1 hr and 38 mins in a canoe with the Green Gov Beasts

I would like to break down the story of the canoe a little bit. I would love to say that it was smooth sailing and we traveled in a straight line, sang row, row, row your boat in various languages (and in rounds)…but that is what an experienced crew would write about…and well…we are the newbie crew...

Out of 48 teams, we are the second last to launch. We finally get our canoes in the water and you can barely see the other canoes in the horizon, all 46 crews are already starting to look like tiny tiny tiny little dots. As I jump into the canoe in the front, Lisa pushes our canoe gently into the water as so not to tip us and our bikes (especially in front of the cameras and media…I'm sure that’s what they were waiting to capture from us). A "fan" yells out, "hey what's your name" we say "Green Governor Beasts", she yells what our your first names, I say "Kristen" and Lisa says "Lisa", she says "ok I am cheering for you girls" which I must admit at the time of watching the whole rest of the field float away to victory made us feel a little bit better.

Side Note: There is supposed to be a current, there is no current (Frank where is this current you emailed us about?), and the wind is blowing in our faces, at some points it feels like we are going backwards which brings the morale back down.

Once on the water we start off paddling, I think we were both thinking lets just row hard and keep that other team who entered the water last way back there, we cant finishing this canoe Last, we just cant! . We start to row for about 5 minutes, and I say "Hey Lisa tell me about what it was like in the school bus coming back from the YMCA", she huffs "K, I need to get into the rhythm" I'm sure she was thinking K this isn't social hour, and was giving me the lip snarl, even though I could not see it. Ok, I should have waited a lot longer until I started trying to make boat conversation. We row in silence.

I continued to row in silence, I was really focusing on my powerful long strokes, I was rowing on the left side of the canoe, because I am left handed and Lisa is right handed. After about 10 minutes of silent concentrated rowing, the last place team comes up next to us. Team Rush. They say "hey where are you guys from?" "Cleveland" we say, then they "BOOO" they are obviously from Pittsburgh. They ask us some other questions and as we put our attention towards the conversation our boat starts to go towards the right, and we really start to zig zag. I being the more blunt member of the team yell out "HEY WE CANT TALK TO YOU" "YOU ARE MESSING US UP" "THIS IS A RACE" and put my head down and continue to paddle, they just laugh as they effortlessly pass us….and now we are in last…urhhhh!

We then approach another male team that we pass, and now we are the team with all the smiles! I climb on board and run on land for about 5 meters to get check point number 1! Yes we are feeling good! And we pass Team Rush again!

We are now in front of two teams, and we can see another co-ed team about 3 boat lengths up. We see them turn completely horizontal. I laugh to Lisa "they must be hating life" while also thinking man we have this down, how can they be so bad at steering…...we get to the same exact spot about 20 seconds later and also turn horizontal…….errgggg!!! I jump out, with my socks and shoes and push us in the right direction, there are some shallow parts and Lisa is doing a lot of steering. I try to help by paddling on the right side and she yells! "NO K I need you to row on this side" I yell "I can't see you so I don’t know what THIS side is" oh why was I so sassy. She doesn’t respond. So I got back to my side. We row in silence for a little bit again.

We come around checkpoint 2 and with teamwork we are able to spot it and paddle right up to it. We are more then half way done with the canoe and things are looking up! We are even giggling a little bit and Lisa giggling yells "Stroke Stroke Stroke"! Then I notice that there is a little water in the bottom of the boat from me jumping in and out and that’s where I had the maps, so I now have them pinched between my legs, but sometimes they slip down and down, so I have to let go of the paddle to re-adjust! Lisa yells "K you do have the maps tightly between your legs, right?!" I respond "Yes Lisa" although I am freaking a little, I know how she gets about the maps and I can see a few drops on them, I just hope she doesn’t see that when we get on shore, luckily it starts to drizzle when we get on shore, I think to myself she will never know :) (half just kidding)

We ended up doing really great docking our boat and jump out of the canoes, we are ready to hop on the bikes! We did the 6 mile canoe (with no current) in 1 hour and 38 minutes! Our goal was 2 hours!