Yesterday, Kam got in touch with her contact, Leon, at the HK Island Paddling Club and organized a small boat paddle from Deep Water Bay to Lamma Island. I didn't go because I didn't want to interfere with my off-season and I was glad I didn't because it was really rainy, windy and stormy. There was even a lightning storm in the afternoon!! Leah and Rebecca went and I was really relieved that they got back in one piece, although I found out this morning that they agreed to hide the fact that Rebecca hulied on the way back from Lamma Island in order to convince me to go out and paddle today.
In the evening, Leah, Kam, Jamie and I went out for dinner with members from the HK Island Paddling Club where we socialized over delicious Peking food. Yumm!! Kam, Leah and Jamie dragged me out to go paddling this morning with them in OC-3 despite my protests.
Leah, Jamie and I met up with Leon, Matt, Eva, Elke at 9:30 AM this morning at the Pacific Coffee Company coffee shop in Stanley. Kam was already there because she was out coaching at 6:30 AM. The weather was much better today - it was cloudy with sunny breaks and no rain clouds in sight. After grabbing coffee and breakfast, we walked over to Leon's house, dropped off our stuff and then headed over to the Sea School where the OC-3s were kept.
We spent at least half-an-hour bailing out the OC-3s because they were filled with water in the hull and both bulkheads. Then, we needed to find new rubbers to tie down the amas because the existing ones were worn out by the sun. Finally, about an hour later, we were ready to head out. I was in a boat with Leah and Elke (who steered) and Eva, Jamie and Kam (steered) were in another boat. Leon was in an OC-1 and Matt was in a surfski.
We paddled from the beach at Stanley across to some rock island, around it and then to Po Toi. The water was choppy with waves coming from every possible direction and our ama popped a few times. Elke also had trouble steering the boat because it always tended to point right even though she was working so hard to keep it pointing left. We had to stop a few times to bail the boat because the gunwhale sat lower in the water than an OC-6 so we had some waves come into our boat.
After an hour and 10 minutes of paddling, we reached Po Toi. We beached our boat, washed up and went to the only restaurant at the beachfront of the island. We had a delicious lunch of fresh clams, prawns, deep fried squid, and bok choi with white rice. After our appetites were satisfied and we were rested up, we slathered on some sunblock that Eva had brought (I forgot mine in the hotel...BIG MISTAKE) and headed back out. Leon shuffled the crews around and I went back with Matt and Elke (steering) while Leah returned with Leon and Eva. Kam took back the surfski and Jamie paddled the OC-1. When we got into our OC-3 at Po Toi and started paddling, Leon began yelling at us to jump out of the boat because we were heading towards the rock embankment. I had one foot out of the boat and ready to jump out when Matt told me to just draw right to bring the boat over and ignore Leon because he is just crazy. Matt was right and after a few draw strokes, we were able to point the boat in the right direction and off we went.
The water on the way back to Stanley was less choppy than on the way to Po Toi (more my type of water!) We raced a bit to a point on an island through a channel and then continued our paddle back home. Half way, Matt decided he wanted to give steering a try so he and Elke switched places. The paddle back got really hard because we were facing into a head wind. Every stroke was a lot of effort and it felt like we weren't moving anywhere! But, the return trip from Po Toi to Stanley was fast - I think we got back in 50 minutes. In total, we paddled for about 2 hours and 20 km.
When we reached the beach, I had to admit to the fact that eating Chinese food and paddling was not a great combination because I felt sort of sick to my stomach. Jamie said that he thought he had some heat exhaustion because he started getting lethargic on the water (I made him drink some water because he was also dehydrated). We put the boats away and rinsed the sea water off of us with a hose. At that point, I realized how ineffective Eva's sunblock was (or maybe I didn't apply enough) because my arms and legs were pretty lobster red. I think I'm going to be in trouble with Candice because I've got a pretty bad farmer's tan (my arms are white and red, it looks really awful) and I have to wear a sleeveless dress for her wedding!! Oh dear...I hope she won't be too mad at me.
We went back to Leon's place to change and grab our stuff. On the way to the bus stop, we went to Wellcome to buy water and snacks and then headed back to town where we showered, napped and rested up. We met up with Kam and Jamie for dinner and compared sun burns. Kam has a pretty nasty burn on her back with her racer back tank top clearly defined in contrast to her red lats. She also has streaks of paleness on her chest, shoulders and arms clearly highlighting the areas where she did apply sunblock and areas where she forgot. Jamie is pretty sore and has some mild sun burn and the color of Leah's arms is nowhere close to the color of her stomach (her arms look like they belong to a different body). After dinner, I bought some aloe vera gel to ease the pain of the burns and we went in search of a mango cheesecake to celebrate but to no avail. Instead, we ran into Rebecca and her high school friend and went back to the dessert place in the lobby of our hotel...yumm!!
