The Dog Paddlers are back in the groove. The official launch of our race season has now come and gone with our participation in the Gorge SuperSprints. This was our first opportunity to gauge how our return to being a coached team had affected our performance levels.
Apparently, it has had a very positive effect! We found ourselves in the top division after finishing second in our first heat (by just 13/100ths of a second), and ended up racing our coach's team in Race #2. Needless to say , this put a bit of a crimp in having the coach give us a pep talk or talking to us about strategy. Race #2 (Blue Semi B) also delivered a bit of a hiccup, when three of the four boats were involved in a collision on the course. We weren't involved in the bumper-boating, and were somewhat surprised when the race officials' decision was that the race was to be re-run, minus the initiating boat of the collisions, thereby nullifying the first or second place finish we had just achieved (we'll never know which it was, as their computer program wiped out the original times). Ah well. We finished third in the re-run.
So we ended up in the Blue Semi B, in another tight race, this time NOT against our coach's team (which ended up in the Blue Semi A). In the end, we came in third in our final, just 45/100ths of a second behind the second-place team. A very respectable showing for the Dogs. When all was said and done, we finished 7th out of 37 teams. No ribbons. No hardware. But a great sense of satisfaction that we had pushed ourselves up to the next level. We even made the local TV sports report on the 5 o'clock news: apparently they showed the finish of our first race (the one we lost by a dragon's whisker), complete with a panning shot down the boat that showed all our team members.
This year, all the team tents were in an informal athletes village in the parking lot beside the club — a change that we had been advocating for several years. Porta-potties had not increased in numbers, but at least this year they were on level ground, thus putting an end to last year's rock-and-rolling attempts to seat oneself in the facilities.
The boys discuss strategy outside the tent.
Some of the action out on the water. The weather started off cloudy but cleared off to a beautiful, sunshine-filled afternoon.
Brianna, our Steers-Babe, ices her knees post-race... 
and is soon joined by drummer Nicole, who ices her ankles — which were still recovering from a karate indiscretion earlier in the week.
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