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| Calm before the storm |
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| Jetty @ Lower Seletar Reservoir |
Finally! I managed to come back to Dragon Boat Paddling!
The only problem was that I told myself (and a few friends) that
I will NOT be paddling competitively. I mean NO races! I would
just paddle to keep myself fit and also to complement my MTB
training. So it was a good plan. Paddling for upper body training
and Mountain Bike for lower body.
But March 16 came and there I was walking the very familiar
route from Khatib MRT to Lower Seletar Reservoir at the ungodly
time of 7 in the morning! I was carrying my old Crumpler bag,
my old BurnWater carbon paddle and I was lugging along
a plastic bag of bottled water and my breakfast. It felt like
2006-2009 again!
8AM came and the rest of my teammates from Spanish Armada
had already assembled under the tent which was put up by the
Armada's long suffering Core. Thanks guys!
El Capitan of the Spanish Armada has briefed our team on
what to expect for the next two days. We have lots of newbies
in our team and this will be their first taste of DB racing.
After all the preliminaries were done, I found myself in the
front right side of the boat with the Mixed Crew of Spanish
Armada behind me. The first heat of the day for us is the
Mixed 'Open' (just a bit of disclaimer here, I tend to call
heats as 'Open' if they are not closed to Expat, Schools,
Corporate or Community Centre teams).
From my previous experiences, first heats, especially
in boats with many newbies are bad for two reasons :
first, things haven't sunk in yet and so the crew is not really
focusing on the proceedings. Second, the crew have lots
and lots of nervous energy which tend to mess up the
race piece which we practiced countless number of times.
I heard the race official say 'Are you READY??!! Attention!!!
HOOOONNNKKKK (<== airhorn). I started the race piece
but I can feel that there is something wrong behind me. We
seem to be sluggish. The boat corrected within a few seconds
and then we went on to do our maintenance paddles. My partner
on the left (the Armada Coach) must have drunk 5 cups of
coffee before the race because he seems to be faster than me.
Now, my excuse is that I haven't raced for 3 years and so, instead
of reminding him to slow down a bit, I upped my pace to match
his. Bad! After a while, I heard the all important command to
'Charge' ... this means that the finish line is just around 50
meters long. I felt that we were nowhere near 50 meters from
the finish line and so I lifted my head and looked ahead.
I almost panicked when I saw that the 2nd to the last buoy
was still a few meters ahead ?! It seems the charge was
called early. The thing is the crew behind me has already
started to call 'Up! Up! Up!'. Also, we were still in the middle
of the 'long' 20 paddles and NOT yet in the 'power' phase.
Arrghhhh split second decisions! I gave in to the crew
behind me and upped the pace BUT the problem was we did
not train to charge at longer distances and so the power died
before we reached the finish line.
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| Canadian DB Tent |
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| Hearing Spanish being spoken by lovely ladies will surely make your day :-) |
Haaahhhh!!! That was very bad for my first race of the year.
Once we got to dry land. Our steer/captain told us that he has
no choice but to call the charge early as we were getting left
behind. The captain and the coach also filed a request for a
rerun of the heat because as it turned out, the sluggishness that
I felt at the start was because some of the crew did not hear the
commands coming from the race officials.
After a few minutes, we were told that our request has been
granted and we will have our rerun. Now the Armada Core
is in a quandary. Just a few minutes after the rerun, the Mixed
Expat Crew will be going for their Qualifying heat. The Armada
bench is NOT deep. A lot of people in the crew who will do the
rerun will also be doing the Mixed Expat Heat. So, the question is
whether to just disregard the rerun and keep the crew rested
or do the rerun so that we will have a fall back plan just in case
the Mixed Expat Heat doesn't turn out good.
In the end, it was decided that we will do the rerun.... at least
I have a chance to redeem myself. I should have controlled that
boat as was expected of me.
After a few minutes' rest, we were back in the water again.
This time the start was good. The drummer confirmed that by
saying she almost fell out of her seat. During the maintenance
stage of the race, I told the left side pacer to sloooww down his
pace by a little bit and when he did he confirmed that he can
feel the boat gliding along (yes, we talk during races).
I heard the call for the charge ... and again it happened during
the 'long' part of our maintenance. I heard the crew go 'Up! Up!'
again ... and I wanted to scratch my head at that time because
we are absolutely not going to go 'Up' if we just came from
paddling long ... there has to be a transition. Although I realised
it at that time, I didn't know what to do and so I went along
with upping the pace. This on/off paddling (from long to fast)
will produce a bit of 'hesitation' in the movement of the boat.
After a few strokes the boat/crew corrected and we finished
strongly ... now off to the Mixed Expat Heat.
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| Our neighbors, AustCham DB |
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| Outrigger Canoe paddling buddies @ the SurfAid Tent |
The Mixed Expat Heat is the target race for Spanish Armada.
Good thing that with each heat, some of those things that I
forgot were coming back to me. Talking to long time friends
from SPC also helped to clear my head. Now I know what to
do when I hear the charge in the middle of paddling long...
and so by this time, I was more confident when we went out
for our heat.
