Racing at Trentham!!! .....

So in my last post I mentioned that I was going to be racing, well yesterday was the day and I had such a blast! I had to leave my friends house at half past 7 in the morning to be there for 8 'o'clock. We were very very tired and I was very nervous, my race was at 10:29, I know very specific, but that meant that I had to register with all the other girls I was racing with. So we met up at the boats and had a walk around to see where we were and if we could find any of our coaches. At this point it was around half past 8 to 9 o'clock and we bumped into our coaches, we then went to registration and got our number, we were number 68 and Georgia had to have it on her back.

We then had a bit of time to kill so we walked up to watch some of the races and cheer on our fellow club members. The sun had started to come out and it had begun to get very hot! Some of the lads had won their races and we were going to be racing in the same boat that they had used so we were hoping for some luck :).

It was now time to go take our boat down to the water and get ready to paddle up to the starting line, we all got in with Me at Stroke, Chloe at 3, Ellen at 2 and Georgia at Bow. We had a Cox as well, Adam. So we said goodbye and our coaches and everyone wished us luck and we nervously started to paddle down when Adam wasn't sure which way to go and I didn't know either so we just guessed and went down a pathway. Then we felt a bump and was not moving anywhere anymore and then I realized that we had 'crashed' into the bank of sand. Adam didn't go the right way after all. We all tried to get ourselves out but it was no use we were well and truly wedged in. I turned round to find the launch boat very very slowly coming to rescue us. When they eventually got to us they through a rope and tried to pull us out, but we were too wedged in and we didn't move, so one of the men resulted to getting out and pulling us himself. This then meant that we were slightly late for our race and had to paddle faster than we would've liked. We were very grateful to the people who helped us!

When eventually got to the starting line we were told to line up but the umpire was talking through a megaphone and I couldn't hear a thing he was saying so it was very difficult and added to my already ton of nerves. We were lined up and ready to start, he shouted " Come forward, attention.... GO!" as soon as I heard that my nerves went and I was focused and ready to go, rowing as hard we could making sure our technique and rate was good we rowed down the course. Our opponent was in the lead which made me nervous and determined to beat them. The race was 750 meters but it felt like forever! One of our coaches was running down the side of the bank and I could hear him cheering us on, this helped me loads and I pushed as hard as I possibly could. You don't realize how fast it is and when you mess up it can cost you the race, luckily we didn't mess up but we weren't fast enough and our opponent won the race. We were 4 lengths behind but we didn't mind because it was our first ever race and we wanted to get experience, although it would've been nice to have won :).

When we finished we congratulated our opponent and paddled back the side to get out of the boat. My arms were really hurting and I was very tired, we'd raced so well and we were all very proud of ourselves and now we're more determined to win the next time we race. Sadly there weren't many pictures taken because I was so busy rowing and cheering everyone on that I forgot to take photos but I have one to show you guys what we looked like :)

Thank you so much for reading this, I had such an amazing day yesterday and although we didn't win We were all very proud :) bye x