Lesson of the day: don't forget to wear your sun block when you go paddling and make sure you apply it equally all over...the aftermath of not doing so is not pleasant at all!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Race Day 2
The racing on Sunday began earlier than on Saturday. Our first race was our mixed semi-final, which was scheduled for 8:43 AM. Today, the FCHP, Jambalaya and Women's team had two races each - a semi-final and a final. The men had the potential of also needing to race a repechage if they did not come top two in their semi-final. We arrived on-site at 6:30 AM, got ourselves settled and began our warm-up.
The strategies for FCHP's and Women's races this morning was to go out with a full start. If we were ahead enough, Fanya and Jenny would give us a call to bring it down to 90% where we would maintain until the finish when we would bring everything back up to 100%. The crew this morning was made up so that our heavier men could race (yesterday, our heavier men were spared in favor of running a lighter crew so we would finish our race without huli-ing). In exchange, the heavier women (including yours truly!!) were spared (yippee!). We were instructed however, that today, if we were spared, we needed to have our paddle and jersey and come down with the crew just in case a last minute change meant that we needed to be on the crew too. Unfortunately, the race officials were being pretty strict about the number of people allowed into the marshalling area. Each team was only limited to 23 people inside the marshalling area so the spares had to walk around to the race site and meet the team as close to the dock as possible.
Poor Rebecca this morning looked like she was melting. The Hong Kong government issued a heat warning. By the time we reached the pre-marshalling area, her face was literally dripping with sweat, mixed with sunblock. When Kam came running up to Rebecca and told her that she was stroking, Rebecca was the perfect oxymoron - she was frozen in fear but melting in the heat. I wish I had my camera to capture the Kodak moment!!
The reason why Kam asked Rebecca to spare was that Erica was suffering badly from food poisoning. She had thrown up earlier before we headed out to the race site and had thrown up one more time on the way to pre-marshalling. She decided to race after throwing up the second time because she felt better. Erica was such a trooper all day. For the rest of the day, she was pretty dehydrated, felt tired, and didn't look great, but she managed to pull herself together every time we raced. She later told me that she had never felt so awful as she did today but she didn't want all of us to know just in case we would get distracted by her being sick.
Anyways, both FCHP and Jambalaya won their heats. The men came second in their heat, which meant they did not need to race the repechage. When the women went down to race, we watched the Jiujiang women, the Chinese team, race. It looked like they were sandbagging their race because we saw them hold the boat and bring down the rate during their race. The Jiujiang women ended up in third place in their heat and left us wondering why they decided to sandbag. The False Creek Women also won our race with a much better effort than yesterday.
We had a four hour break after the semi-final races. Some of the team went off in search of an air conditioned hotel or restaurant while others went off to go to Starbucks to check e-mail. Jimmy, Kiran, Graham, Leah and I stayed around our area in racers village because it was cooler where we chatted about my brilliant ideas such as figuring out how to "Moon Paddle" (in tribute to Michael Jackson) and how to win a 500m race in 3 strokes. As well, Leah and I spent some time convincing Graham why he needed to come back to our core sessions in September (I think we were pretty convincing or we were effective naggers because he buckled and agreed to come back!). During our conversations, we also had the pleasure of observing Jimmy Jay's magical hands in action while he helped Barbara loosen a knot in her shoulder that had been bugging her for a while. We don't call him "THE GREAT ONE" for no reason!!
Anyways, 2 PM rolled around and it was time to start focusing on racing again. We began our warm-up and Kam gave us a pep talk about having no fear, racing with confidence, being aggressive and getting out of the boat and onto our blade. The men's and women's final were about one hour after our mixed races so we needed to pack waters and snacks and whatever else we needed after our mixed races because we wouldn't have time to come back to get our stuff.
In the mixed cup final, we raced against the Jambalaya crew. It was an awesome race. We were aggressive, we raced with confidence and we got out of the boat! Racing today was very different from racing on Saturday because all of us grew more comfortable with the rocky conditions so it now felt like we were racing at Alcan at home. In the mixed cup final, we had an explosive start and pulled ahead right away leading all of the crews to the finish line. We won by at least 1 or 2 boat lengths and the victory was thrilling! We were tired and breathing heavily but it was worth it. In the showering area, I got sandwiched by Kei, Kiran, Rebecca, and Leah in a celebratory hug which was a bit overwhelming for me :) Everyone was all smiles and congratulating each other on a fine effort, but we quickly needed to get back to business and focus on our women's and men's races.
The women quickly ran off to marshalling again while the men re-grouped and got ready for their race. Our women's race was phenomenal - for me, it was the best women's race I've ever raced. We were light and dynamic, the rate was urgent and the boat felt like a mixed boat. Every stroke we took felt so effective and that we could accelerate the boat forward even more. When Fanya called finish, Jenny went ballistic, telling us to "DRIVE! DRIVE! DRIVE!" she was just sooo pumped! We lost the race to the Jiujiang women by about 1 second, but we were thrilled by the results because the women's team had made up 9 seconds on the Jiujiang women in a matter of a day!! Rebecca later talked to the Jiujiang women who told her that our women's crew scared them because we were so strong and finished so close to them in the final.
