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5K & Cherry Blossom Paddle

I had a busy day on Saturday - running a race and then kayaking. At 8:30 AM I participated in the Fairlington 5K, our monthly 5K race. I told myself I was going to take it really easy since I knew I was going kayaking right afterward, but we were there with our friends Gail and Chris and I guess competitiveness got the better of me and I wound up pushing it a little bit. I wound up running the race in 29:30, which is actually my best time of our monthly 5K series. I still finished three minutes behind Chris :( Valerie turned in a personal best as well of 47:57. It wasn't that long ago that she had a goal of breaking an hour - I'm quite proud of the times she's turning in these days!

At the completion of the race I headed over to Columbia Island Marina, where I was leading a Cherry Blossom trip for Chesapeake Paddlers Association. The marina was quite busy. There were three groups launching around the same time: us, Deke's Meetup, and a canoe club from Harrisburg, PA. Another Meetup had headed out earlier and Rita's Sugarloaf group was out there too doing their own trip. I threw on my dry suit over my running clothes and got down to business organizing the group.

The main challenge of the day was wind. It was a beautiful, sunny day but the wind was blowing hard, with gusts over 25 MPH, kicking up some pretty good waves on the river - even some whitecaps. My group of nine headed directly across the river to the blossoms, bumping into Rita's group along the way. The blossoms were right at peak and were quite gorgeous. Because of the river conditions we didn't get to linger and take pictures for as long as we ordinarily would have. When we were done peeping at the blossoms we prepared to head upriver. Two of my group didn't want to paddle any further in the wind and so they headed straight back. The rest of us headed up the DC side to check out more blossoms. Most of us were quite comfortable in the conditions, but we had a couple of people we shepherded a little bit.

We paddled up the DC side to Roosevelt Island, crossed over and followed the Roosevelt Island shoreline around the top and down the channel, then ducked into the shelter of the Boundary Channel (fortunately it was high tide) for the final miles. A pretty, club classic trip.

Checking out turtles in the Boundary Channel

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Location: Washington, DC, USA

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