Humbled

Today was the Downriver stand up paddleboard race at the Fibark river festival. Last weekend was my first race of 3 miles and I was ready to drink the river by the end... today's was 10miles. I can say that it thoroughly humbled me. To start off, let me compare it to tele. In a tele race, the only place you can really talk yourself out of the race is in the start. During this race, I had an hour to play tug of war in my head. A whole new challenge, but one that I am looking forward to tackling in the future.
Second, as compared to the other racers, I definitely had the least river experience. I would fight the river and expend more energy. Next time I need to just go with the flow. I am currently working on my zen, calm, go with the flow state of mind (I know, just my type of mental state).

This lesson, I should know from skiing, but I keep learning it over and over (in climbing too): look more than one move ahead. At the start, I took the fastest line through a rapids, right down the middle, but didn't think about what would happen if I fell (below) and was set up going straight toward a bridge pylon. Thankfully, I was able to get to one side with my board, but if I had been caught by my leash with my board on one side and me on the other, it wouldn't have been a good situation. Regardless, the close call freaked me out a bit.


Overall, I did pretty good despite my learning curve and ended up third in the race!!