After showering and quickly debriefing, the women ran off to watch our men who came in 5th in a solid race. It was great watching the men race because their style was so different from the Asian teams. The Asian teams had a higher rate and splashed a lot whereas our men had a slower rate, longer stroke and a cleaner run of the boat. Soon after the men finished their race, the women dashed off so that we could go back to the hotel to get ready for the celebration dinner at 7 PM at the Trade and Convention Centre.
The celebration dinner was a fantastic way to finish the regatta! We got our medals at the dinner and they were huge! Catherine and Nick also wrote a skit that Team Canada had to perform. All of us got to participate on stage and Rebecca translated the script for the team. There were also performances from other teams as well as from organizations that were providing entertainment during the festival (my favorite was the drum performance by a drum troop - it was amazing the rhythms they created). The food was awesome too! We got a full 7-course Chinese dinner and San Miguel beer. Many of the Team Canada paddlers were also busy getting photos with paddlers from other teams and trading jerseys so Rebecca and I took advantage of the opportunity to eat more than our fair share (especially the dessert which was so tasty - mango and pommelo in a cold tapioca milk soup. We even stole 2nds and 3rds from the other tables). There was a really cute Taiwanese girl with a bowl cut called Cathy who was just hilarious to watch. She was so excited when she got her picture taken with Jim Nosella (it must be his big blue eyes and blond hair) and she was jumping up and down clapping with joy after she took her picture with Vince and Jake too. She was over the moon when Jake gave her a jersey!! Kiran, Kei, Amanda and Jen looked absolutely thrilled at having their photos taken with the Italian men and Kiran managed to trade her women's Medium jersey to an Italian guy who thought the women's jersey fitted him better than the men's (the jersey looked ridiculous on him!).
When we got back to the hotel, some of our team members wanted to go out and party even though it was 11:30 PM already. Norman and Anthony led Catherine, Graham, Kiran, Kei, Leah, Jenny and I to some bars in Tsim Sha Tsui where Norman and Anthony proceeded to get Kiran really drunk. After 5 shots plus several cans of beer from dinner, Kiran was wasted. She had trouble walking in a straight line, talked loudly and giggled more than usual. She even fell out of her bar stool on the way out of the bar. The worst was when she kept saying "Erin, don't worry. Erin, don't worry. Don't worry" while mimicking my Chinglish accent. When we left the first bar, Kei ran into the Japanese team and started flirting with the men so we had to go into the second bar for more drinks. By this time, Kiran was barely able to keep her eyes open and growing paranoid. We decided to head home despite Norman's suggestions to go out for food. Heroic Catherine was put into a taxi with both Kiran and Kei (who also couldn't walk a straight line and had thrown up a few times) but she managed them both brilliantly. We didn't return to our hotel until 3:30 AM so we all had to quietly sneak into our rooms to avoid waking up our roomies.
The next morning, several of the paddlers headed home while others, like myself, moved on to new hotels to begin our vacation in Hong Kong. It was great paddling with everyone on the team and getting to know them. The racing was exciting and we conquered the huge learning curve that faced us with determination as is evidenced by our results. Congratulations on a wonderful effort, Team Canada!
The strategies for FCHP's and Women's races this morning was to go out with a full start. If we were ahead enough, Fanya and Jenny would give us a call to bring it down to 90% where we would maintain until the finish when we would bring everything back up to 100%. The crew this morning was made up so that our heavier men could race (yesterday, our heavier men were spared in favor of running a lighter crew so we would finish our race without huli-ing). In exchange, the heavier women (including yours truly!!) were spared (yippee!). We were instructed however, that today, if we were spared, we needed to have our paddle and jersey and come down with the crew just in case a last minute change meant that we needed to be on the crew too. Unfortunately, the race officials were being pretty strict about the number of people allowed into the marshalling area. Each team was only limited to 23 people inside the marshalling area so the spares had to walk around to the race site and meet the team as close to the dock as possible.
Poor Rebecca this morning looked like she was melting. The Hong Kong government issued a heat warning. By the time we reached the pre-marshalling area, her face was literally dripping with sweat, mixed with sunblock. When Kam came running up to Rebecca and told her that she was stroking, Rebecca was the perfect oxymoron - she was frozen in fear but melting in the heat. I wish I had my camera to capture the Kodak moment!!
The reason why Kam asked Rebecca to spare was that Erica was suffering badly from food poisoning. She had thrown up earlier before we headed out to the race site and had thrown up one more time on the way to pre-marshalling. She decided to race after throwing up the second time because she felt better. Erica was such a trooper all day. For the rest of the day, she was pretty dehydrated, felt tired, and didn't look great, but she managed to pull herself together every time we raced. She later told me that she had never felt so awful as she did today but she didn't want all of us to know just in case we would get distracted by her being sick.
