Kiran

BAD 2 (lane 4) battles it out

After being on BAD since November 2006, all the months of practice and enduring painful reaches and rotations finally paid off at the local Redwood Shores race on May 12 2007. It was the first race for me and several other new members of BAD, but I think we all gave it our 100% since all the BAD teams did well against pretty stiff competition.

I wish I could say I was nervous and waiting for the start of the first race of the day in anticipation, but to be honest, the abrupt and quiet starting call caught me by surprise. With a split second to plant my paddle for the start, our boat was off and accelerating quickly from the starting buoys. Even though we settled into an even stroke rate fairly quickly, I'm pretty sure my heart was racing until we passed the finish line and won our first race. The pressure to win our qualifying race was pretty high in my mind since BAD 1 and BAD 3 had already placed 1st in their heats, but we showed the rest of BAD that we could live up to our team's great reputation too.

The weather was a little cold and windy, but we had seen worse at the weekday evening practices, so BAD couldn't be phased by it. In terms of BAD performance, it was really motivating having our Masters team take first in their heat with such a commanding lead. It inspired the rest of us to keep up the BAD winning streak, and we certainly did. The BAD 2 boat seemed to perform better and better in each of our races. Our rhythm in the final was excellent thanks to our strokes, the power blends worked well too, and Felicia did a great job of keeping up the energy on the boat with her drumming, right to the winning end. It was a fantastic feeling having that 1st place finish, but we all had less energy to show that enthusiasm than after our first win. The most memorable race of the day from my perspective, had to be the BAD Women's final. We definitely weren't concerned with being lady-like when it came to using those muscles and grunting in sync between Andy's reach calls. Our finish was definitely the best we've ever achieved, but unfortunately, we ran out of race course and lost by a matter of inches at the end. It was still a great race to be proud of, and all-in-all it was a very fun day. Now let's show them how BAD we can be, in Vancouver!

The women showing who's bad!

Photos by Kurt Berger

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