Race Day!

Race day is always a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions. There is the excitement you get when you wake up and prepare your gear, the focus and serious face then comes on when you see the course, this is followed by excitement again, along with nerves and then the highlight comes when you take off from the start line. Sitting on the start line was a different story for me this year. This is because this year I nearly wasn’t able to even be here...when I first hurt my shoulder I thought I was on the next plane home to NZ. I was fortunate however to have a quick recovery which saw me through to being here today. So for me, I was just so happy to be on the start today! In the warm up pool I felt reasonably relaxed but excited! I was happy and felt totally ready to go. First Run: K1- I thought I had it covered, but totally messed up the move on the drop which meant I was very slow coming into the first upstream gate on the right. Cleaned up middle and then had a wee mistake around gate 10 and lost focus, cut lines tight...game over. Got a 50 too. Runtime: 137

Second Run: K1- I knew I had to lay it down, last chance. Started okay and then came a bit high in gate 4 and the rest was slow and not efficient. I did some things worse than my first run and some things better. Runtime: 137

I felt disappointed with my mornings racing. I didn’t perform as well as I had hoped and was gutted because I had been feeling really good in the sessions leading up to the race. Despite the fact I had 3weeks off I think my performance reflected some important things. There were moments in my runs where I used the water well this reflects my ability to negotiate white water. There were moments however when I failed to execute moves well. I don’t know if I hadn’t been injured I would have done much better...The thing is, my whole perception and race head would be so different. But at the end of the day I am not fast enough yet. Maybe if I had put down my best possible run I would have made the cut. Basically I think I have a lot of work to do and am looking forward to going home and getting a game plan that will help me progress more. My result this year is worse than last year yet I do think my paddling has improved a lot! My paddling is improving but it will be great to get home soon and be able to get to work early so by this time next year I can sit on the start line and know that I have had the best preparation possible!

Racing C1: Yes that is right...I ended up racing C1. I decided a few hours before the race to take my place on the start line. After a quick walk through of the course I jumped on warmed up and away I went. I had a fair bit of aggression in my strokes and managed to nail the top move! Stoked as! I continued down the course negotiating the holes and features as I went. I actually had a pretty okay run and managed to get all of the gates, that is until I missed the last two downstream gates on the course!(Without these 50s I would have been in 8^th). My 2^nd run was a nightmare. I ended up placing in 19^th- Top 20 go through to the Semi-Finals which are meant to be held on Sunday.

I do feel that not having raced since the World Cups has had a big impact on my racing this week. Because I was injured I was not able to race the Slovak Open and this made it really hard for me to get back into the zone of racing after a two month break! Other Kiwis that raced today included Luuka Jones who placed 35^th, she missed the Semi-Finals by 2seconds. Ella and Jane Nicholas also missed the Semis. We also had 3C1Men, Brent Bastin, Shaun Higgins and Ben Gibb who all missed the Semi-Finals too. Tommorrow we will be cheering on New Zealand’s K1Men, including Mike Dawson, Aaron Osbourne and Johann Roozenburg.