Dragon boats!

[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.

[DianaB]

It looks like you had a lot of fun!!!! I had someone mention dragon boat racing the other day and I knew what it was, thanks to you!!!! I'm so glad that you won! How exciting!!!