Different Strokes

I came home yesterday and – after a short stint of just watching television with my husband on the couch for a chance – I face planted onto the bed and didn’t wake up until about an hour ago. So, obviously, I delayed putting up my lists and thoughts from Saturday until right now…

Yesterday was one of the few days where I didn’t endeavor to record all of my food throughout the day, but rather I wrote it all down just over the last few minutes based on memory. I think that I have compiled the entire list, but there were a lot of random items because it was such on out of the ordinary day. Hopefully, it is accurate.

I had a boating regatta yesterday - unfortunately the very last one of the season - and it was a strange beast indeed! My team is for dragon boating, but this event had us broken up into two teams and paddling in 10-person voyageur canoes. The races were three to four times longer than the ones we are used to competing in and they feature lots of turns and loops instead of the straight runs we have mostly done in the past. But it was such a blast!

I got to do lead stroke for all three of our races which was really exciting (and a little different since the front bench on the canoes only seats one person rather than two like on the dragon boats)! We came in third in our first heat and got first place in our second race, which meant that we got to compete in the A division finals! That second heat was amazing too; the whole boat had an incredible synergy and was the embodiment of what it means to work together as a team!

We came in last in the finals, but we still had a great time! And that last race was really different. We had to row out from the start, collect a pumpkin from the water which had been dropped from an overhead bridge, paddle down to a buoy where we did a tight turn to race back to where we had started, make a right, head into a beach area, have a runner jump out to receive a glass of cranberry juice which he then had to carefully walk down atop his paddle to a place where he exchanged it for a bag of cranberries and then run back to our canoe and jump back on, then we had to go around one more marker and head in a straight line for the finish! Like I said, it was very different!

After all of the fun of the regatta I got to go to my in-laws for a tasty Thanksgiving dinner. It was wonderful to relax with family after such an exciting and exhausting day of paddling, and I am very thankful that I have such opportunities to enjoy myself so thoroughly in a variety of ways! I am very lucky and I know it!

FOOD & BEVERAGES:
- 8 glasses of water
- 1 cherry tomato
- 1 small glass apple juice
- 2 sausages
- 2 pancakes with butter and syrup
- 2 bites of a cranberry sausage
- 6 small chocolate peanut butter cups
- 4 pieces of a chocolate peanut butter square
- 1 slice of coffee cake
- 1 bite of haggis
- 1/2 cup cranberry chili
- 1/2 cup coconut peanut brittle
- 2 slices eye of round peppercorn beef
- 2 white dinner buns with butter
- 1/2 cup roast potatoes with butter
- 1/8 cup canned corn with butter
- 1 cup broccoli, celery, cherry tomatoes, and carrots with ranch dip
- 1 slice brown sugar coffee cake with whipped topping, ice cream, and caramel sauce
- 1 mug tea with milk
- 1 coconut chocolate bar

EXERCISE:
- 8 1/2 hours at a long boat regatta (approximately 40 minutes on the water)