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Almost back in Canada |
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| July 20th, 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hey Hey all you fine people! I'm currently hanging out in a Safeway parking lot for internet access waiting for the traffic on I5 to settle down so I can continue my trek north. Heading to Victoria to spend some time with a great friend from Parry Sound and her family. Hoping to see a few other people while I'm there and do some paddling too with the clubs in the area. As for this weekend's races, well, can't complain at all. It was a great weekend (well, week really). The wind was blowing when I arrived in Stevenson, WA on Wednesday after I spent the morning visting Mt. Rainier and walking around at Mt. St. Helens! What an amazing site! Again, when I get time I'll upload the video. There are pictures up on my facebook that anyone can see here. Wednesday afternoon I jumped in with a group of folks doing a downwinder, pretty good. Got two in on Thursday and Friday. It was neat starting behind all the paddlers out there and trying to catch as many as I could before we stopped to regroup again. Most runs we had 12-20 paddlers going. Raced OC6 with the False Creek Womens second crew. We eneded up finishing the race in second behind the number one crew. Huge wind and huge waves! It was a blast! The waves were so good that a few of us did a downwind run after the race. It was wicked but I had no energy left to catch some of the waves so wasn't as good as it could have been but still great. Sunday was the OC1 race. I was quite dissapointed that many of the women that were there and had been doing runs the past few days didn't race! .My race had womens surfski, womens and mixed OC2 and womens OC1 in it. I started between some OC2s and hung on as long as I could off the start but they were strong on the upwind to the first turn. The downwind section was alright, waves were the smallest they'd been all week and slow moving but still enough to get a bit of a rest and decent rides down by the turn to go back up wind. Loved the upwind sections, felt quite strong and powerful. Apparently when I came under the pier for the start of the second lap there were a few comments made wondering if I had turned early or something because I was all by myself (even though there were OC2s just infront of me). On the second downwind portion I started to gain a little on a mixed OC2 infront of me so figured, let's go for it! Made my gains on them on the upwind section to the finish. I managed to catch them with about 100m to go and finished a few boat lengths ahead of them. For being the fastest female on the water I got a cute little ceramic carving of whales in a nice wooden frame. Add that to the tiles we got for second in the OC6 and that I got for placing in the OC1 and people are joking that I am going to have to build a little trophy shelf in my house (aka, my car!) since I have the one from last week's VOS race too. I met a ton of new people this weekend and made some connections for future races and got lots of invites to paddle in various places. Had a few moments like during the great downwinder yesterday with the Jerico girls where you just look around, see the mountains, the sun, the water, waves, great people around you and you just can't help but smile. I hope everyone's summers are going well, I hear the weather back in Toronto hasn't been the greatest but I'm sure you folks are making the most of what you've got! Can't wait to see people when I'm back in Ontario for a few days. Get in the morning of August 5th I think! Also, I still have some 18 month calendars left. Cost is $20 and the proceeds go towards Breast Cancer, National Women's Dragon Boat team and our quest for gold in Prague! Let me know if you're interested. |
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Old Posts ... July:
June:
May: April: Older: |
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Last update on: July 20th, 2009 |
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Copyright 2009 Leanne Stanley. All rights reserved. |
