Great day at the Inwood Canoe Club today! They have a lovely little garden in front of their boathouse which was very popular with the local insects. This lovely dragonfly was quite cooperative about posing for photos!
Saturday, August 03, 2019
Monday, July 29, 2019
Kayak Support for the 15th Annual Grimaldo's Mile
From what I've seen, the Mayor's Cup in Hoboken on Saturday went great. Meanwhile, I was helping out with the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers' (CIBBOWS) 15th annual Grimaldo's Mile swim race.
Grimaldo's Mile is named after a lifeguard who was really instrumental in turning Coney Island and Brighton Beach into the popular open water training ground it's become for NYC area aquatic athletes. It's funny - if somebody just stumbled across this blog today and just poked around in the last couple of years, they would think that recreational water access is just a normal thing here in NYC. That's getting to be the case now, and certainly was the case historically, but there was a rather large hiatus when the city's waterways got to be too polluted to play in.
The passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 (thank you Pete Seeger & friends!) mostly stopped the river from being used as a legal dumping ground for industry, and the local waterways began a long, slow recovery, setting the stage for a renewed interest in recreational use.
That wasn't as much of a no-brainer as you might think, though. Perceptions of the water quality stayed bad for a long time -- when I started paddling in the late 90's, people's reactions when I told them about my new hobby generally involved cracks about how I must glow in the dark; I get a lot less of that and a lot more "That must be fun!" these days, which is really neat. Also, the impression I have is that NYC had lost the recreational traditions that naturally grow up in port cities, and with no recent history, and deep concerns about liability, the higher-up powers that be weren't entirely sure that opening up access was a really good idea.
It took people who were actually there on the waterfront and in a position to vouch for the idea to make it happen. There were a number of people and organizations to whom I would give credit for opening the waterways to the level of paddling and rowing we have here today, and I owe a lot to all of them.
Lifeguard Grimaldo Medrano was the guy who did that for the open-water swimmers. Before he took up their case, Coney Island and Brighton Beach lifeguards didn't let anyone swim outside of the jetties, which are spaced maybe 500 to 600 feet apart.
I started swimming at Coney Island far too late to meet him, but the love that my swimmer friends have for him is profound, and every Grimaldo's Mile is a tribute to him.
You can read more about him in a moving NY Times article I always like to share when I talk about this race - it tells his story way better than I could. Click here to read.
It was a beautiful morning at Coney Island and I had a wonderful time helping out. I always enjoy doing kayak support for CIBBOWS races - and this year was extra fun because my friend Steve the Paddling Chef has been doing some lap swimming and decided to give open water a try. Grimaldo's is a fantastic intro - my first open-water swim was in the Hudson, where just going to the beach isn't an option, and it was a little intimidating. I'd never swum any serious distance in water where I couldn't see, and the green murk of the Hudson was enough to freak me out a bit. Fortunately one of my paddling friends was doing swim support that day and came paddling up just as I stopped to tread water and think for a minute. Couldn't whuss out in front of Harry!
Steve did report a similar reaction (his open water experience had also been somewhere with tropical fish and coral), but he carried on just fine. The last few shots here are him finishing the race - I took about a million of him but I think these ones show the sequence pretty well, right down to the high-five with one of the Swim Angels (experienced swimmers who are there to encourage less experienced swimmers as necessary) as he left the water. There were a number of other Sebago Canoe Club folks paddling and we were all so excited to see him pull this off!
And then afterwards I joined another friend who'd volunteered in a roughly 3/4 mile swim. The water temperature was perfect for swimming. All in all, just a great day.
Photos from the day - click on any photo for a better view.
Grimaldo's Mile is named after a lifeguard who was really instrumental in turning Coney Island and Brighton Beach into the popular open water training ground it's become for NYC area aquatic athletes. It's funny - if somebody just stumbled across this blog today and just poked around in the last couple of years, they would think that recreational water access is just a normal thing here in NYC. That's getting to be the case now, and certainly was the case historically, but there was a rather large hiatus when the city's waterways got to be too polluted to play in.
The passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 (thank you Pete Seeger & friends!) mostly stopped the river from being used as a legal dumping ground for industry, and the local waterways began a long, slow recovery, setting the stage for a renewed interest in recreational use.
That wasn't as much of a no-brainer as you might think, though. Perceptions of the water quality stayed bad for a long time -- when I started paddling in the late 90's, people's reactions when I told them about my new hobby generally involved cracks about how I must glow in the dark; I get a lot less of that and a lot more "That must be fun!" these days, which is really neat. Also, the impression I have is that NYC had lost the recreational traditions that naturally grow up in port cities, and with no recent history, and deep concerns about liability, the higher-up powers that be weren't entirely sure that opening up access was a really good idea.
