Last weekend I was on Toronto Island for the Toronto International Dragon Boat festival.  Again, we had only two races as our National team.  First race felt better than Pickering had but was still lacking something.  On Saturday not only did I race with the girls but I had the privilege of steering 3 crews.  My team from Bethune HS was awesome!  Each race they had they improved.  In the final race it was so close at the finish line we had to wait for the results to be announced to see who one.   Paddling back to the mainland after the races were done on Saturday I wrote a mental blog “It’s Not Always about Winning”.  I had planned to write it out and posted it when I got home but unfortunately I was so exhausted and wiped from the day in the rain that I passed out.   I was so inspired by my high school team.  They were in the slowest junior final but they still gave it their all.  They did everything that I asked for on the water, they gave me power when I called for it, they stuck to the plan and they were all smiles after the race was over.  They felt that that was their best race, they didn’t need me or their other coach to say anything.  Sadly they were second by 0.6 of a second but they still cheered, went nuts and were all going to wear their medals to school on Monday.  Love you guys!

On Sunday, in the sun, my hospital team and university womens crew had great final races just like Bethune.  Hospital team made the Hospital A final and managed to take over 15 seconds off their best time from last year. As for my team, we wanted to up the intensity level in the boat so coach decided that when the gun went off, we were going to sit on the line and wait. Wait while the other boats started then we would have to play catch up. We ended up waiting for about 3 seconds before started but it seemed like we caught up within our first 5 strokes! We were ahead by the time we finished our starting sequence.   Our final time was posted as a 2:03:something, that’s based on the gun time so take off the couple seconds that we sat on the line!  It was definitely MY best race that I’ve had with them.  I’m starting to figure out my pacing and how I need to focus myself for that type of race.

Sunday night after paddling off the island I had the pleasure of watching Marty Adams in his final performance at Second City.  What an amazing performer!  Can not wait to see what he comes out with next!