Day 4 (Thursday): 2,000m Mixed and Men’s
There’s nothing quite like the feeling you have waiting to be called up to the podium, hearing PD’s being called then walking proudly in line up a red carpet before standing as one on a podium. This is how things are meant to work, but in true PD’s style, we weren’t quite ready in time, perhaps missed our name being called and then hurriedly sprinted across the red carpet and jostled our way onto the stage. Regardless of style, we were there. A silver medal to the Premier Mixed crew for the 2,000m event. A PD’s first! Gavin told me today that it has been 14 years since we first went to Vancouver to compete at the World Club Crews. So this medal has been a long time in the making. For some of us, this journey started more recently, after a tremendous experience in Penang 2 years ago. I had luckily joined PD’s the previous season, and was a relative newbie on the trip. Nonetheless, I was hooked by the PD’s experience, and have keep the feeling of the boat in the Women’s 500m final always in the back of my mind. The best part of Penang was that I knew we could get better! And two years down the track, after a lot of training sessions in the dark and mornings at the gym we proved our improvement and made it to the podium.
The race itself is a bit of a blur to me. The boat felt strong, powerful and as one. We overtook the crew in front of us on the second lap after fighting our way over their wash. Christian summed up the race using 3 C’s: Commitment from the start, Control throughout the whole race and Courage to the end. Justin felt it was like the final minute of a 2 minute erg (x 9). Michal’s succinct comment afterwards was, "that was hard". All the pain, lactic acid and tiredness were forgotten immediately upon seeing Julia and Nicola race back from the results boards with smiles on their faces!
To all the PD’s who have trained through a cold winter wrapped in thermals, snuck out from work early to get to training, huddled under a towel at a regatta, filled in a spot when we were short paddlers, stood on the sideline as a reserve when we had too many, dressed up in a ridiculous costume for a party or to raise money, this medal is for you!
Congratulations PD’s!
Tomorrow’s races – 200m Mixed, 200m Men’s heats
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