Elk Lake, 2" Snow, 0 C, frozen ground, cross-wind of 10km/h.
This "race" was a bit of a redemption for me, I wanted to show that I could pull (literally) it together on the water and show that I could move the boat.
In my mind, the rough conditions were a sketchy subject, I'm not that stable on the best of days but in a cross wind I'm sloppy! Also, I have been having this issue with my right forearm extensor muscles seizing up (dead-arm, wood-arm, bunkarm, spasm).
The race started at 11am, with a meeting at 10am. The weigh-in was at 9:30, I was luckily just under, 73.65 kg (74kg is max). I got to meet Paul Hawksworth, the organizer of this set-up, a real positive and motivating guy. I went for a 15min WU run on the Elk Lake trail, with 4 layers and gloves, to get my body temperature going. I was the last one on the water to head to Point 1 start, but I feel that was a good thing. I wore all my clothes and gloves to keep warm all the way over.
The time trial started, I was placed in 6th starting position, behind Jerry, Andy, and a guy called Aubrey. Everyone is started on 30sec increments. It was calm water the first 500m, no wind really, and I felt like a had a good push. Once we got to the open water the wind East to West, was blowing strong. I just kept repeating Clean, Clean, Clean... and I was anything but! You could say I was almost dirty; Splashing, dis-organized, and knuckle cracking on the handles. Some how, my right arm seized up again, but I found out afterwards - most people had that - it has something to do with gripping the handle tightly in windy conditions. The finish was strong and just trying to hold-on, I was able to pass the guy ahead of me, but he had some problems with taking water on-board. Lucky he went straight, so I just followed him down the track.
Afterwards, I stuck around to find out what the results were. Unofficially, it turns out I was at 78% of a gold standard. I will have to figure out what that completely means, but I will post on this later. I was about 3-4th on the list compared to everyone.
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