Anyways, both FCHP and Jambalaya won their heats. The men came second in their heat, which meant they did not need to race the repechage. When the women went down to race, we watched the Jiujiang women, the Chinese team, race. It looked like they were sandbagging their race because we saw them hold the boat and bring down the rate during their race. The Jiujiang women ended up in third place in their heat and left us wondering why they decided to sandbag. The False Creek Women also won our race with a much better effort than yesterday.
We had a four hour break after the semi-final races. Some of the team went off in search of an air conditioned hotel or restaurant while others went off to go to Starbucks to check e-mail. Jimmy, Kiran, Graham, Leah and I stayed around our area in racers village because it was cooler where we chatted about my brilliant ideas such as figuring out how to "Moon Paddle" (in tribute to Michael Jackson) and how to win a 500m race in 3 strokes. As well, Leah and I spent some time convincing Graham why he needed to come back to our core sessions in September (I think we were pretty convincing or we were effective naggers because he buckled and agreed to come back!). During our conversations, we also had the pleasure of observing Jimmy Jay's magical hands in action while he helped Barbara loosen a knot in her shoulder that had been bugging her for a while. We don't call him "THE GREAT ONE" for no reason!!
Anyways, 2 PM rolled around and it was time to start focusing on racing again. We began our warm-up and Kam gave us a pep talk about having no fear, racing with confidence, being aggressive and getting out of the boat and onto our blade. The men's and women's final were about one hour after our mixed races so we needed to pack waters and snacks and whatever else we needed after our mixed races because we wouldn't have time to come back to get our stuff.
In the mixed cup final, we raced against the Jambalaya crew. It was an awesome race. We were aggressive, we raced with confidence and we got out of the boat! Racing today was very different from racing on Saturday because all of us grew more comfortable with the rocky conditions so it now felt like we were racing at Alcan at home. In the mixed cup final, we had an explosive start and pulled ahead right away leading all of the crews to the finish line. We won by at least 1 or 2 boat lengths and the victory was thrilling! We were tired and breathing heavily but it was worth it. In the showering area, I got sandwiched by Kei, Kiran, Rebecca, and Leah in a celebratory hug which was a bit overwhelming for me :) Everyone was all smiles and congratulating each other on a fine effort, but we quickly needed to get back to business and focus on our women's and men's races.
The women quickly ran off to marshalling again while the men re-grouped and got ready for their race. Our women's race was phenomenal - for me, it was the best women's race I've ever raced. We were light and dynamic, the rate was urgent and the boat felt like a mixed boat. Every stroke we took felt so effective and that we could accelerate the boat forward even more. When Fanya called finish, Jenny went ballistic, telling us to "DRIVE! DRIVE! DRIVE!" she was just sooo pumped! We lost the race to the Jiujiang women by about 1 second, but we were thrilled by the results because the women's team had made up 9 seconds on the Jiujiang women in a matter of a day!! Rebecca later talked to the Jiujiang women who told her that our women's crew scared them because we were so strong and finished so close to them in the final.
After showering and quickly debriefing, the women ran off to watch our men who came in 5th in a solid race. It was great watching the men race because their style was so different from the Asian teams. The Asian teams had a higher rate and splashed a lot whereas our men had a slower rate, longer stroke and a cleaner run of the boat. Soon after the men finished their race, the women dashed off so that we could go back to the hotel to get ready for the celebration dinner at 7 PM at the Trade and Convention Centre.
The celebration dinner was a fantastic way to finish the regatta! We got our medals at the dinner and they were huge! Catherine and Nick also wrote a skit that Team Canada had to perform. All of us got to participate on stage and Rebecca translated the script for the team. There were also performances from other teams as well as from organizations that were providing entertainment during the festival (my favorite was the drum performance by a drum troop - it was amazing the rhythms they created). The food was awesome too! We got a full 7-course Chinese dinner and San Miguel beer. Many of the Team Canada paddlers were also busy getting photos with paddlers from other teams and trading jerseys so Rebecca and I took advantage of the opportunity to eat more than our fair share (especially the dessert which was so tasty - mango and pommelo in a cold tapioca milk soup. We even stole 2nds and 3rds from the other tables). There was a really cute Taiwanese girl with a bowl cut called Cathy who was just hilarious to watch. She was so excited when she got her picture taken with Jim Nosella (it must be his big blue eyes and blond hair) and she was jumping up and down clapping with joy after she took her picture with Vince and Jake too. She was over the moon when Jake gave her a jersey!! Kiran, Kei, Amanda and Jen looked absolutely thrilled at having their photos taken with the Italian men and Kiran managed to trade her women's Medium jersey to an Italian guy who thought the women's jersey fitted him better than the men's (the jersey looked ridiculous on him!).
