Dragon boats!

[Lindsey]

Has anyone here dragon boated before?
Every summer here there is a huge dragon boat race on the river to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. I'd never been in one before but I always see them going down the river and it looked pretty cool! Anyways this year my company decided to put in a team, and our first practice was tonight. It was so exciting! Well, until it started. Then it was tiring! I'm pretty sure my arms are going to fall off by morning and if they don't, I'll probably be too sore to even move my mouse tomorrow.
But I have to say, for our first practice we were pretty awesome! Everyone was rowing in sync for the most part and we learned the commands quickly. We have two more practices next week and then the actual races are next weekend. We have 3 guaranteed races and then there are final races between winners.
I'm going to be sure to take a waterproof (I GOT SOAKED!) disposable camera for the day and I'll definitely post pictures for you guys when it's done!

[Marilyn]

Sounds like a lot of fun. Please do post pics. Never heard of a dragon boat!!

[Janet]

Lindsey it sounds like so much fun. I think I've seen news stories of them on TV, but of course never actually seen one. Will love seeing pictures of this race...how fun!

[Lindsey]

Well my arms aren't that sore today. I thought I was doing pretty good.. just my neck and shoulders are a bit stiff. Then I sat down at my computer. OUCH! I think my whole butt must be black and blue!!! Those wooden planks to sit on are not very comfy

[Dobie]

I've never participated, but Jim and I go see the races when they are going on.

[DianaB]

I've never heard of it either. Did you get pictures to share with us?

[Lindsey]

Our next practices are Tuesday and Wednesday, but I probably won't get pictures until the actual event day. Basically it's a long skinny wooden boat (think a really long canoe!) with 20ish paddlers, split evenly on each side of the boat, and a drummer (to keep the pace of the paddle strokes) and a steerperson in the back with another paddle that steers.
Here's the results of a google image search: http://images.google.ca/images?um=1&...q=dragon+boats
Unfortunately, ours don't have the cool dragon heads on them lol

[DianaB]

Ok, I've seen pictures of races like those, but I didn't know they were called dragon boats. I don't think that the ones I saw had the dragon's head on them either. It sounds like fun!

[Marilyn]

Are those like the rowing boats that some of the Ivy League universities up north use for rowing competitions? If so, I saw some practicticing when I was in Philadelphia a few years ago.

The people who compete in that are first class atheletes. Rowing is supposed to be some of the best exercise. Works your entire body.

[Lindsey]

lol I'll believe it because my entire body has been sore! My butt is still sore from the seats, and that was 4 days ago. Now I have practice tomorrow, the next day, and then races on Saturday! I'm barely going to have time to recover! I was telling Kyle after the last practice that I'm probably going to have arms like Popeye when the races are over

[Lindsey]

Practice kicked my butt today. I sit on the right side of the boat and the paddle has to be tight against the side, like scraping the side of the boat with each stroke. So of course, my arm has also been scraping the side with each stroke! I will be using a tensor bandage on it tomorrow because it gets so red and irritated. I just took these pictures now, 2 hours after the end of practice. It doesn't come out quite as red in the pictures. It still hurts to have anything touching it!
Now I just hope I don't get a tan with one bandaged forearm

[Lindsey]

PICTURE TIME!
It was a beautiful day yesterday for the Dragon Boat Festival! I'm a bit sunburnt today but it was worth it!
I wasn't expecting us to do well at all, seeing that none of us had ever dragon boated before except our steerperson (Kyle's brother). Anyways he told us that if we got between 2:10 and 2:15 we'd be doing really well. We had our first heat and got second place by just a second, with a time of 2:08! Our next race was 15 minutes later so we were all exhuasted, but we worked together and got a time of 2:07!
Anyways, the first two heats were to collect times and see who we would be racing against in the third heat, the only one that counts. We got into the second division. We had to wait around for a few hours, and my friend from high school and her husband came into the city and so I got her to take pictures
We were so exhausted from sitting in the sun all day, the only thing that kept us going was the thought that as soon as we finished that race we could finally go into the beer gardens and have a nice cold beer! We got into the boat, and started our count to paddle to the starting line, and it went like this: "one, two, three, BEER" so it was pretty motivational We kept it up for the whole race.

1. Starting line (we're in the middle)
2. Starting to pull ahead
3. Look at us go! I had no idea we were that far ahead, I wouldn't look up from the water. This is 250m, halfway done the race and my arms felt like rubber.
4. Still in the lead but slowing down. The last boat was pretty far behind!

[Lindsey]

5. We won!!!!!
6. On our way back, completely exhausted.
7. The team! And two dogs. I'm kneeling in front

[Tink]

Wow, way to go on winning!
I bet it helped that you have such a young team.
I can just imagine all us ladies here climbing in one... rofl we'd get half way and need to be towed back to shore!

[Lindsey]

Originally Posted by Tink

Wow, way to go on winning!
I bet it helped that you have such a young team.
I can just imagine all us ladies here climbing in one... rofl we'd get half way and need to be towed back to shore!

Lol well there's also an all-female division and they only had two teams in it, so even a 4WT team would automatically get at least third place haha. One of the two teams was called "Bustin' With Energy" and they were supporting breast cancer research. I'm pretty sure the whole team was survivors, or families of people who had breast cancer. It was an older team and they didn't do that well, but they automatically got second place lol. They were really cool though, they wore all pink and even had pink life jackets and their little team area was all out in pink I thought it was a really good idea. Apparently they travel around and go to dragon boat festivals everywhere.