Waterloo

The Silvermasters paddled in Waterloo today and wound up 17th out of 53 non-university teams. That's a pretty good finish for us :) We had some great race times today - we did a 2:21:00, 2:21:26, and 2:18:26 (in that order). Those are really good times for a 500m race. Our third race was AWESOME! We did a series of 10 hard strokes and then the finish was called at 300m. That's a much longer finish than we've been doing, and it works really well for us. We did, after all, shave 3sec of our time - that's a HUGE improvement!

So, anyways, here are the things I liked about Waterloo:

• participants got free bottled water after each race
• everyone else got free bottled water whenever they wanted. It was really hot today (30C)
• there were recycling facilities
  
• flush toilets with soap and running water
• portalets were cleaned once
• great view of the races
• friendly competitors and organizers
  
• starter was good at lining people up to start the races
• lots of good competition and some really good teams there
  

... And these are the things that I didn't like so much:

• it was slooooooooooow. They finished 1 1/2 hours late, which made for a very long day.
• little shelter at the marshalling area. Not only was it hot and humid out, it was sunny.
  
• the band moved/appropriated the speakers that let us hear the announcer. We couldn't hear our team called to the marshalling area (or who was racing, or really anything about the races).

We'd go back to this event - it's very fun. We are very tired, of course... but it's a good kind of tired :)