When we got back to the hotel, some of our team members wanted to go out and party even though it was 11:30 PM already. Norman and Anthony led Catherine, Graham, Kiran, Kei, Leah, Jenny and I to some bars in Tsim Sha Tsui where Norman and Anthony proceeded to get Kiran really drunk. After 5 shots plus several cans of beer from dinner, Kiran was wasted. She had trouble walking in a straight line, talked loudly and giggled more than usual. She even fell out of her bar stool on the way out of the bar. The worst was when she kept saying "Erin, don't worry. Erin, don't worry. Don't worry" while mimicking my Chinglish accent. When we left the first bar, Kei ran into the Japanese team and started flirting with the men so we had to go into the second bar for more drinks. By this time, Kiran was barely able to keep her eyes open and growing paranoid. We decided to head home despite Norman's suggestions to go out for food. Heroic Catherine was put into a taxi with both Kiran and Kei (who also couldn't walk a straight line and had thrown up a few times) but she managed them both brilliantly. We didn't return to our hotel until 3:30 AM so we all had to quietly sneak into our rooms to avoid waking up our roomies.
The next morning, several of the paddlers headed home while others, like myself, moved on to new hotels to begin our vacation in Hong Kong. It was great paddling with everyone on the team and getting to know them. The racing was exciting and we conquered the huge learning curve that faced us with determination as is evidenced by our results. Congratulations on a wonderful effort, Team Canada!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Race Day 1
Our day on Saturday started bright and early with a 6:30 AM meet-up time. The organizers provided a shuttle to bring each team to the race site. Unfortunately, characteristic, it seems, of the way things are organized in Hong Kong, there was chaos. The Chinese team coach was livid that we had boarded his team's bus. With us inside, and the Chinese team outside, we all watched the Chinese team coach screaming and yelling at poor Shen (our team manager) in Mandarin. Eventually, Kerry came up into the bus and told all of us to get off quickly so we could let the Chinese team take our bus. I asked Shen later what the Chinese team coach was saying, and he told me that it wasn't as bad as it looked. The Chinese team coach was upset over the fact that they got in trouble yesterday from the organizers for being late for the bus and that today, their bus wasn't ready and on-time. The coach wanted his team on our bus purely on principle so we got the boot. It wasn't a big deal though, our team shuttle buses (one for FCHP and one for Jambalaya) arrived a few minutes later.
I forgot to describe how the race site was set-up here in Hong Kong. The racing was done in Victoria Harbour along the East Tsim Sha Tsui promenade. In the water, the organizers brought in a large number of barges to enclose our racing area and dampen the waves generated by the water traffic further out in the harbour. The starts were held starts. On shore, the loading area was on a barge and we hopped onto a floating dock made of these plastic interlocking blocks. There was a grand-stand by the finish line and an area by the docks that we headed off to after a race to rinse ourselves. The grand stands were packed every day as well as the entire shore line down the length of the course. Photographers with telephoto lenses and huge video cameras are everywhere filming and capturing the action. Our marshalling area was across the highway - we walked along an overpass and crossed the "street of death" to get to the dock. We were required to be at marshalling approximately 30 minutes before our race time otherwise we would get disqualified. Even further was our racer's village, which was at least a good 15-20 minute walk to the marshalling area. It was located at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which was nice because the area was cooler (all of the racers were under sheltered areas of the university foyer) and the bathrooms are indoors and flushable!! Our "tents" at racer's village consisted of a set of chairs placed in a U-shape. Fortunately, we could occupy as many Us as possible because not all the teams chose to base themselves in racer's village.
Once we arrived at the race site, we got down to the business of setting up and settling down. Some of the women took care of checking the team in at the registration desk and helping to grab the boxes of free water and other goodies that the organizers provided for each of the teams. One of the requirements for this regatta was that we either needed to have our paddles clearly marked as IDBF 202a certified or we needed to have a race official check and certify our paddle. Paddle certification was located next to marshalling, so some of the men needed to scramble down to marshalling to have their paddle certified before returning for the team warm-up. Erica, Catherine and I grabbed most of the women's paddles and went down to get our paddles certified.
Today was a qualifier day. Each of our teams only had to race once in our respective divisions. Our results from the day's race (time) determined which championship (bowl, plate or cup) we would be racing in on Sunday. There were fewer teams in the mixed and women's divisions (6 and 4 respectively) but a whooping 70 teams in the men's division.
The men had the first heat of the day. Originally, they were going to race 18 paddlers but decided at the last minute to try and race 20 paddlers in the boat because the water was calmer and because many other teams were racing with 20 paddlers. Kam scrambled to find the spare men for the race because they had scattered soon after marshalling - fortunately, she was able to do so before the men had to load up to race. Leah, Rebecca, Erica, Catherine, Kam, a few other girls and I went to watch the men race. The men had an awesome start and they looked super fast coming out of the gates. About one-third of the way down the course, the men's boat started rocking side-to-side after a series of waves hit the side of their boat. Then, the boat looked like it lost control because it cut across several lanes on the right before teetering some more and finally flipping over. The rescue crew came over to our men's boat and got it upright fairly fast with Jimmy Jay getting into the flipped over boat first. Then, we watched the rescue boats pull out all our men and drive them safely to shore while organizers stayed behind with the dragon boat bailing out the water. Meanwhile, the commentator for the regatta was pointing out how, in the Western countries like Canada, we prefer to have big, strong, huge guys on our dragon boat team, unlike the Asian teams, and as a result, our boat is more unstable and likely to take on more water. When the guys got back to shore, they were OK albeit a bit sheepish. Alan, Norman and Jimmy lost their glasses but everyone got their paddles and flip-flops. Poor Jimmy was the only one who didn't bring a back-up pair of glasses and spent the rest of his stay here in Hong Kong wearing his prescription sunglasses!
