So in a little over a week I will be back at the start line of the first race of this seasons Cayuco races. In short, cayuco is a four man canoe made similar to the local indigenous canoes but with some major upgrades, its a 100% Panamanian sport. I wrote a blog post about what is cayuco if you're interested in learning more.
It's been crazy this past month. For one, we found out that one of the girls on the team was pregnant (with less than a month left till the first race), then we had to find someone to replace her knowing that whoever we choose probably has little or no experience paddling (paddling is not necessarily a popular sport in these parts of the world). Also, our baby boat was in trouble and we had to find a way to fix it for at least this race and fast so that we could train.
Luckily we ended up finding a strong young athlete to paddle with us. And well, like most of the times our team goes through crazy changes it ended up being really awesome. At first, we had to get our paddling in sync and this took time. But we did get it figured out and now I feel like we are ready. I actually really do like this set up- everyone on our team are very athletic and we all respect each other as athletes. Even if we don't win this coming race I feel confident that we will perform excellent for the other ones that are coming afterwards.
This season we will have two new paddlers in Cayuco Paunch, the most we have ever exchanged as well as some new sponsors that we are very excited to be having.
Not sure what to expect. Being so far away from the other teams we don't know what they are doing or how they look. We just know that when we show up everyone usually looks very strong and paddling very good. It is hard being a paddling team from #BocasdelToro #Panama, we pretty much show up blind not sure what to expect. We will just keep training like we have been and hope for the best.
