Gull RIver

What an eventful week it was here!! We found out that we were competing in the teva races series and the top 15 paddlers got the latest Teva booties so this made everyone super keen to get out there and give everything a go, including myself. 

First off we had the boatercross. This is when 4-6 people race down a certain part of the river at the same time and more or less anything goes. This was my first ever boatercross so i was pretty dam nervous at the start line. 

Having a fast turn around i got in the lead at the start and managed to maintain that all the way to the finish line. Therefore pushing me into the semi-finals. 

Semi-finals got my heart beating. I had another fast turn around and was in the lead going down the dam. Eddying out at the bottom, i thought it was all over. A fast recovery had me back on track to come in 2nd place, just scraping onto the finals.

Finals, once again had a fast turn around but so did everyone else. There was all four of us going down the dam at the start, only turning into carnage at the bottom. Cole rode up on top of me and we got caught up but after sorting that out i was in third. But once again i eddied out and it was all over, everyone was gone. So i ended up coming 4th, still pretty happy with that.

The Photo finish, for the finals between Cole and Michael.

Here is a video of the boatercross. 

Gull River Boater Cross 2011 from Flow Addicts on Vimeo.

So after that we had a little freestyle event. The wave was flushing alot on the right so it was pretty hard to pull off any good moves i think the limit of the field was more or less a flat spin. I think i ended up 5th.

The next day was the first slalom race. It was a pretty hard river but a not so difficult coarse. The river had a drop at the top with quite good eddied on both sides, flowed by a number of good holes. At the bottom of the coarse there was a pretty cool slide but wasn't to much you could do on it as there was a rock at the bottom. 

We all got told there was price money for this race so the level of racing picked up. i had a solid first run but had 2 touches once again. Second run, my goal again was to go clean but once again i had one touch. With everyone having a good race it was a nervous wait for results. They finally came out and i won but .2 of a second. Therefore meant i won 150 Canadian dollars and another trophy. 

The final Day. This was the final day of the Teva race series and the last slalom race. 

It was on a different section of the gull river, a slightly more flat section. But this time the river was slightly easier but the coarse was harder. 

I had a good first run but touching 2 gates AGAIN, this left me so focused on going clean as it is the last race till the big one. 

My second run was probably the best run i have had in a long long time. I had a clean run and ran the boat through the whole coarse . So was super happy. 

The final results for this race was me 1st in juniors on 96seconds and cole 2nd 101seconds and the fastest time of the day was a 93seconds.