So let go, jump in, oh well, whatcha waiting for?

This weekend was the big dragonboat festival. We had 2 races yesterday, and 2 today. The races on Saturday were the heats to determine what divisions we'd be racing in. They had put us in the wrong heats actually; we were with mixed teams when we were an all women's team. Now, we were told that we couldn't use this as an excuse; women's teams can paddle just as well or maybe better than mixed teams since women do tend to be good team players, which is what dragonboat racing is all about. Nevertheless, we came in last in our qualifying heats, but at least our times were on par with the lowest division of women's teams.

Our first race today was a diaster. We were racing again against mixed teams for the education cup. Again we finished last and had our worst time ever.

However, we had one race to go: the final for the lowest division of women's teams. We buckled down, practiced our start while sitting in rows on the grass, and stretched beforehand. We repeated our mantra for the upcoming race: reach out, head up and focus on our boat. We also had to borrow some paddlers from another team to fill our boat (a couple people left early for no good reason - boo, they're off the team next year I say).

We got yet another coach to steer us for this race. Apparently this year, everything was rather disorganized as compared to other years. We didn't even get a consistent coach from week to week, like we were supposed to. This last guy was really good; he got our sagging morale up and give us good last minute tips.

The race started. We reached out. We kept our heads up. We focussed on our boat. (Which is so much easier to do when you are not in last place with all of the other boats ahead of you.) I had no idea where we were compared to the other boats. At one point our coach said we were in third place. Everyone was screaming. For the last 100 m we paddled like crazy. The finish line got closer. The coach screamed "Go you sexy bitches!!! Reach!!" We went all out screaming like crazy. We got to the end and had no idea how we did; there were two other boats really close to us. Even at the end, we weren't sure how we did. All we cared was that we weren't last and we gave it our all.

There was less than 1 second between first and third places. One of the several coaches that we had throughout the season told us that it's often the push at the end that determines the winner. Well, the push that we gave at the end did it! We won the last race! We got a gold medal! Dammit, we were sexy bitches!!

(Note: we loved this last coach and asked him to be our coach next year. He said sure, if we were willing to drive all the way to Pickering. We were very disappointed to find out he wasn't in Toronto.)

Anyhow, below is a collage that we made to celebrate our victory complete with a medal, our trophy and our plaque.



One of my coworkers had to leave early because she had a bad knee that got really bad from being knocked against the side of the boat. We called her to tell her that we won the last race and she wouldn't believe it. Hahaha. We're all going to wear our medals to school tomorrow.

Anyhow, it was a great experience. I'm so that I decided to sign up for dragonboating. If you recall, I did so when I was a bit drunk. I honestly don't think I would have done so while sober. I'm not the most sportive of individuals, and I haven't been on any sort of sports team since fourth grade and haven't even thought about joining any sort of team since then either. It's really fun doing something unexpected and out of the norm like this, and I guess it goes to shows me that I should take more risks in life.

(Note: I just remembered that my friend begged me to be on the broomball team in teachers' college. I reluctantly agreed. We only played in one tourney I think. We were the Mighty Ducks of broomball: we didn't even have our own helmets. I think we actually won a game which made us very happy. We had no chance agains the likes of the Faculty of Pharmacy who had jerseys and were sponsered by Advil for crying out loud.)

Also, perhaps I would have been better in sports if I had had someone screaming at me "Go you sexy bitch!"

Anyhow, I think I'm going to be hurting tomorrow. But, it will be hilarious wearing my gold medal all day at school.

Well, off to do some marking. I've got two sets of projects to mark (well not complete sets, some are to come in tomorrow still, but I promised those who got them in on time I'd have them marked for tomorrow). Tomorrow is a short day of classes and then exams in the afternoon. I'm not even doing anything with my classes: I wrapped up everything on Friday. Oh summer vacay, you're getting so close that I can taste you!