Race Day 2

The racing on Sunday began earlier than on Saturday.  Our first race was our mixed semi-final, which was scheduled for 8:43 AM.  Today, the FCHP, Jambalaya and Women's team had two races each - a semi-final and a final.  The men had the potential of also needing to race a repechage if they did not come top two in their semi-final.  We arrived on-site at 6:30 AM, got ourselves settled and began our warm-up.

The strategies for FCHP's and Women's races this morning was to go out with a full start.  If we were ahead enough, Fanya and Jenny would give us a call to bring it down to 90% where we would maintain until the finish when we would bring everything back up to 100%.  The crew this morning was made up so that our heavier men could race (yesterday, our heavier men were spared in favor of running a lighter crew so we would finish our race without huli-ing).  In exchange, the heavier women (including yours truly!!) were spared (yippee!).  We were instructed however, that today, if we were spared, we needed to have our paddle and jersey and come down with the crew just in case a last minute change meant that we needed to be on the crew too.  Unfortunately, the race officials were being pretty strict about the number of people allowed into the marshalling area.  Each team was only limited to 23 people inside the marshalling area so the spares had to walk around to the race site and meet the team as close to the dock as possible.

Poor Rebecca this morning looked like she was melting.  The Hong Kong government issued a heat warning.  By the time we reached the pre-marshalling area, her face was literally dripping with sweat, mixed with sunblock.  When Kam came running up to Rebecca and told her that she was stroking, Rebecca was the perfect oxymoron - she was frozen in fear but melting in the heat.  I wish I had my camera to capture the Kodak moment!!

The reason why Kam asked Rebecca to spare was that Erica was suffering badly from food poisoning.  She had thrown up earlier before we headed out to the race site and had thrown up one more time on the way to pre-marshalling.  She decided to race after throwing up the second time because she felt better.  Erica was such a trooper all day.  For the rest of the day, she was pretty dehydrated, felt tired, and didn't look great, but she managed to pull herself together every time we raced.  She later told me that she had never felt so awful as she did today but she didn't want all of us to know just in case we would get distracted by her being sick.

Anyways, both FCHP and Jambalaya won their heats.  The men came second in their heat, which meant they did not need to race the repechage.  When the women went down to race, we watched the Jiujiang women, the Chinese team, race.  It looked like they were sandbagging their race because we saw them hold the boat and bring down the rate during their race.  The Jiujiang women ended up in third place in their heat and left us wondering why they decided to sandbag.  The False Creek Women also won our race with a much better effort than yesterday.

We had a four hour break after the semi-final races.  Some of the team went off in search of an air conditioned hotel or restaurant while others went off to go to Starbucks to check e-mail.  Jimmy, Kiran, Graham, Leah and I stayed around our area in racers village because it was cooler where we chatted about my brilliant ideas such as figuring out how to "Moon Paddle" (in tribute to Michael Jackson) and how to win a 500m race in 3 strokes.  As well, Leah and I spent some time convincing Graham why he needed to come back to our core sessions in September (I think we were pretty convincing or we were effective naggers because he buckled and agreed to come back!).  During our conversations, we also had the pleasure of observing Jimmy Jay's magical hands in action while he helped Barbara loosen a knot in her shoulder that had been bugging her for a while.  We don't call him "THE GREAT ONE" for no reason!!

Anyways, 2 PM rolled around and it was time to start focusing on racing again.  We began our warm-up and Kam gave us a pep talk about having no fear, racing with confidence, being aggressive and getting out of the boat and onto our blade.  The men's and women's final were about one hour after our mixed races so we needed to pack waters and snacks and whatever else we needed after our mixed races because we wouldn't have time to come back to get our stuff.

In the mixed cup final, we raced against the Jambalaya crew.  It was an awesome race.  We were aggressive, we raced with confidence and we got out of the boat!  Racing today was very different from racing on Saturday because all of us grew more comfortable with the rocky conditions so it now felt like we were racing at Alcan at home.  In the mixed cup final, we had an explosive start and pulled ahead right away leading all of the crews to the finish line.  We won by at least 1 or 2 boat lengths and the victory was thrilling!  We were tired and breathing heavily but it was worth it.  In the showering area, I got sandwiched by Kei, Kiran, Rebecca, and Leah in a celebratory hug which was a bit overwhelming for me :)  Everyone was all smiles and congratulating each other on a fine effort, but we quickly needed to get back to business and focus on our women's and men's races.