Seeing what had happened to the men in their race was a great learning lesson for the mixed and women's team. We changed our crew slightly to race with a lighter crew, we decided to have designated bailers in the boat who were responsible for determining when and if we needed bailing during the race, and everyone was more conscious about leaning out and getting over top of the blade. When the mixed crew raced 2 hours after the men, we raced with a conservative pace and managed to win by a few boat lengths.
In the women's heat, we raced against the Chinese women's team from Jiujian, the same crew of women who dominated Worlds at Prague last year. We were annihilated by the Chinese women who easily beat us by 10 seconds. Our race was conservative in pacing and the boat didn't feel like we had the urgency to show we really wanted to win the race. We vowed that we needed to do better the next day.
Following our races we had to stick around because we were invited to a special "Team Canada Only" beer garden so that the dragon boat festival sponsors could meet us and present us with gifts. We stuck around the race area for dinner and attended the beer garden party at 7 PM following a few team photos. At the beer garden, the sponsor, San Miguel, thanked us for coming to race and presented each paddler with a complimentary glass of beer. Don't worry, we were conservative in our drinking because we knew we had a big day ahead of us on Sunday. After the party, we boarded the bus and headed back to the hotel to get ready for racing the next day and to sleep.
I forgot to describe how the race site was set-up here in Hong Kong. The racing was done in Victoria Harbour along the East Tsim Sha Tsui promenade. In the water, the organizers brought in a large number of barges to enclose our racing area and dampen the waves generated by the water traffic further out in the harbour. The starts were held starts. On shore, the loading area was on a barge and we hopped onto a floating dock made of these plastic interlocking blocks. There was a grand-stand by the finish line and an area by the docks that we headed off to after a race to rinse ourselves. The grand stands were packed every day as well as the entire shore line down the length of the course. Photographers with telephoto lenses and huge video cameras are everywhere filming and capturing the action. Our marshalling area was across the highway - we walked along an overpass and crossed the "street of death" to get to the dock. We were required to be at marshalling approximately 30 minutes before our race time otherwise we would get disqualified. Even further was our racer's village, which was at least a good 15-20 minute walk to the marshalling area. It was located at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which was nice because the area was cooler (all of the racers were under sheltered areas of the university foyer) and the bathrooms are indoors and flushable!! Our "tents" at racer's village consisted of a set of chairs placed in a U-shape. Fortunately, we could occupy as many Us as possible because not all the teams chose to base themselves in racer's village.
Once we arrived at the race site, we got down to the business of setting up and settling down. Some of the women took care of checking the team in at the registration desk and helping to grab the boxes of free water and other goodies that the organizers provided for each of the teams. One of the requirements for this regatta was that we either needed to have our paddles clearly marked as IDBF 202a certified or we needed to have a race official check and certify our paddle. Paddle certification was located next to marshalling, so some of the men needed to scramble down to marshalling to have their paddle certified before returning for the team warm-up. Erica, Catherine and I grabbed most of the women's paddles and went down to get our paddles certified.
Today was a qualifier day. Each of our teams only had to race once in our respective divisions. Our results from the day's race (time) determined which championship (bowl, plate or cup) we would be racing in on Sunday. There were fewer teams in the mixed and women's divisions (6 and 4 respectively) but a whooping 70 teams in the men's division.
The men had the first heat of the day. Originally, they were going to race 18 paddlers but decided at the last minute to try and race 20 paddlers in the boat because the water was calmer and because many other teams were racing with 20 paddlers. Kam scrambled to find the spare men for the race because they had scattered soon after marshalling - fortunately, she was able to do so before the men had to load up to race. Leah, Rebecca, Erica, Catherine, Kam, a few other girls and I went to watch the men race. The men had an awesome start and they looked super fast coming out of the gates. About one-third of the way down the course, the men's boat started rocking side-to-side after a series of waves hit the side of their boat. Then, the boat looked like it lost control because it cut across several lanes on the right before teetering some more and finally flipping over. The rescue crew came over to our men's boat and got it upright fairly fast with Jimmy Jay getting into the flipped over boat first. Then, we watched the rescue boats pull out all our men and drive them safely to shore while organizers stayed behind with the dragon boat bailing out the water. Meanwhile, the commentator for the regatta was pointing out how, in the Western countries like Canada, we prefer to have big, strong, huge guys on our dragon boat team, unlike the Asian teams, and as a result, our boat is more unstable and likely to take on more water. When the guys got back to shore, they were OK albeit a bit sheepish. Alan, Norman and Jimmy lost their glasses but everyone got their paddles and flip-flops. Poor Jimmy was the only one who didn't bring a back-up pair of glasses and spent the rest of his stay here in Hong Kong wearing his prescription sunglasses!
