I woke up this morning wondering if I'd be satisfied with my 42 week journey if we did not take the gold in the 500m. Yesterday's race was not our best and we all knew it. Coach M lectured us on thinking about the race and not the podium.
The way the races work here is the first place team in each heat makes it to the final, the next fastest team overall also makes it to the final. All of the others have to battle it out in a semi final where the first two boats from the semi will make it to the final.
It was a humbling experience to have to race in the semi final without going directly to the final as we had in the 1st 2 events. I looked at it as one more chance to practise a start before the final. We won the semi final several seconds ahead of the other boats. We would be in the final with Brisbane Australia and Toronto Outer Harbour as our biggest competition.
Coach M gave us a motivational talk before the race that brought us all to tears. Everything felt so intense; the heat, the noise, the energy of the team. The start took forever (what a surprise). I pounded it every step of the way but I could see after the finish that we were not quite fast enough to beat Brisbane, the question was "did we beat outer harbour?".
It had been a good race. Regardless of second or third we all knew we had paddled well. The results finally came in; a third silver to complete the set.
While waiting for the awards ceremonies Brisbane, Outer Harbour and us all gathered and agreed how we all pushed each other to our limits over the past 4 days and we were grateful for the challenge.
Am I satisfied with the voyage? 42 weeks ago I was in the worse shape of my life. I had never raced on a sport division team before and I only had 2 years of paddling behind me. I had never done a chin up, and I had never benched over 100 pounds . Most of the women on the team are paddling in the sport division for the first time and when we started back in September we looked like a pile of potatoe ladies with legs. Last summer (the team's first season) they placed 3rd in Canada. This week we placed second in the world. I give credit for this amazing accomplishment to the inspiration we gave each other and the incredible coaching and people skills of our coach Matt Roberts.
The way the races work here is the first place team in each heat makes it to the final, the next fastest team overall also makes it to the final. All of the others have to battle it out in a semi final where the first two boats from the semi will make it to the final.
It was a humbling experience to have to race in the semi final without going directly to the final as we had in the 1st 2 events. I looked at it as one more chance to practise a start before the final. We won the semi final several seconds ahead of the other boats. We would be in the final with Brisbane Australia and Toronto Outer Harbour as our biggest competition.
Coach M gave us a motivational talk before the race that brought us all to tears. Everything felt so intense; the heat, the noise, the energy of the team. The start took forever (what a surprise). I pounded it every step of the way but I could see after the finish that we were not quite fast enough to beat Brisbane, the question was "did we beat outer harbour?".
It had been a good race. Regardless of second or third we all knew we had paddled well. The results finally came in; a third silver to complete the set.
While waiting for the awards ceremonies Brisbane, Outer Harbour and us all gathered and agreed how we all pushed each other to our limits over the past 4 days and we were grateful for the challenge.
Am I satisfied with the voyage? 42 weeks ago I was in the worse shape of my life. I had never raced on a sport division team before and I only had 2 years of paddling behind me. I had never done a chin up, and I had never benched over 100 pounds . Most of the women on the team are paddling in the sport division for the first time and when we started back in September we looked like a pile of potatoe ladies with legs. Last summer (the team's first season) they placed 3rd in Canada. This week we placed second in the world. I give credit for this amazing accomplishment to the inspiration we gave each other and the incredible coaching and people skills of our coach Matt Roberts.
Mission accomplie! C'est absolument génial says Hélène F.
ReplyDelete