Metabolizing my first OC1 race at Nationals: Honouring My Blueprint

JOURNAL ENTRY: Metabolizing my first OC1 race at Nationals.  Writing has always been a big part of me and how I process things.

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Because the ocean cannot be manipulated by persona.

It responds only to what is real.

Presence.

Regulation.

Listening.

Rhythm.

Adaptation.

Respect.

I’m realizing I cannot perform my way through open water.

—-  

At age 49, I accidentally discovered an entire part of my blueprint that had been dormant beneath decades of adaptation — and the ocean woke it up.

Over the last 15 years, through the evolution of my work — from Canberra Yoga Space, to CCALFA working with children and adolescents, and now the emerging terrain of SATORI EARTH — I’ve been exploring what it means to consciously reorganize life around aliveness instead of inherited performance structures.

Much of my work has centred around what I call the human blueprint:

**how human beings thrive when we stop organizing ourselves around conditioning, hyper-performance and external expectation, and begin relating to ourselves more truthfully, sustainably and somatically.

For much of my younger life, I lived far away from my own blueprint.

—-  

I became a lawyer because that was the terrain I was raised inside. Success, in my childhood environment, was narrowly defined through prestige, productivity and external achievement.

Like many children, I unconsciously adapted toward approval and survival long before I was cognitively mature enough to understand what I was doing.

By my mid to late twenties, despite outward success working as a solicitor at NAB and later the Australian Stock Exchange, internally I was numb, depleted, and profoundly disconnected from myself.

—-  

Over time, I began realizing I had denied entire parts of my nature/ my natural wiring (my blueprint) :

• the artist,

• the architect,

• the writer,

• the teacher,

• the builder of systems, culture and spaces,

** and (surprise!) unexpectedly —  the athlete.

—-  

Outrigging has become part of that unfolding.

Not from punishment.

Not from proving worth. ** Not here to prove anything.

Not from ego or aesthetics or external validation.

But from joy.

Curiosity.

Embodiment.

Community.

Nervous system coherence.

Reverence for the organism.

And what I can only describe as Soul alignment.

—-  

** What has genuinely surprised me is how quickly progression can occur when the organism is no longer internally fighting itself.

—  

I keep finding myself wondering:

** what if dormant intelligence within the human blueprint can reawaken at any age once the body finally experiences enough safety, sovereignty and self-permission?

—  

That question feels deeply alive for me right now.

—-  

This week at Nationals in Coffs Harbour, I competed in my first OC1 6km race.

Being on an OC1 feels like a strange combination of bravery, sovereignty, vulnerability and exposure — all at the same time.  

Unlike an OC6 crew canoe, out there I am alone with my regulation, my decisions, and my nervous system.

—-  

Coffs Harbour was unfamiliar water to me. It was also my first time racing on Mandy’s canoe — which felt significantly lighter, faster, and far more volatile underneath me than my old Hurricane.

The conditions inside the bay were deceptively messy.

Wide swollen water was rolling in from the mouth of the bay on my left side, pushing unevenly underneath the canoe before we had even started.

From shore, everything looked manageable enough. But sitting on the water itself was a completely different experience.

Even launching the canoe challenged me psychologically.

I realized I had never actually launched from a wide beach break before. I’m used to calmer inlet waters. Quiet water. Controlled water.

Standing there holding the canoe on my shoulder while timing incoming waves, trying to calculate when to place it down, when to hop on, whether the rudder would bury into sand — my mind was racing.

Afterwards, it struck me how many things the nervous system is processing simultaneously in moments like that.

Timing.

Balance.

Positioning.

Safety.

Confidence.

Exposure.

Eventually I walked the canoe out to just above knee depth, jumped on quickly, and paddled hard away from the wash.

Once clear, I paused, clipped on my leg strap, adjusted myself, and waited for the start.

As the flag dropped, something instinctive switched on in me.

Despite the nerves, I actually felt strong and steady during the race start. The canoes were packed tightly together, side by side, wash colliding from every direction. I remember wanting to thrust myself forward and away from the chaos around me.

I paddled at a strong race pace continuously for a good while.