It took people who were actually there on the waterfront and in a position to vouch for the idea to make it happen. There were a number of people and organizations to whom I would give credit for opening the waterways to the level of paddling and rowing we have here today, and I owe a lot to all of them.
Lifeguard Grimaldo Medrano was the guy who did that for the open-water swimmers. Before he took up their case, Coney Island and Brighton Beach lifeguards didn't let anyone swim outside of the jetties, which are spaced maybe 500 to 600 feet apart.
I started swimming at Coney Island far too late to meet him, but the love that my swimmer friends have for him is profound, and every Grimaldo's Mile is a tribute to him.
You can read more about him in a moving NY Times article I always like to share when I talk about this race - it tells his story way better than I could. Click here to read.
It was a beautiful morning at Coney Island and I had a wonderful time helping out. I always enjoy doing kayak support for CIBBOWS races - and this year was extra fun because my friend Steve the Paddling Chef has been doing some lap swimming and decided to give open water a try. Grimaldo's is a fantastic intro - my first open-water swim was in the Hudson, where just going to the beach isn't an option, and it was a little intimidating. I'd never swum any serious distance in water where I couldn't see, and the green murk of the Hudson was enough to freak me out a bit. Fortunately one of my paddling friends was doing swim support that day and came paddling up just as I stopped to tread water and think for a minute. Couldn't whuss out in front of Harry!
Steve did report a similar reaction (his open water experience had also been somewhere with tropical fish and coral), but he carried on just fine. The last few shots here are him finishing the race - I took about a million of him but I think these ones show the sequence pretty well, right down to the high-five with one of the Swim Angels (experienced swimmers who are there to encourage less experienced swimmers as necessary) as he left the water. There were a number of other Sebago Canoe Club folks paddling and we were all so excited to see him pull this off!
And then afterwards I joined another friend who'd volunteered in a roughly 3/4 mile swim. The water temperature was perfect for swimming. All in all, just a great day.
Photos from the day - click on any photo for a better view.
Early morning in the Coney Island Aquarium's Education Hall
Registration underway
Buoys heading out
Marker buoys awaiting pickup
Education Hall filling up!
Paddling to the start - such a calm morning!
Starting Line - at Grimaldo's Chair in Brighton Beach
Swim Angels are ready!
Into the water
And they're off!
Heading for Stilwell
Paddlers gather to cheer on Steve the Paddling Chef
who is now also Steve the Swimming Chef!
Approaching the finish
High-five with Eric the Swim Angel before the run to the finish.
My post-swim look. Beach hair, don't care!
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Fun Event Saturday - Ke Aloha Outrigger's Mayor's Cup and Ohana Festival, Hoboken Cove
"Hey! Did somebody say Mayor's Pup?"
(adorable photo swiped from Ke Aloha!)
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No, pup, you're adorable, but it's Cup! Starting line 2018.
Quick post today to mention that the 3rd Annual Ke Aloha Mayor's Cup Race and Ohana Festival is happening at Hoboken Cove on Saturday the 27th. I'm SO sad I can't make this year, I've attended the last two, and it's a wonderful race with that spectacular view of Manhattan (and of course the Statue of Liberty for the outriggers and surfskis), and Ke Aloha gathers some really wonderful entertainers and food vendors for their Ohana Festival in Maxwell Place Park. It's a great event, and if you're in the area and looking for a lovely way to while away a few hours on Saturday, I just can't recommend this enough. Click here for full details.
A bit more from last year. At the moment I recorded this snippet, I may have been as unwound as I got for all of 2018 (so relaxed!). Enjoy. :)
Maxwell Place Park
Mmm kalua pig bowl. The guy had had spam musubi but was sold out, but this was pretty ono!
Samoan dance by the Hudson
Monday, July 22, 2019
Return to the Graveyard of Ships, 7/7/2019
Me and trusty Romany with Hila (ex ATR-89). Thanks to clubmate Frank Favia for the spectacular photo! Click for a better view. Flickr album links at the end of the post.
The poor blog has been being neglected as I've been busy with other things, and maybe had a touch of blogger's block, but a weekend of being lazy and hiding at home from the heat wave has let me do some catching-up. So hello, here I am!
