Second best women's premiere crew in Canada.
With every dragonboat festival, there is always some element of drama. This weekend was no exception.
At the Canadian championships, you race the 200m, 500m and 2000m (on a 500m course with turns) distances; however, your final overall placement is based on a point system. The team who wins the final heat for each distance wins the most points and at the end of the competition, the points are tallied and the team with the most points gets the title of national champion.
We finished a strong second in both our 500m races - which put us in a good position for our 2000m race. Our 2000m race, however, left a few team members with a sour taste in our mouths. Our crew was penalized ten seconds for contacting another boat coming out of the turn - that penalty cost us another second place finish - which resulted in a fourth place finish for the 2K.
Going into the second day of the championships, we were standing in third place based on our points - we needed to pull up our game to make a comeback.
Comeback we did ....
One of our main "rival" teams, Montreal Elite (I say rival but really they are an inspirational group of female paddlers who routinely rank second in the WORLD) was gunning for us in the final 200m. But the Galley Girls have been getting stronger and have been focusing on podium finishes at big races - so we gave it our all. I think having them as our competition gave us the fuel to have one of our best ever races.
MTL elite beat us in the final 200m race by 0.3 seconds - on the outset, you're probably wondering why we are content (happy, really) with this - but this is the closest we have been to that crew. It's a step in the right direction which affirms that the hard work is paying off.
All in all - after the points were tallied, my crew finished with a respectable second place.
Very exciting :)
Now to concentrate on getting ready for my Hawaii race, my upcoming move and continued Team Canada tryouts.
Till next time!
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