Waterside A - Race day is here

After a good bowl of porridge Lee drove over to Matt's to load up the Condor, Matt's wife Mel was kindly supporting us today, along with Tilly their labrador.

Great Bedwyn was absolutely mobbed with cars, boats etc. Lee checked in and the nerves kicked in, the start seemed quite sedate, just paddle up to the starter and they would release you after noting your number, we were boat No 192.

After wishing other Reading crews well, the time was upon us to push on, we were held on the line for 20 seconds then GO..................

We were using the new winged paddles and they were noticably heavier and seemed to offer more resistance (perhaps power) than our usual blades, we were soon catching a solitary K1 whose support crew proceeded to feed him at the only place to put back in! once we were underway we caught and passed him at the next portage, and that was the pattern set for most of the race, we think just 5 or so boats passed us and we passed many more than that.

We had a tussle with 3 junior K2's who leap frogged us at one portage, us doing the same to them the next then back again and finally we pulled away on account of Matt's charging efforts at the portage, the girl's crew were kind enough to compliment us on the our nice wake pattern!

Good camaraderie ensued however the portages were where it was won or lost and we soon upped our game in this department, exiting quickly and running smoothly leap frogging crews at most portages, I could tell we were both maxing out as the banter stops and the breathing became laboured.

We met a meandering K1 who would not keep to a line as Matt tried both sides to overtake, eventually an unfortunate collision directed him towards a fallen tree across the canal which he paddled into and had to back up and we managed to paddle on relatively unscathed after some backing up.

Melissa at Kintbury was a welcome sight, although no time to stop and chat...we rushed on through this
portage.

Finally a Canadian Double shouted  "it's a mile to go", we upped our pace and raced into Newbury, the final portage was fun with a more experienced crew trying to trick us into clearing the put in area, Matt was having none of it although they did get ahead, the river flows in through a quite narrow area in the centre of Newbury which was very turbulent, still there were hundreds of faces at the end and the horn a welcome end to what was a very hard first race.

We had finished in 2:08:55 and were delighted with this result, which was 12th place in the Veteran group and would have been 6th in the Senior (younger) group! not bad considering we have not yet reached our first paddling anniversary, having firset set foot in a boat at Reading Canoe Club in July last year.

Eyes down for next weekend the Thameside 1 race in our back yard......let's hope the forecast cold weather does not bring any more ice.

That's all folks I am off to bed!