It started out well enough

This morning I went down for another team practice for the Rusty Iron, the first OC6 race we plan to do down in Portland on April 26. Our crew will be, in seating order, Minnie, Rives, Nancy, me, Lise, and Kristen steering. We had a nice ten minute warm up, gradually ramping up our intensity and pace, a quick break to adjust clothing and get water before we were off for the big part of the workout. We headed south towards the 520 bridge keeping pretty close to a race pace. Minnie is really coming along as a good stroke person. She is setting a good pace and keeping it very steady. We got all the way to the western high rise, passed under, went along the bridge to the eastern high rise, and back under again in about 45-50 minutes. The water on the south side of the bridge was messy and slowed our pace somewhat. The wind was blowing the water towards the bridge and then it bounced back towards us creating a little bit of chaos.

Once we were back on the north side of the bridge we took another short break and got ready for 3-10 minute pieces, the first was to be at a higher stroke rate, around 62+ per minute, then back down to 58-60, and the final piece back up to 62+ again. Well, 2-3 minutes into the first piece my back up and rebelled. The message was clear, you want to race on 3/29, 4/12, and/or 4/26 you better stop this nonsense right quick! I pulled up and told Kristen that I couldn't do the fast pace so we backed down to the slower pace and my back was still rather pissed off. I asked Kristen if I could steer back. You know things aren't going well if I want to steer, my hind parts don't fit in those seats, I have to sit up on one hip to be back there. Kristen moved up to seat 3 and Nancy moved to 4. I discovered there is enough space behind seat 6 for my legs and feet so I could sit on the tail section of the boat! I didn't have to wedge myself in, huzzah!!! They kept a decent pace and I tried to keep a straight line, I think they did better than I did, but I didn't do too badly. I tried to paddle a couple of times, bad idea on two counts, our course became rather erratic and my back said no. So, I just poked and sat, sat and poked, poked and sat, and got cold, I'd worked up a decent sweat during the first half of the workout and now wasn't really working so hard. I thought I did bring us in rather nicely, right up along the shore followed by a quick turn and a couple of back paddles and there we were.

My neighbor, a nice young woman named Kyle, came down for her first time paddling. She went out with John, Meilee, Marth, Neil, and Judy. Sounds like she really enjoyed it and plans to come out again. Her boyfriend has expressed interest as well. Since her boat came in earlier she was able to let the dog boyz out of the car. By the way, Gus is feeling much better, he started perking up last night. Gus could recognize me in the boat coming in and raced over to the ramp to meet us, or rather me. Llelo followed in short order and I could tell he'd been rolling in goose poop. Dumb dog! I dragged him into the water for a rinse and somehow he managed to roll in more between the rinse and time to go home, got another rinse and then into the car. During the ride home I could make out 'ew de goose poop and made the snap decision to give the both baths! I have a friend with 2 corgis down in California and her boy dog, Redd, has made the connection that if he gets skunked he gets a bath, he HATES baths, he takes pains to not get skunked, the girl dog, Cosmo, ya, not so much. I can only hope that Llelo will make the connection that when he rolls in goose poop he gets a bath, but I think he's going to be more like Cosmo, sigh.

I wanted to extend a big public (as big an audience I my blog has, anyway) mahalo to Steve E for letting me use his Kaimana OC1 this winter! It has been wonderful to have a boat to use for training (wish I'd done more!) and to take to races! I still think he should have sold it to me, but since I actually saw him down at the club going out for a paddle this morning perhaps he really does intend to get back into paddling! ;-) And since I'm getting my own boat tomorrow maybe we can go for paddles together on our OC1s. So, Steve "Mahalo ā nui loa (thanks very, very, very much)". And now it's time to go ice my back.