Long Beach Marine Stadium Christmas Regatta Dec 3rd. Silver Medal for Mixed Doubles Pair.
This was a 1,000 meter sprint race. Though it’s short, this race is as hard as a 5,000 meter race because it’s one hundred percent power the whole way. You row side by side in lanes with other boats in your class. We raced against four other boats and we quickly pulled into the lead and stayed there for over three quarters of the race, only to tire and have the boat in second place overtake us, and sadly beat us by one boat length at the finish line. Just 2 seconds on the clock!
You talk about nervous! We didn’t even know we had finished the race and we rowed another 30 yards across the finish line and almost beached our boat! But it sure was a good first doubles race, and with a limited field we did wind up second and got a silver medal. Of course, Liz was and is a stalwart and a dyed-in-the-wool competitor. Though we had trained a great deal together to prepare for this race, I’m just going to call this one beginners luck.