Seeing what had happened to the men in their race was a great learning lesson for the mixed and women's team. We changed our crew slightly to race with a lighter crew, we decided to have designated bailers in the boat who were responsible for determining when and if we needed bailing during the race, and everyone was more conscious about leaning out and getting over top of the blade. When the mixed crew raced 2 hours after the men, we raced with a conservative pace and managed to win by a few boat lengths.
In the women's heat, we raced against the Chinese women's team from Jiujian, the same crew of women who dominated Worlds at Prague last year. We were annihilated by the Chinese women who easily beat us by 10 seconds. Our race was conservative in pacing and the boat didn't feel like we had the urgency to show we really wanted to win the race. We vowed that we needed to do better the next day.
Following our races we had to stick around because we were invited to a special "Team Canada Only" beer garden so that the dragon boat festival sponsors could meet us and present us with gifts. We stuck around the race area for dinner and attended the beer garden party at 7 PM following a few team photos. At the beer garden, the sponsor, San Miguel, thanked us for coming to race and presented each paddler with a complimentary glass of beer. Don't worry, we were conservative in our drinking because we knew we had a big day ahead of us on Sunday. After the party, we boarded the bus and headed back to the hotel to get ready for racing the next day and to sleep.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Update Finally!
I'm so sorry for the lack of updates to my blog! My brilliant idea of keeping a blog of our trip to HK was hindered by the fact that there was no free Wi-Fi at the Panda Hotel. I'm going to give you a quickie update of what happened this past week:
Hong Kong was hit by a Level 3 typhoon shortly after we arrived. As a result, our scheduled practice on Thursday was cancelled and the regatta schedule was adjusted from a 3 day festival to a 2 day festival. The arrival of the typhoon caused smoldering, humid weather in HK and an unbelievable amount of rain (more than anything we get in Vancouver - it felt like the sky was seriously going to fall down on us). We got an extra day to sight-see around Hong Kong but we were getting antsy to get on the water...
We finally got our first practice in the dragon boat Friday afternoon. It was chaotic because there was a misunderstanding. We thought that we would be able to get 2 hours of practice time so we could have both mixed crews practice in the first hour and the men's and women's crews practice in the second hour. Unfortunately, what ended up happening was that the organizers counted our hours on a per dragon boat use basis. So, when we took out two dragon boats for our mixed teams, the organizers counted the hour long practice as two concurrent hours so we had to rush through the women's and men's practices in the last 15 minutes of our hour.
Paddling in the waters of Victoria Harbour was quite a change from the flat waters of False Creek. The water stank pretty badly and the salt content was higher than what we were used to so getting splashed stung a lot. We had to learn to get out of the boat and on top of the blade without compromising the hinge and catch that is characteristic of our team's stroke. There was quite a bit of hesitation from the paddlers in the boat to trust ourselves to get out on the blade with the boat sliding around back and forth under us. Due to the wavy conditions, we filled our boats with 18 paddlers, leaving seat 1 empty. Catherine built two "super bailers" which were much needed since we took on quite a bit of water during our pieces.
While we were waiting for the start of our practice, a bunch of Chinese tourists came around to where we were stationed and started playing with our carbon fibre paddles. When I went over to see what they were doing, they turned around and started chatting with me. Then, they grabbed my bicep and said "wow, you Canadian women are so strong! Look at you, you're so big!!" Aiya...that is definitely not the way to speak to a delicate flower!
Hong Kong was hit by a Level 3 typhoon shortly after we arrived. As a result, our scheduled practice on Thursday was cancelled and the regatta schedule was adjusted from a 3 day festival to a 2 day festival. The arrival of the typhoon caused smoldering, humid weather in HK and an unbelievable amount of rain (more than anything we get in Vancouver - it felt like the sky was seriously going to fall down on us). We got an extra day to sight-see around Hong Kong but we were getting antsy to get on the water...
We finally got our first practice in the dragon boat Friday afternoon. It was chaotic because there was a misunderstanding. We thought that we would be able to get 2 hours of practice time so we could have both mixed crews practice in the first hour and the men's and women's crews practice in the second hour. Unfortunately, what ended up happening was that the organizers counted our hours on a per dragon boat use basis. So, when we took out two dragon boats for our mixed teams, the organizers counted the hour long practice as two concurrent hours so we had to rush through the women's and men's practices in the last 15 minutes of our hour.
Paddling in the waters of Victoria Harbour was quite a change from the flat waters of False Creek. The water stank pretty badly and the salt content was higher than what we were used to so getting splashed stung a lot. We had to learn to get out of the boat and on top of the blade without compromising the hinge and catch that is characteristic of our team's stroke. There was quite a bit of hesitation from the paddlers in the boat to trust ourselves to get out on the blade with the boat sliding around back and forth under us. Due to the wavy conditions, we filled our boats with 18 paddlers, leaving seat 1 empty. Catherine built two "super bailers" which were much needed since we took on quite a bit of water during our pieces.
