Friday, July 06, 2012

Record temperatures today

Hi everyone,
Wausau had a new highest EVER recorded temperature today. My phone said it was 38 degrees!

Unfortunately the 4th July wasn't quite what we'd hoped for. We went to a lumberjack show at 3pm but I don't think I got any marks for taking them there. Then at 830 we went to Marathon park to the fair for the fireworks spectacular.  after an hours wait the poor announcer told the crowd that due to the incoming thunderstorm that we'd all been watching, it was too windy for the show so we went home to bed.
The room I'm sharing with Shaun seems to have been a little hot so I tweaked some of the A/C settings with great results. At 3am I woke up with icicles hanging off my nose! Sorry Shaun!!!!

 If you look at the photo in the post below you'll notice it looks really brown. Part of this is the setting on the instagram I used. However, it is really brown but not in a bad polluted way. It is all from the forestry upstream and the wood tannins apparently. It makes it pretty hard to spot the rocks!!

We had to go to the course for our first session for the C1s at 10am so we set off at 830. When we got there we found that the sessions were all running 30 minutes late. By the time we'd done their session and then the junior one 2 hours later we were more than ready to head back for video review indoors!! The 2 groups videoed each other which made coaching easier as well as speeding up the session. Bravery award goes to Cole. I asked him to pop over to the mall to buy me a spray for my sore throat. An hour later having scoured many many blocks of Wausau he valiantly returned. I awarded him the sole bottle of powerade we had.....only to find out just as he was drinking it ......that the bottle was actually Shaun's secret last stash!! Sorry again Shaun!!!

Anyway, everyone came through the first session unscathed. It's always fun when the last group of 35 haven't left the water and the next 35 start. Mass carnage. Especially when the first feature is a river wide sticky hole!! After 3 runs Ben had 2 very impressive power flips and a bit of a bruise to the forearm. Everyone had close calls at some point with that many people in a 150m metre area of rapids. Jess skirted the top hole looking nervous for a couple of runs but pretty much nailed it by her 4th run down. Finn, Geoff, Cole and Shaun improved all session and we all learned heaps from the video analysis. Geoff's shoulder seemed to hold up pretty well to the session. At one point he looped around a guy getting a rodeo ride in the hole and when the guy got spat out his kayak smacked hard in to Geoff.....fortunately just his buoyancy vest took the impact.

I just watched a TV article about the concrete buckling in the heat. A 4wd hit a section on the freeway and got launched about 1metre in the air at about 80KMH!!

Final bit of news, Dale is the most efficient team manager on site and we are the first team to have completed all the paperwork and pre race registrations. Nice work Dale. I even trusted him to drive the pimp mobile today. The team are all out getting groceries, laptop cables, etc etc. Peace and quiet at last.......

1 comment:

Sue Clarke said...

Great read can just visualize it all. 35 per session that is horrendous!!