Liffey Descent & MPL

Just a super quick one since I'm under pressure with college work...last weekend the Liffey Descent took place, as I'm sure everyone reading this is aware! Great weather and great water levels on the day made for a great event, and all the usual faces were there so there was some good banter in the carpark before the race!

As my first year competing as a senior I decided to try to start with a bang. I took ULKC's Gola Sprint out on flatwater for 10 minutes a week before the race and since I didn't fall over I decided to do the race in it! I had great plans at the time to get out training a few times that week to get used to the boat but college got in the way of all that and I went into the race only having paddled the boat for those 10 minutes a week before! It all got off to a less than spectacular start when I fell over while waiting for our class to be allowed down to the start line! Thankfully I was able to grab Jack's boat and T-rescue and save myself from swimming but it was a bad sign for the rest of the race!

I wobbled my way down the river and it was all going relatively well until we reached Lucan. Myself, Kev Cahill and another lad were pretty much neck and neck all the way and the pace we were setting was pretty tough! At Lucan however, everything literally fell apart! I made a mess of the line on the high drop, and didn't turn the boat sideways enough. The boat bridged at the bottom of the weir and folded in half, putting one massive crack across the hull and matching one in the deck. My first instinct was to hop out and call it quits but since the boat didn't instantly sink I decided to keep going and see how it went. The next few weirs were a bit interesting with the boat half full of water and I had to empty the boat three times between Lucan and the finish line.

With all this emptying I obviously lost the two lads, but thankfully the three of us had buit up such a big lead over the rest of the field that I was just able to hold onto 3rd! Not a bad result at the end of the day, and hopefully I can come back next year and go one or two better!

This weekend the first night of this season's Munster polo league was held at UL Arena pool. With teams entered from Galway, Dublin, Cork, Kilkenny and of course Limerick it looks like it's going to be a good competition! The Div B matches were played and ULKC was represented by a team of extremily enthusiastic and talented first years who just started kayaking a few weeks ago! They tore the place up and are now sitting in first place in the league on goal difference! Already they're moving and passing like a proper polo team so it's going to be great to see how they're doing by the end of the season!

In Div A, we achieved the remarkable feat of carrying on our 100% record from last season of loosing every game! In a tight game against Misfits, what was almost a 3-3 draw became a 4-3 loss after a last ditch shot and some shoddy refereeing that resulted in us thinking the game was over before the ball was thrown. In our other match against Kamakazi, we were comprehensively thrashed, showing that some serious training is needed before the next night of competition!

Looking forward to next weekend, Crana fest is coming up and that promises to be one of the events of the year with competitions in just about every discipline imaginable! We've got a big crew going up from UL so it's going to be an awesome weekend! Before then, I'd better get a bit of study done, 4th year of Engeering really isn't designed to let you go away kayaking every weekend!