Last day of racing

Today is the last day of racing at the IDBF World Cup in Fuzhou, China. This has been an incredibly interesting experience, and one where I'm learning a lot about team dynamics, managing expectations and kicking negative out of my head (and that of my teammates).

It's tough - our women's crew is not what our coach wanted - but we are doing our best.

This morning, we finished in silver position after the Philippines and before China in the 100m standard boat a final.

We just got off the water from the A final for the 200m relay. This is a tough race because pure putting teammates against teammates. In this case, it's our women who do a 200m race, and when they hit the finish line, the men have to race 200m in the opposite direction. It was head to head against China and we came in second by a few seats.

One of those heartbreaking races/ situations and now the women are psyched out or the final race of the day - a 500m standard boat mixed race.

Right now, we are waiting for the TV crews to ready themselves for our medal presentation ceremony, and trying to stay positive. It's unfortunate really. We are second place in the World Cup, and the mood at our team tent is collective dejection. It's different than my previous experiences - that's for sure.

Another item that we are contending with is having to race around television schedules. In some cases, they load us into the boats and leave us out on the water for twenty minutes before they start the race - this is particularly true whenever we are racing China. It makes it difficult to manage heat, water, mental and physical preparedness, but hey - the way I see it, we have been racing on cray jet-lagged bodies, so we really can't be much worse off ;)

The audience and crowd watching the races is incredible. There are so many people cheering us on, and we have made some friends with the locals. A man even brought us banana leave sticky rice after our last race that he made at home. It was cute.

Alright, enough for now. I will update when we have finished the 500m.