Friday, May 1, 2009 was the Cheat River Race. Rick organizes this race and for the last three years I've helped him. Oh, I didn't do much--I'm more like a support person up until the race, doing little things on the computer side of things. And then, the day of the race, I do registration with a woman named Liz. Mostly, I type things into the computer. If I'm quick, I can get all the names typed in before the start of the race. But just barely.
I never get to see the start of the race. It's real exciting too, because it's a mass start. This year we had 118 kayaks (a few were rafts) in the water plus additional safety boaters. I stayed behind to pack up our registration things at the booth and when Rick came tearing back up from the put-in, I was ready to go. We jumped in the car and raced (literally!) the top kayaker to the take-out. We got there oh---about 5-7 minutes ahead of him. He came in at 55 minutes and 10 seconds!
Once again, here my help consists of typing into the computer. We had a few people keeping time and as quick as I can, I get this information entered into the computer. It's not always easy because when you are sitting up on the rocks above the river and trying to see race bibs pulled over full kayaking gear it's very hard to read the numbers. Triply so if several boaters are coming across the finish line within seconds of each other! The last two years I've been really fortunate to have gotten everything entered in in time before it's time to leave the take-out. This year went especially well; when we got back to Mountain Streams it took less than 30 minutes for Rick to run all of the sorting programs. He had the results for the individuals, the classes for men and women, and the team results. We finally got to attend the after party and eat dinner!