While we were waiting for the start of our practice, a bunch of Chinese tourists came around to where we were stationed and started playing with our carbon fibre paddles. When I went over to see what they were doing, they turned around and started chatting with me. Then, they grabbed my bicep and said "wow, you Canadian women are so strong! Look at you, you're so big!!" Aiya...that is definitely not the way to speak to a delicate flower!
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Road to Hong Kong
Wow, these last weeks have been a whirlwind of activity! Isn't life so interesting when something great just catches you off-guard? Like having our season extended by an additional three weeks following Nationals...to go race in Hong Kong!
During the week before Alcan, the False Creek High Performance (FCHP) program received an invitation to race in the 35th Annual Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Festival. The festival will be held July 23-25 in East Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour. After several surveys and a ton of additional work by Kam to ping interest from paddlers, we had enough to build not one but two FCHP crews (mixed and women's) so we gladly accepted the invitation to go and race. In total, 33 paddlers from the FCHP program will be heading to race in Hong Kong.
Besides having the opportunity to race in the country from where the sport of dragon boating originated, I'm really excited to race with Catherine and Graham again, who are flying in from Sweden, as well as Jason Au, who will join us before heading off to Macau for the World Club Crews. We also have Vince Kleiss from Sudden Impact, Jim Nosella and Sean Franklin (kayakers), Alan Li from Toronto and Casey Mcdonald from Calgary rounding out our crews.
Amidst a ton of e-mails flying back and forth about flight reservations, rooming, jerseys and general Hong Kong logistics, we squeezed in three practices before we left. We worked on blend in the boat and getting used to paddling in rough water conditions, which we simulated by having a coach boat drive in circles around us as we did pieces. I have to admit that I was not a happy camper after these practices because of the buckets of water pouring onto my lap during the pieces. I was crawling out of the boat at the end of practice looking like a drowned rat!
In addition, we also worked on our race plan. One of the daunting things about racing in Hong Kong (besides the impending dread of having to paddle in poo water, which shouldn't really be that bad since we paddle in False Creek) is that the race course is 640 m long (approximately 2:40 in length). We've broken down our race into thirds with breakthrough calls at the 220 m and 440 m mark and managed to practice a few during our last practice on Thursday.
Tonight, some of the team are flying to Hong Kong with the majority of the rest of the team flying out tomorrow night. We will be staying at the Panda Hotel is Tsuen Wan, which is close to the New Territories. Our sponsors are generously covering our hotel and food expenses plus our registration fees to race and we're responsible for covering our transportation costs.
Leah took some photos of everyone at the airport right now. It looks like Kei and Kiran are already up to no good!
During the week before Alcan, the False Creek High Performance (FCHP) program received an invitation to race in the 35th Annual Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Festival. The festival will be held July 23-25 in East Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour. After several surveys and a ton of additional work by Kam to ping interest from paddlers, we had enough to build not one but two FCHP crews (mixed and women's) so we gladly accepted the invitation to go and race. In total, 33 paddlers from the FCHP program will be heading to race in Hong Kong.
Besides having the opportunity to race in the country from where the sport of dragon boating originated, I'm really excited to race with Catherine and Graham again, who are flying in from Sweden, as well as Jason Au, who will join us before heading off to Macau for the World Club Crews. We also have Vince Kleiss from Sudden Impact, Jim Nosella and Sean Franklin (kayakers), Alan Li from Toronto and Casey Mcdonald from Calgary rounding out our crews.
Amidst a ton of e-mails flying back and forth about flight reservations, rooming, jerseys and general Hong Kong logistics, we squeezed in three practices before we left. We worked on blend in the boat and getting used to paddling in rough water conditions, which we simulated by having a coach boat drive in circles around us as we did pieces. I have to admit that I was not a happy camper after these practices because of the buckets of water pouring onto my lap during the pieces. I was crawling out of the boat at the end of practice looking like a drowned rat!
In addition, we also worked on our race plan. One of the daunting things about racing in Hong Kong (besides the impending dread of having to paddle in poo water, which shouldn't really be that bad since we paddle in False Creek) is that the race course is 640 m long (approximately 2:40 in length). We've broken down our race into thirds with breakthrough calls at the 220 m and 440 m mark and managed to practice a few during our last practice on Thursday.
Tonight, some of the team are flying to Hong Kong with the majority of the rest of the team flying out tomorrow night. We will be staying at the Panda Hotel is Tsuen Wan, which is close to the New Territories. Our sponsors are generously covering our hotel and food expenses plus our registration fees to race and we're responsible for covering our transportation costs.
Leah took some photos of everyone at the airport right now. It looks like Kei and Kiran are already up to no good!
The Troublemakers - Kei and Kiran
Erica
Jamie and Kam
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