Must extend this until tomorrow as I have just had a 10-hour ride back and now need to unpack. Things didn't go as planned and so instead of coming back yesterday it ended up being today.
The race was 20 minutes later than previously scheduled, so we warmed up and all and got all pumped up to race. I was supposed to be in lane 6, my friend in 7. My friend's guide was wearing her singlet and so she had to paddle off and get her coach's shirt, during this time both us blind para-athletes had to warm-up with the one guide/coach. At one point we heard the gun go off and the announcer says "And they're off, lanes six and seven are no-shows...' and didn't pay attention to the rest of the chatter after that. I was completely confused as to what had just occurred, my coach I guess knew what happened first and kept saying "Oh my god, I'm so sorry..." She made me come up against her boat and kept apologizing and so we realized that we had just missed our race...No warning to start time no nothing, this saddened us very much and so we quietly paddled to the dock. My coach, having had a very long and exhausting week kept swearing as she paddled off and I could tell she was crying a bit by her demeanor and finally she broke down completely as she reached the dock.
I went up to the dock and got myself lined up to get out, she came to me;still crying, kneeled on the dock and squeezed my shoulder tightly and still apologizing the whole time. I was keeping it together for her but deep inside I was disappointed as this had been the race that I had trained extremely hard these past few months for. So, I went and gave her a pep talk and finally succeeded in making her laugh. As I shedded off my singlet my friend's guide came and she was also crying, so she had to be the next one we had to comfort. At that point I looked at the situation and found it a little amusing; the two guides who hadn't worked as hard as us were practically bawling, the 2 blind athletes who worked their asses off for months were composed and comforting the sad guides.
So finally, one coach who wasn't involved in our training but in the Master's program which my visually impaired friend was also part of, lied about my age and so I had a paracanoe race yesterday afternoon instead and brought home a silver
So all in all, it was a good weekend