City of Water day (my last post was a plug for that) was fantastic - we had beautiful weather, I helped out with our beautifully refurbished war canoe and did well enough to get promoted from bow to steerer by my last trip of the day, and I was on a break at the right time to catch the Billion Oyster Project demonstration. Not a lot of pictures from on the water but I definitely will share some photos of the oyster folks, that was very cool!
Today goes a little farther back than that, though. Sebago has not done a trip to Witte Marine Salvage, aka the Staten Island Graveyard of Ships, in several years - in fact the last trip report I can find from there was in 2010. I'd been making noises about getting back there and had been planning on looking for a good day in the fall, and then early in the first week of July, I got an email from Steve the Paddling Chef saying that Sunday the 7th looked perfect tidewise and did I want to assist?
Well, he took care of all the coordinating, all I had to do was join a lovely bunch of clubmates and a couple of guests from other clubs on a very nice paddle from Conference House up to Witte and back, with a lunch break on a little beach at the base of the Fresh Kills landfill. And everybody thanking me for helping Steve with the trip when he did all the work. Yeah, life was indeed good!
I did find I had one little bit of concern when visiting Witte's for the first time in a while - there are always rumors that there just isn't anything left there, so as one of the organizers (not that I did any organizing) I did kind of find myself thinking "What if we drag everybody out there and there's nothing to see?". Of course I've been hearing rumors like that pretty much since I started my NYC kayaking career with a paddling lesson at Manhattan Kayak Company back in (yikes) the late 90's. I know I missed the heyday of the place, and it's true that there aren't as many boats there as there used to be, even since my first visit; Witte's is a salvage yard, not a museum, and with NYC's construction industry booming they're selling all the scrap metal they can. In addition, the Army Corps of Engineers has been doing some clearing out to keep pieces of the boats from coming loose and becoming hazards to navigation as they float off into the shipping channels. Folks who have been visiting for a while may find old favorites gone, but there's still enough there for first-time visitors to be impressed.
Here are a couple of old favorites of mine that I didn't see this time. This old Astoria ferry was not actually at Witte's, it was off by itself a little ways south. I did hear a rumor that this one got cleared out because a development went in and the developers didn't think condo buyers would want to look at a junky old boat. Personally I think it would be cool to have a condo with a view of a sunken ship, but I'm guess I'm probably not representative of your average Staten Island condo buyer.
City of Water day (my last post was a plug for that) was fantastic - we had beautiful weather, I helped out with our beautifully refurbished war canoe and did well enough to get promoted from bow to steerer by my last trip of the day, and I was on a break at the right time to catch the Billion Oyster Project demonstration. Not a lot of pictures from on the water but I definitely will share some photos of the oyster folks, that was very cool!
Today goes a little farther back than that, though. Sebago has not done a trip to Witte Marine Salvage, aka the Staten Island Graveyard of Ships, in several years - in fact the last trip report I can find from there was in 2010. I'd been making noises about getting back there and had been planning on looking for a good day in the fall, and then early in the first week of July, I got an email from Steve the Paddling Chef saying that Sunday the 7th looked perfect tidewise and did I want to assist?
Well, he took care of all the coordinating, all I had to do was join a lovely bunch of clubmates and a couple of guests from other clubs on a very nice paddle from Conference House up to Witte and back, with a lunch break on a little beach at the base of the Fresh Kills landfill. And everybody thanking me for helping Steve with the trip when he did all the work. Yeah, life was indeed good!
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frogma kayak smiley, patent pending
I did find I had one little bit of concern when visiting Witte's for the first time in a while - there are always rumors that there just isn't anything left there, so as one of the organizers (not that I did any organizing) I did kind of find myself thinking "What if we drag everybody out there and there's nothing to see?". Of course I've been hearing rumors like that pretty much since I started my NYC kayaking career with a paddling lesson at Manhattan Kayak Company back in (yikes) the late 90's. I know I missed the heyday of the place, and it's true that there aren't as many boats there as there used to be, even since my first visit; Witte's is a salvage yard, not a museum, and with NYC's construction industry booming they're selling all the scrap metal they can. In addition, the Army Corps of Engineers has been doing some clearing out to keep pieces of the boats from coming loose and becoming hazards to navigation as they float off into the shipping channels. Folks who have been visiting for a while may find old favorites gone, but there's still enough there for first-time visitors to be impressed.
Here are a couple of old favorites of mine that I didn't see this time. This old Astoria ferry was not actually at Witte's, it was off by itself a little ways south. I did hear a rumor that this one got cleared out because a development went in and the developers didn't think condo buyers would want to look at a junky old boat. Personally I think it would be cool to have a condo with a view of a sunken ship, but I'm guess I'm probably not representative of your average Staten Island condo buyer.
