and I headed out to Costco to get some antihistamines for me on our way home. Even though Zyrtec is now sold over the counter here, it's much cheaper in Canada, they have generic. Ed and I have an on-going banter regarding when we should stop for gas. I start getting nervous when it dips below 1/4 tank, Ed says, 'ah, we'll be fine!' We aim for the Costco at Smokey Point (exit 206). It goes below 1/4 mark and I poke him and point, he gives a p'shaw face, and we keep going. Yesterday we actually began to dip below the E line as we were on the exit ramp. I've never actually run this car out of gas before, so I don't really know how low I can go. If we ever do run out of gas Ed will have a load of ribbing to live down! I have AAA so I'm not too worried if we actually did run out of gas, it would just keep us from our showers and naps that much longer!

In all I had a not so good race. I realized I never had my protein shake in the morning and I didn't have quite enough to eat. I think I need to do a better electrolyte loading before a race as well. I'd run out of my Emergen-C packets, guess I'm off to go buy some today! However, I had excellent company for the travel, loads of laughter and good conversation. In all a good day!