End of a CRAZY week

This past week and a bit has been absolutely crazy beyond all belief. It started off a little over a week ago with the drive down to the Glacier Breaker. The drive itself wasn't bad at all, as I didn't drive at all, it was all Mark and Nic. The race itself, was a very good experience for me even though I raced fairly poorly. It was one of those things where I was able to figure out where I was relative to the rest of my competitors, as well as what I need to work on between now and trials in order to improve my performance once trials is reached. We unanimously decided to drive home that night in order to get our weeks work started, and have a nice day of rest after a not so good race for most of us. The next day was sleeping in till 10:00am or so, as we didn't get home till about 1:00am, and didn't get to sleep till 1:45-2:00, and then work all day until 2:00am on Monday morning. This was a really bad thing for me for two reasons, one it started a very bad trend that would last through the end of the school week for me, and then also because waking up at 6:30 to go work out after 4.5 hrs of sleep is really hard. 

     The rest of the school week only got worse for me, as I didn't get any more sleep on any of the nights, the school work itself continued to get harder and harder, as well as the workouts in the morning getting harder as well. Between Wednesday and Friday I had three exams as well a stack of reading that was way higher than it really should have been, but thats my fault. 

    In the end, when I got into my car to drive down to Charlotte on Friday afternoon, after finishing up with everything, I was in a very good mood. Leaving the frozen wastelands of Gettysburg PA, and driving on down to the sunny banks of the Charlotte Whitewater Center (USNWC), where hot days, and hard whitewater with good training, would be graciously accepted by me. 

     I was able to sleep in the next morning before heading off to the course for a little bit of reconnaissance on the course and a race later on. Everything was going smoothly with me until it was time for my first race run; I was all there mentally, ready to go, but when you have a large mess up on the third gate, for me most of that mental preparation goes right out the window (something that I've been working on quite hard for some time as this has been a plague to my racing thus far). The rest of the run was alright, with only marginal little mistakes that I was able to fix, although when I got to "Big Drop," I got a serious smack down, being flipped over very hard, and having a tough time with the finish of the course. My second run was going very well through to "Big Drop," were I once again got pushed into the wrong place and missed a gate. It was a good learning experience though and I will take what I've learned through my training into Olympic Trials in a little under two months. 

    Day two of racing proved to be on the whole much better than day one in terms of my overall performance, being able to connect everything much better than the day before. However, at the end of my second run I had a very violent flip, and broke my paddle, thankfully it is fixable and will be just like new in a week once I get it back from Sylvan (Galasport Rep. and US Kayak coach). 

     When all is said and done I am very glad the this all around crazy week, that had its fair share of ups and downs (more downs unfortunately) is over, and I can flow into my week of training down here in Charlotte. Hopefully it will be very good, and I will do my best to keep you updated. 

Dodge