Marathon Kayak Team Trails, Texas

Hi guys,

I just got back from the USA Marathon Kayak Team Trials in Sugar Land, TX.  It was an awesome course; we were doing laps on Brooks Lake.  I did 6 laps, with 6 portages.  The lake had low bridges, fountains, a no-dock portage, and narrow buoy turns: a very entertaining course.  The hardest part was by far the heat; this early in the year, I was not prepared for the climate of Texas. My start heat consisted of the junior men kayaks, U23 men kayaks, and the one canoer racing, my teammate Ian Ross.  I stole as many wakes from the boys around me as I could.

Unfortunately, I was the only women racing the senior class this year.  We also didn’t have anyone trying out for the junior or U23 women’s slots.  We have to get more women out there racing for our sport.  But because of this, for me it was a race against the clock; I had a time standard I had to beat.  I had to maintain a 10.8 km/h pace for the 6 laps/25.6km of race, and I was very happy to see that at the end of the race, my time was 2:14:32 making my average pace, 11.4 km/h. This put me about 8 minutes faster than my time standard; a very comfortable result to sit on as I wait for the official team announcements from the Marathon committee.  I think my time should be plenty fast enough to send me off to the World Champs in September.

This year Worlds will be in Copenhagen Denmark, which I’d love to go visit mostly because I’m a little obsessed with Vikings.  Hello Scandinavia! I’ve gone to marathon worlds the past two years, but this is the first time I’d get to do the big bad senior women’s solo race.  There is no race more prestigious for marathon women than this race in this class.