The women quickly ran off to marshalling again while the men re-grouped and got ready for their race.  Our women's race was phenomenal - for me, it was the best women's race I've ever raced.  We were light and dynamic, the rate was urgent and the boat felt like a mixed boat.  Every stroke we took felt so effective and that we could accelerate the boat forward even more.  When Fanya called finish, Jenny went ballistic, telling us to "DRIVE!  DRIVE!  DRIVE!" she was just sooo pumped!  We lost the race to the Jiujiang women by about 1 second, but we were thrilled by the results because the women's team had made up 9 seconds on the Jiujiang women in a matter of a day!!  Rebecca later talked to the Jiujiang women who told her that our women's crew scared them because we were so strong and finished so close to them in the final.

After showering and quickly debriefing, the women ran off to watch our men who came in 5th in a solid race.  It was great watching the men race because their style was so different from the Asian teams.  The Asian teams had a higher rate and splashed a lot whereas our men had a slower rate, longer stroke and a cleaner run of the boat.  Soon after the men finished their race, the women dashed off so that we could go back to the hotel to get ready for the celebration dinner at 7 PM at the Trade and Convention Centre.

The celebration dinner was a fantastic way to finish the regatta!  We got our medals at the dinner and they were huge!  Catherine and Nick also wrote a skit that Team Canada had to perform.  All of us got to participate on stage and Rebecca translated the script for the team.  There were also performances from other teams as well as from organizations that were providing entertainment during the festival (my favorite was the drum performance by a drum troop - it was amazing the rhythms they created).  The food was awesome too!  We got a full 7-course Chinese dinner and San Miguel beer.  Many of the Team Canada paddlers were also busy getting photos with paddlers from other teams and trading jerseys so Rebecca and I took advantage of the opportunity to eat more than our fair share (especially the dessert which was so tasty - mango and pommelo in a cold tapioca milk soup.  We even stole 2nds and 3rds from the other tables).  There was a really cute Taiwanese girl with a bowl cut called Cathy who was just hilarious to watch.  She was so excited when she got her picture taken with Jim Nosella (it must be his big blue eyes and blond hair) and she was jumping up and down clapping with joy after she took her picture with Vince and Jake too.  She was over the moon when Jake gave her a jersey!!  Kiran, Kei, Amanda and Jen looked absolutely thrilled at having their photos taken with the Italian men and Kiran managed to trade her women's Medium jersey to an Italian guy who thought the women's jersey fitted him better than the men's (the jersey looked ridiculous on him!).

When we got back to the hotel, some of our team members wanted to go out and party even though it was 11:30 PM already.  Norman and Anthony led Catherine, Graham, Kiran, Kei, Leah, Jenny and I to some bars in Tsim Sha Tsui where Norman and Anthony proceeded to get Kiran really drunk.  After 5 shots plus several cans of beer from dinner, Kiran was wasted.  She had trouble walking in a straight line, talked loudly and giggled more than usual.  She even fell out of her bar stool on the way out of the bar.  The worst was when she kept saying "Erin, don't worry.  Erin, don't worry.  Don't worry" while mimicking my Chinglish accent.  When we left the first bar, Kei ran into the Japanese team and started flirting with the men so we had to go into the second bar for more drinks.  By this time, Kiran was barely able to keep her eyes open and growing paranoid.  We decided to head home despite Norman's suggestions to go out for food.  Heroic Catherine was put into a taxi with both Kiran and Kei (who also couldn't walk a straight line and had thrown up a few times) but she managed them both brilliantly.  We didn't return to our hotel until 3:30 AM so we all had to quietly sneak into our rooms to avoid waking up our roomies.

The next morning, several of the paddlers headed home while others, like myself, moved on to new hotels to begin our vacation in Hong Kong.  It was great paddling with everyone on the team and getting to know them.  The racing was exciting and we conquered the huge learning curve that faced us with determination as is evidenced by our results.  Congratulations on a wonderful effort, Team Canada!