Memorial Day Weekend: LGRA

My boys: Pi, Gil, and Yumi

Every year, RCRA hosts race meets over Memorial Day Weekend. I have not attended in several years, for various reasons, but this year we promised that we would go and support the club. I was getting a little worried as the date drew closer, because the weather reports were indicating it to be a hot weekend. In situations like this, I am always happy to pull my dogs out of competition if I think it's getting too warm. So, I packed up plenty of water, a small kiddie pool, and some sponges in case I needed to cool them down.

Thankfully, the venue we were running at had plenty of shade, and it was surprisingly cool if you weren't standing in direct sunlight. Combine that with a gentle breeze and the ambient temperature throughout the day wasn't too bad.

I decided to enter all three boys; Gil, Pi, and Yumi. Gilly had an unfortunate string of bad luck starting in October of last year, so he has been lame on his left front every now and again. I anticipated him coming up lame either right before the meet, or after the first program, but he surprised me and was sound all day.

One thing I like about running with RCRA is that they are one of the few clubs that have starting boxes big enough to accommodate the MAs. The only problem on this particular occasion was that only Gil has had any serious box training. Nevertheless, I figured if the other two were going to learn, it was now or never.

Below is a slow motion video of the beginning of one of their races:



Both boys put up a pretty good struggle when it came time to box them, but we muscled through it and they were noticeably better as the day went on. Pi's break got a lot better too, although not as good as Gil's. Yumi is either a slower learner, or he's just stubborn (I think probably the latter), so his breaking skills may take more time to come around. His slow exit from the boxes cost him a second place finish in the first program, but he got it together well enough by the end of the meet to finish second overall behind Pi. One more GRC point down, 7 more to go!

I'll report on the NOTRA meet in a separate post to come. Stay tuned ...