Rapid Fire Racing was busy this last May and June, all of our training culminating in a month straight of paddling and racing together.

In USRA sanctioned events there are four disciplines, each described below. These are the formal events that include regional qualifiers, nationals, and worlds.

We’ve been paddling the Shoshone section of the Colorado River near Glenwood Springs. It feels amazing to be back on the water and the low flows are perfect for training, with plenty of rocks to practice our slalom turns and ferrying technique.

This would be my first time sitting in the back of the boat for these rapids because I had not yet attempted to “check out” on the Fractions. I had paddled the section during training and observed that it was quite technical to navigate but naively thought that I would be able to “wing it” cleanly with my family in the boat.

My family and I embarked on a 13-day commercial trip down the Grand Canyon, and boy did I fall in love. Of course, I was the kid, well, I guess an adult, on the trip that was like, “I want this job, how do I do this job?!?”

I was just a bean sprout the first time I hopped in a raft. I was about 8 years old and highly impressionable. It was summer and my mother had drove my sister and I from a tiny beach town on the west coast of Florida into the hollers of Tennessee to take us on our first ever whitewater rafting trip down the Ocoee River.