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! 

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