The start was called and our start was perfect. However, in my
peripheral vision, I noticed that FDS (Filipino DB) was already
3 seats ahead by the time we finished our start sequence. Hmmm
I need to remember that for the future. That means while we
were doing Power 10 paddles, they were doing more than that.
Anyway, our maintenance was perfect. I had to remind the left
side to slow down a bit and control their exuberance as some
of our crew were fresh. The charge was called and we had a good
transition to charge. In the end I didn't know where we finished
as apart from FDS who managed to keep the lead they got from
their start, all the other four boats in the heat crossed the line
side by side. ... and now the agonizing wait starts.
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| The Spanish Armada ladies crew |
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| Team Captain of SurfAid Team |
The wait was finally over and there was good news and bad news.
Bad news is that the rerun was no good. We still did not get in.
Good news was that we got into the Grand Finals of the Mixed Expat
Race!!! Also we managed to beat our own time. During practice
the best we could do was 2mins 9secs for 400meters. This time
around, our time was 1min 54secs.
... and so more waiting.
By the way, that is what normally happens in DB races, you
wait and wait and wait ... But don't worry there are lots of
interesting things to see :)
Anyway! The Finals came and there we were sitting in Lane 2
(nobody in Lane 1). Before the finals, my friends from SPC asked
me which lane we will be in and when I told them Lane 2, they
told me that that lane was 'bad'. Now, normally, in situations like
these, SPC steers are expected to stick to Lane 3 as much as possible
WITHOUT actually going into Lane 3. However, I haven't seen our
coxswain practice steering so much and so I kept that information
to myself.
In the finals, the common denominator of all the boats in there
are that they are the 'A' boats. This means they all have 'B' boats
(or even up to 'C' boats). The Captain and Coach of the
Armada were beaming with pride because only Armada sent out
one single boat to qualify and there we were seating
in the start line of the Finals.
The race finally started. Everything again was as perfect as
can be. The start was perfect, the middle was perfect and finally
when the charge was called, the transition from maintenance to
charge was there and so we charged strongly. ... Since there
was no one on our left, I can only feel the boat on my right
side. I can feel that we crossed the line almost at the same time
BUT when I lifted my head at the finish line, I saw that the
other boats were either 1 or 2 seats ahead of us :-(
No medals for us then. ... but still ... hehehehe soon, very soon.
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| Noriko of Okinawa DB donning Spanish Armada colours. Thanks to Kei, Noriko and Zhi Hao of Okinawa DB for lending us their strength |
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| FDS ladies crew |
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| Spanish Armada Coach telling the ladies crew how it went down. |
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| Sharon and Reena of SurfAid Team |
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| Long time friend and Coach of German DB Team |
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| Ladies of German DB ;-) |
The next day of racing was for the Men's Open and the
Women's small crew.
This is not what we prepared for and so our orders were
to paddle like this is the last race of the day ... and have fun.
I talked to our coach the previous day on how we are getting
left behind during the starts. I told him I suspect that the other
teams are doing more 'Power' paddles than us. He said that
that may be so but it was already too late to change the start
now. I agreed to this and we reached some sort of compromise
that the first 30 paddles of our maintenance would be a little
bit faster to compensate for the 'short' start.
The captain took me aside and whispered to me that since
this is an all men's crew, I can bring the whole race piece
up a notch.
So with fresh orders, we waited at the race starting line
for Judgment hour. The start was finally called and I was
surprised at the power I have behind me. The start was
strong. The first 30 paddles of the maintenance came and
I did an up 1 for all those 30 paddles. I let them recover
for 20 paddles and then we went for 10 power paddles
again. For the last 30 paddles, I went up a notch again
and so when the charge was called, there was no need for
a transition. Everybody just charged. That was the best
race piece I felt in two days ... scratch that... I mean best
ever since I came back to DB ... and the first thing I
did when I got to the shore is go to the nearest bush and
vomit. I thought nobody saw me but when I came up it
seems my friends from SPC saw what I did and told
me : tsk tsk tsk you are getting too old for this.
What was surprising was that although I think this was the best
race piece for us (and we beat our time again from 1'54" to 1'51"),
it turned out that our efforts was not good enough.
Well C'est la vie ... or is it Que sera sera ?
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| Stef from Spanish Armada |
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| Team Spanish Armada |
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| Spanish Armada Mixed Crew coming back from the Heats |
So that was MR500 2013 for me and the Spanish Armada DB team.
In this race I have seen the Core Team of Spanish Armada overcome
countless obstacles. In fact, we don't even have enough people!
... and yet at the end of the day there was the Armada Mixed Crew
sitting at the starting line of a 400m race. Of course, the best
ending was if we won a medal. But sadly, that did
not happen ... yet :-)
If you guys are interested in DB paddling you might want to
head on over to Spanish Armada's website and check out how
you can go for a test paddle with the team.
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