Saturday morning was the 12 mile race- and it's a hugely rough race!! The Keys are super hot and the humidity is really high, and if there's any wind at all then there's a ton of difficult side chop. I started pretty strong ahead of all the other girls I compete with. I got to mile 3 and suddenly, I just stopped.
My skin was clamming and I felt like I wasn't getting enough air in my lungs. My whole body was sore and my head spun; I just couldn't take another stroke. It was like all of the stress and work caught up to me in that one moment. The endless cycle of traveling, racing, and making up homework finally got to me and I finally encountered one difficulty I couldn't push through. It was somewhat of a relief, actually. For the past month and a half I had been wondering when I would crash, because it was definitely inevitable. Well, now I had my answer. I stood out on the water in the shipping channel through Key West, not even moving, watching the other paddlers go by. I had bonked. But I knew one thing with certainty-I was NOT giving up on this race. Never have I ever quit any race, and I don't ever plan to. So I started back up, slow and steady, and watched other paddlers pass me by as I cruised my way through the race.
It must have worked for me, because I surprised myself by ending up in second place!! I was so happy to be done with the race. It was brutal, the third hardest race I've ever done. That night I got to spend time with some friends and even MC the awards!! I also had a great time meeting and talking to the Special Olympics kids. They have amazing bright spirits and I hope to be able to work with them soon :) truly incredible.
The next day was ten times more fun than the previous!! At first I was really nervous because the wind was whipping and pretty much none of the kids had boards. So there I was with 20+ kids, one of them a Special Olympian, all of different ages, sizes, and paddling abilities. Luckily, I had two friends with me to keep me on track. I learned all the kids' names, talked with them about paddling stroke and instruction, and we did some stretching and warmups. All of the different board companies came together to set the kids up with boards and paddles, and we managed to get in some unstructured-but fun!- water time.
By then it was time for the race!! I wasn't really expecting to, but I kind of took a leadership position on the race, which was cool for me. The course was super cool!! It was one lap around a buoy paddling and then a run through a mini-obstacle course, two laps for the kids 10 and up. These kids crushed it!!! I could not have asked for it to go any better under the rough conditions. All of the kids had a ton of fun, and I did too!!
After that was the Sprints, which I won-yay!- and then the Relay Races! They were by far the most fun relay races that I have ever participated in. I went with two friends around my age, Trapper and Annette, plus another super fast racer and good friend named Jesse. All of us did 2 laps, and we got to go around the obstacle course too!! We ended in third, which was fine by me. Overall it was an incredible weekend, I had a lot of success and even more fun!!
We drove back Sunday so that I could get back to school on Monday. It was tiring but I'm glad I got to do it, an excellent opportunity and one of the highlights of my year so far. It's also my last out of town trip for a little while. Thank goodness!!!
Thanks for reading :)
bailey
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