Hot Hot Heat

After a few weeks of rainy psuedo-summer in the Northeast Kingdom, New Jersey welcomed us this past week with sun, heat, and (most notably) humidity levels floating around mid-ninety percentiles. The radio weatherman proclaimed that it would be hard to breathe; Charlie stated that his people weren’t made for this weather; Ben Dann, gesturing at his complexion, said “This–this belongs in the clouds in the mist in Ireland”; and Phil Henson was loving it.

On the upside, the water was calm all day for time trials on Wednesday and heats and reps on Thursday. The threat of impending thunderstorms shuffled racing around a bit. Time trials were delayed for about an hour, then the Thursday afternoon session was pushed up to omit a morning break and ovoid potential un-rowable weather that afternoon. For those of us doubling up, it was a quick turnaround between the 2x heats and the 1x reps, about 20 minutes on land to chug an electrolyte drink and sit motionless in the shade. Then back to sloth mode at the hotel, where a few of us played a scintillating game of Monopoly.

Finals on Friday brought typical Mercer chop and wind that started as a cross, then shifted around to a tailwind towards mid-morning. The chop threw a little wrench in my momentum; I didn’t handle the conditions well in the 1x finals, but figured some things out for the 2x final with Maddie in a better (albeit messy) race later that morning. For everyone, last week was great for gaining racing experience, which can be few and far between. Overall, a great week of throwing down; the GRP medaled in almost every event entered.

A big congrats to Maddie Lips and Lenny Futterman on their races at U23 Trials! They each won the 1x and will be representing USA and Craftsbury abroad at the U23 World Championships in Linz, Austria in late July.