—-  

The bay mouth sat front-left of us, swollen and elevated, with water cascading diagonally across the race line. The canoe kept leaning right with the ama lifting higher than normal. I felt hesitant paddling on my right side and instinctively kept returning to my stronger left side where I felt stable and confident.

Then suddenly — without warning — I hulied.

One second I was paddling.

The next, the ama lifted and the canoe flipped.

 It happened so fast there was no time to brace.

—-  

I remember grabbing my paddle immediately — mildly panicked about losing a $650 paddle into the ocean — then orientating myself underneath the canoe trying to work out the fastest way back on.

The irony is that I never really feared death  out there.

We had safety boats tracking us constantly.

I had a life vest on.

The support crews were extraordinary.

Even when I hulied, the guide boat came straight over, checked on me, retrieved my visor floating away, and stayed nearby until I remounted safely.

—-  

The deeper emotional reaction wasn’t fear.

It was embarrassment.

And that realization fascinated me afterwards.

Because physically, I was okay.

I recovered quickly.

I got back on.

I continued the race.

I finished.

Yet internally, some old conditioned performance structure still surfaced:

“You should have done better.”

“You shouldn’t have fallen.”

“You’re failing publicly.”

I was surprisingly hard on myself.

For much of the remainder of the race, my nervous system became more cautious. I paddled predominantly on my left side where I felt safer and more regulated, only taking shorter strokes on my right before quickly returning left again.

++ It probably wasn’t technically ideal.

++ But it was adaptive.

And I think that matters.

—-  

Because what I’m learning through outrigging is not mastery through perfection.

It’s relationship.

• Relationship with water.

• Relationship with uncertainty.

• Relationship with my nervous system.

• Relationship with recovery.

—-  

** I’m realizing the ocean has no interest in maintaining my self-image.

It simply reveals where I am.

—-  

Coming back into shore was almost comical.

I hulied again in the returning wash near the beach and immediately felt another wave of embarrassment — until I realized most paddlers around me were also being wiped out by the shore break as they arrived on shore.

Only the more experienced paddlers knew to disembark earlier in deeper water and walk their canoes in with dignity intact.

Again:

relationship.

Experience.

Learning.

—-  

What moved me most afterwards was not the race itself, but the response from my community.

My coach Leisha Antunovich was standing there smiling proudly at me.

My teammate Lisa Jayne Brown immediately congratulated me.

And another teammate, Kelli Wilson, embraced me warmly at shore and kept checking in on me throughout the weekend with genuine encouragement and pride.

—-  

I remember saying:

“I could have done better.”

Leisha calmly replied:

“Wait until you see your webscore. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.” — and I was!  As despite (and including) the hulie, I completed the 6km race at 45.06 minutes, which is 3.5-4minutes faster than my last two PB time trials.

And Lisa said something that genuinely shifted my perspective:

“Out of 600 delegates here, maybe only 200 are willing to get on an OC1.”

That landed deeply.

Because internally I had been fixated on:

the hulie,

the imperfections,

coming sixth,

what went wrong.

—-  

Meanwhile the larger reality was:

I had launched alone into unstable ocean conditions in unfamiliar water, after only several months of discovering outrigging. I have been dragon boat paddling the last three years, but only discovered outrigging in December 2025 (OC6). And started exploring OC1 in March 2026.

Perspective changes everything.

And perhaps this is the deeper terrain I’m exploring now.

—-  

—-   

** What happens when I stop organizing my life around inherited performance structures and begin organizing around aliveness?

** What happens when the organism is no longer constantly fragmented by people-pleasing, hyper-vigilance, over-performance and self-abandonment?

** I keep wondering how many people are not actually lazy, incapable or lacking discipline — but simply living too far away from their true design.

—-  

I suspect many people are waking up to this right now.

** I can feel a broader collective shift occurring where people are beginning to realize they built entire identities around adaptation rather than attunement.

Outrigging has become a strangely powerful mirror for me inside that process.

Because the ocean cannot be manipulated by persona.

It responds only to what is real.

And perhaps most importantly, I’m learning that it does not require perfection from me.

Only presence.

Only honesty.

Only willingness to keep climbing back on the canoe.

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