And I think this tugboat is gone. Kind of sad as it was fun to see these old wooden tugs, even rotting away in the mud like this - but here, I think you can see pretty well how if pieces of this old vessel were to break loose and get out into the shipping channels, they really could be a hazard. The paddler disappearing behind the bow gives you a little sense of scale, this was a good sized boat and constructed of some big, solid timbers. It's also possible that we just missed it somehow, but at any rate, I'm glad I took the photos I did.
So yes, there are some that are gone, but it's still a fascinating place to visit by kayak. And of course I came back and put together a new Flickr album - actually two Flickr albums. For the "blog version", click here. This one is 25 of my favorite photos from the day. If you were on the trip, or are just some kind of glutton for photographic punishment,click here for the extended version (39 photos, with most of the additional photos being pictures of the paddlers on the trip).
Want to learn more about the Staten Island Graveyard of Ships? Get yourself a copy of the short documentary Graves of Arthur Kill, produced by Gary Kane and directed by my good boatblogging friend, "Tugster" Will Van Dorp.
Want to learn more about the Staten Island Graveyard of Ships? Get yourself a copy of the short documentary Graves of Arthur Kill, produced by Gary Kane and directed by my good boatblogging friend, "Tugster" Will Van Dorp.
Friday, July 12, 2019
City of Water Day - July 13, 2019
Should've put this up much earlier in the week!
This is a typical scene from the Sebago Canoe Club's event for the Waterfront Alliance's annual City of Water Day. It's grown from an event on Governor's Island 12 years ago to a day with events all over NYC, in Yonkers, and New Jersey. Click here for the Waterfront Alliance's information page with details about everything that's going on everywhere, or here for details about the Sebago Canoe Club event (see the sidebar on the right). We'll be doing kayak, canoe, sailboat, and rowing trips all day from 10 to 4; last trip launches at 3.
Friday, July 05, 2019
4th of July NYC Skyline Sequence
I had the good fortune to be invited to a 4th of July party at a beautiful Staten Island apartment, one with a glorious deck offering magnificent views of Upper New York Harbor and the full skyline from Jersey City over to Brooklyn. No more words here, just click on the first photo for a slideshow view. 1st 2 from the Staten Island Ferry, the rest from the deck.
Wednesday, July 03, 2019
Pride People
So, jeeze, the second half of June was crammed with so many kinds of awesome I've had a terrible case of blogger's block just trying to figure out where to start. It's all a little overwhelming. It started off with an ACA Instructor Development Workshop with three great days of dusting off skills, while camping out at nearby Floyd Bennett Field. Then there was a fantastic family gathering in Michigan to celebrate 110 years of marriage (one 50th and one 60th anniversary). Then to finish things off I joined Scholastic colleagues on Sunday to march in my first NYC Pride. It was World Pride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Scholastic employees have marched together just as friends in past Pride Parades, but this year the company made it official.
Sebago had a rescue class going on up at the lake on the same day. I would've enjoyed that, and rescues are one of the things I slacked off on practicing after my mastectomy & reconstruction, and my rustiness on some of the more advanced rescues - Hand of God in particular - was noticeable at the IDW, so the class would've been a good follow-up. Because of that, I didn't quite make my decision the minute I saw the announcement - but after thinking things through I decided on going to the march, but I was leaning towards marching from the start and it didn't take too much thinking to decide.
I might talk more about my reasons for going in another post, but for tonight, I thought I would at least kick of my July blogging by sharing some photos from the march. I got there a good bit early to have some time to wander, it was a picture-taking paradise and as I meandered my way slowly up to the staging area, the question that kept running through my head was "How is it that I've never even come to see this before?" Click here to visit the album I put together. Enjoy!
Sebago had a rescue class going on up at the lake on the same day. I would've enjoyed that, and rescues are one of the things I slacked off on practicing after my mastectomy & reconstruction, and my rustiness on some of the more advanced rescues - Hand of God in particular - was noticeable at the IDW, so the class would've been a good follow-up. Because of that, I didn't quite make my decision the minute I saw the announcement - but after thinking things through I decided on going to the march, but I was leaning towards marching from the start and it didn't take too much thinking to decide.
I might talk more about my reasons for going in another post, but for tonight, I thought I would at least kick of my July blogging by sharing some photos from the march. I got there a good bit early to have some time to wander, it was a picture-taking paradise and as I meandered my way slowly up to the staging area, the question that kept running through my head was "How is it that I've never even come to see this before?" Click here to visit the album I put together. Enjoy!
