Occoquan Sprints Regatta

Yesterday we had our first Regatta of the season up in Occoquan. The weather was a bit cloudy and windy, so it was a little cold, but the sun came out right at the end of the day. It was the first race of a 2K season for a lot of us, so everyone was pretty excited. We raced at Occoquan last semester during 5K season, and man it is so much shorter racing 2Ks! It felt like we started and then two minutes later we were buzzing through the finish line.

I raced in three different events throughout the day. The first event was for our Novice Women's 8, and it was a pretty messy race. We arrived to the starting line late, so that was embarrassing and threw everyone off a little I think. We started, but everyone in the boat was pretty sloppy and the form was definitely slipping the whole time. We came in last place in our heat, so everyone was a little mad about that.

Our coxswain, Emily

Chaos on the dock :)

Us losing to George Mason, bringing up the end of the Novice 8s!

The second race I was in was with the Novice Women's 4, and that race was so much better than our first one. In our heat, we came in 4th out of 6, and overall we ended in 9th place (out of 18). So our four was pretty average, but we are a club racing schools like the Naval Academy and Carnegie Mellon, so it was expected. We had a much better time racing the four, and everyone's technique, form, and power was so much more effective.

So much happier after the four raced!

Us with our coxswain, Kavya!

The third race was the "Petite Finals" for the Novice 8. Basically, it's another race for the losers, because the top six boats race in the Finals for medals. Nonetheless, this race was so much cleaner than the first, and our time was 8:11 (the first time was 8:05, so we were actually slower, but four people in our boat had already raced twice by the time they hit the third race, so it was expected). We were only racing one other school, University of Maryland, and we beat them.

Novice eight ladies!

After the Regatta we packed up the trailer and went to someone's house that lives really close and their parents had a BBQ for us with so much delicious food. So nice of them! We ate and hung around for a little bit, profusely thanked them, then headed back to Richmond. I slept the entire way down the interstate, I was so tired. We got back to Richmond, headed to the Boathouse to rig all the boats, and then were finally free for the remaining few hours of the weekend to finish homework all night. Thankfully we had practice off today!

Saturday we have another Regatta here in Richmond, and I'm so excited for that! I feel like we can do really well, and it's at our boathouse/practice area, so we won't have to travel or anything! Plus, right after the Regatta I'll be headed to Virginia Beach for Easter!