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Saturday, June 15, 2019
First Camping Adventure In A Long Time!
For a long time, I was actually a little doubtful about whether camping at Floyd Bennett Field would be all that nice. This division of the National Park Service's Gateway Recreation Area was originally a military air base, of course, and there's a lot of acreage that's covered in concrete. When I thought about camping there, I was imagining pitching a tent on the tarmac surrounding the big hangar where the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project is - not terribly appealing. Does anybody else remember an episode of Welcome Back Kotter where Kotter tried to take some of the Sweathogs camping, and something went wrong with the navigation or the car or both, and they ended up camping in a parking lot somewhere in the outskirts of the city with Kotter trying to pretend it was just fine? OK, maybe not THAT bad. But still, I just wasn't picturing anything really neat.
However, last year a group of local kayak club folks did a camping trip there and a few of us just went for dinner with the campers (who were grilling, yum) after wrapping up an event at Sebago. Turns out that although there are indeed tarmac campsites, those are mostly for RV's, while the tent campsites are tucked into a green and pleasant wooded area nearby. Maybe not up to the level of the stunning NPS campsite at Ft. Wadsworth shown in this photo, but a perfectly nice place to go spend a few nights outdoors. Oh me of little faith, I should've known that my friend Ranger John's park would have a fine entry in the increasing selection of real live NYC camping experiences. I think this is my first camping trip since 2015. Been way too long
Curious about these urban campsites? Click here for more info.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Current Subway Reading - Yes She Can
I've totally fallen down on that project I had where I was going to share my monthly reading (I stalled out at mid-March, as I recall) but oh my, I have GOT put in a plug for my current subway reading, Yes She Can: 10 Stories of Hope Change from Young Female Staffers of the Obama White House. I am absolutely loving this book.
It's actually kind of heartbreaking reading it and thinking about how hard these young women worked and how much hope they had for what they were bringing to the country and the world, only to have the current administration come dundering in and set straight to work tearing it all down. But it's also such a grand reminder that these young women - and so many other young women and men with similar visions - are still out there, were just starting their careers in the Obama era, and hopefully have long and powerful futures ahead of them to keep working towards what's right. There's a book tour going on right now - unfortunately for me the book came out in March and they started in NYC, but for any friends in these areas who might be interested, they're on the road through June, with several Georgia events, followed by events in Massachusetts, Denver, and Virginia.
Monday, June 10, 2019
Signs of the Season - Peonies!
I may enjoy watching the seasons change at my local greenmarket almost as much as I do out on Jamaica Bay. I got my first strawberries of the year on Sunday (one of the stalls had them before that, I think on Memorial Day weekend, but the first ones of the year sold out way before I made it to the market), and although I'm not a frequent purchaser of flowers, the stand where I got the berries and some apples had the most glorious peonies. I just had to bring some home.
Can't WAIT for the first corn on the cob, peaches, and tomatoes of the season!
I'm looking forward to produce from my own little garden at Sebago, too. It's been a really good Spring with plenty of rain and everything's just shooting up. I actually tried my first carrots from the garden yesterday. Carrots are a new thing I'm trying this year since I've decided that pole beans (which I tried as a climber after we started losing cucumbers to some sort of mildew that had gotten into the soil at the club) are a little too unruly for a garden I don't get to every day - seems like one week they would be innocent little things climbing up their poles just like on the seed packet, and then the next week I would go to the club find that they'd heaped up on each other, pulled down the poles, were making a determined grab at the tomato cages (and of course the poor defenseless tomato plants inside those cages) and just generally going nuts. The hooligans! So this year, carrots instead of beans.
Can't WAIT for the first corn on the cob, peaches, and tomatoes of the season!
I'm looking forward to produce from my own little garden at Sebago, too. It's been a really good Spring with plenty of rain and everything's just shooting up. I actually tried my first carrots from the garden yesterday. Carrots are a new thing I'm trying this year since I've decided that pole beans (which I tried as a climber after we started losing cucumbers to some sort of mildew that had gotten into the soil at the club) are a little too unruly for a garden I don't get to every day - seems like one week they would be innocent little things climbing up their poles just like on the seed packet, and then the next week I would go to the club find that they'd heaped up on each other, pulled down the poles, were making a determined grab at the tomato cages (and of course the poor defenseless tomato plants inside those cages) and just generally going nuts. The hooligans! So this year, carrots instead of beans.
Didn't mean to be sampling my carrots just yet, but I went to the club to finish the gel coat work on my keel strip, which I'd mostly done on Thursday but messed up in a couple of spots when I got impatient to go home and tried to put my boat away myself (there were paddlers out on the water and I should've just waited for them to get back). I did my touch-ups, then let the boat sit out in the sun for a while I went to weed my garden. I accidentally pulled up a couple of carrots with the weeds - they were maybe an inch and a half long and less than a quarter inch thick but they were recognizably carrots and so I rinsed 'em off and ate them and they were quite good.
Chard, beets, basil, and tomatoes all coming along nicely, too.
Oh, and speaking of the keel strip (click here for keel strip post if you missed that, this is the biggest repair I've done on my boat so of course there's a good kayak geek post about it) - it worked! The gel coat is kind of a finishing touch, the fiberglass tape epoxied to the keel is the main thing, so despite wanting to clean up the gel coat where I'd smeared it, I did take the Romany out for the trip leader training class we had at the club on Saturday. I opened the aft hatch during a beach stop and was absolutely delighted to find that the compartment was once again bone dry for the first time in a long time. I'm pretty happy with how that all went - would've been nice if I'd had the sense to not try to move it by myself when the gel coat was still wet on Thursday, but all in all not bad for my first try.
Friday, June 07, 2019
All-Club Invitational at the Sebago Canoe Club
Just realized that the SD card with photos from last weekend is still here in my work computer, so here are some photos from Saturday's All-Club Invitational at Sebago. Another fine day at the club, with 3 different lengths of trips to go on (planned so well that all 3 groups were converging on the Paerdegat at the same time as we returned, which was fun), racing, and then FOOD SO MUCH FOOD by Steve the Paddling Chef.
I was pretty happy, I've kind of been using the Joe Glickman Cup racing series as one of my opportunities to see how I'm coming along in getting back to where I was before my breast cancer episode and this year I really feel like I'm getting somewhere! Dealing with that took from Fall 2015 (I found it in late August but heavy-duty medical stuff didn't really start going down until the fall) through Spring 2016. Took the wind out of my sails and getting myself back up to speed has taken much longer than I hoped. But I've been getting out on the water pretty often this year and my stamina for the 800 yard race (the longest of the 3 races that each club hosts for the Cup) felt noticeably better than it did last year at Yonkers, when I just didn't feel like I could hold any kind of a pace.
Karen from Yonkers and I had a good fight for 3rd place in this year's women's 800, Julie from Inwood and Julia from Sebago are both great racers in fast boats and they were just gone like that, but Karen and I were well matched (that's her in the Wilderness Systems partway down, and with my Romany temporarily out of commission, I was in a Chatham 17, which I'd picked for the extra length, most of our non-racer club boats are 16" so a little bit slower) and the race basically came down to my getting the inside track - I'd chased her all the way up the basin and only got ahead after pulling off a nice tight turn at the buoy. I was so pleased to NOT just run out of gas halfway back - it's taken forever 'cause I'm not wildly disciplined about getting back into shape, but this year I'm finally feeling like I'm getting somewhere with the getting back in shape and I am quite happy about that!
I was pretty happy, I've kind of been using the Joe Glickman Cup racing series as one of my opportunities to see how I'm coming along in getting back to where I was before my breast cancer episode and this year I really feel like I'm getting somewhere! Dealing with that took from Fall 2015 (I found it in late August but heavy-duty medical stuff didn't really start going down until the fall) through Spring 2016. Took the wind out of my sails and getting myself back up to speed has taken much longer than I hoped. But I've been getting out on the water pretty often this year and my stamina for the 800 yard race (the longest of the 3 races that each club hosts for the Cup) felt noticeably better than it did last year at Yonkers, when I just didn't feel like I could hold any kind of a pace.
Karen from Yonkers and I had a good fight for 3rd place in this year's women's 800, Julie from Inwood and Julia from Sebago are both great racers in fast boats and they were just gone like that, but Karen and I were well matched (that's her in the Wilderness Systems partway down, and with my Romany temporarily out of commission, I was in a Chatham 17, which I'd picked for the extra length, most of our non-racer club boats are 16" so a little bit slower) and the race basically came down to my getting the inside track - I'd chased her all the way up the basin and only got ahead after pulling off a nice tight turn at the buoy. I was so pleased to NOT just run out of gas halfway back - it's taken forever 'cause I'm not wildly disciplined about getting back into shape, but this year I'm finally feeling like I'm getting somewhere with the getting back in shape and I am quite happy about that!
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