2008 Montreal Dragon Boat Regatta

It’s been a while since I last updated my blog. Much has happened, so it will take a few entries before I will be able to fully update everyone with what is going on with me these days

First, I would like to talk about the latest competition I attended, the Montreal International Dragon Boat Regatta or, amongst dragonboaters “Montreal” as it is affectionately known. For those that don’t know much about this regatta, it is a 2 day event with roughly 150 teams participating. Factor in that each team has at least 21paddlers plus a cox as well as a couple “spare” paddlers you can just imagine how large this event can be. That’s at least 3300 paddlers! Not to mention all the spectators, vendors, staff and volunteers in the area! Rankings are from A Division to G Division (or to the end of the alphabet if there were more teams). As well, each Division was then split into 3 categories, Premiere, Intermediate and Rookie. Since most of the top teams were not in attendance as they were in Penang, Malaysia for the 2008 6th World Club Crew Championships, the competition was a bit watered down. As a result, some teams that don’t normally “belong” in the A Division category was subsequently ranked as such in this regatta. There were also other “special” races such as the Women’s Division, Men’s Division, Out of Town Race, and Financial Cup to name just a few. Last year, when I raced with the Corporate team, we also participated in the Women’s Division, Out of Town Race as well as the Financial Cup. This year, I did not race in the Women’s Division. However, unbeknown to the Corporate team I was on last year, my team also raced in the Out of Town race as well as the Financial Cup since our team was sponsored by an insurance brokerage firm. They were quite surprised when they saw who they were racing against. Victory never tasted so sweet <insert evil laugh, MUWAHAHAHAHAHA and freaky suspense music here>.

All in all, there was still some pretty decent competition. I am happy to say that my team performed very well that weekend. Although, we did have a rocky start on the first day. I’m pretty sure I can speak for the rest of the team when I say that we were not very happy with the way we performed in our first race. In a nutshell, we just weren’t prepared and focused. One paddler was late and ended up not paddling. Coach SM ended up filling in and he was definitely not happy about that as he said this was the first time he’s raced in 2 years. As well, many paddlers in the boat said they did not hear the referee give the signal to go. Fortunately, I’ve raced at this particular regatta before so I am well aware as to how some of the referees “operate”. There is very little time between when the referee says, Paddles Up! (meaning get your freaking paddle ready to race!) and GO!! Since many in the boat were not ready, our Start was affected and subsequently we did not perform as well as we should have. In fact, there was at least 1 team there that beat us when we know we’ve beaten them before. However, we still ranked 3rd in this race but we were pretty unhappy about it. After the race was over, Coach SM debriefed us on our performance. I won’t go into the details except to say that everyone, including Coach SM and the late paddler all felt extremely bad and upset that we performed so poorly. We all felt we needed to do a lot better in our next race and that is exactly what we did.

I got sat out in one race, the second race that is, as I think Coach SM was concerned about my performance. I’ll have to back track here a bit. About a week before Montreal, during a practice I had a severe asthma attack. At that time, we were getting quite a few hot spells. Usually when the weather is this hot, I am not outside at all. My asthma is triggered by the environment as well as Smog. Any extreme temperatures, hot or cold agitates my asthma A LOT. Normally, when it’s this hot, I stay inside in a very air conditioned room. However, since we were ramping up for Montreal, we were all pushing ourselves to do well in practice. I was just finishing up my TCRs and went up to Coach SM to tell him what my time was. I was only able to tell him once and then I had to grab my inhaler as I felt the all to familiar constricting feeling in my lungs. For those that don’t know what it feels like to be asthmatic, the best way I can describe it is that you literally feel like you are breathing through a straw. As well, and I don’t know if this is part of my asthma or something else, I also feel like there is a huge weight on my chest. Almost like someone put a big heavy cement block on my chest and thereby preventing me from breathing. Sometimes, when it gets really bad I start to cry. Which is what I did that day. I absolutely hate it when I get emotional or cry in front of people and try my best not to do it. However, when you do see me crying because of my asthma you can be certain I am in pain. A few of my teammates came over to me to see if I was OK as well as Coach SM. In the end I was fine. However, Coach SM asked me if I wanted to sit in the front of the boat or the back. I requested to be in the back in case I need to stop paddling for a bit. I am pretty sure that is why Coach SM put me in the back of the boat for Montreal. I’m fine with that as it was also very hot that weekend. One thing I do like about Coach SM is that he moves people around in the boat. He already knows that I can paddle in the front of the boat as well as in the back. This is great as it makes a lot of paddlers versatile and more valuable. He not only switches people from front to back, some can switch sides from right to left and a few can also sit in stroke, Seat 1.

Back to our second race. Even though I was not in the race I sat on the sidelines and cheered us on while we raced. It was definitely an exciting race to watch. For about half of the race, we just dominated everyone. We were at least half a boat if not a whole boat ahead. Then, the boat in the lane next to us, called their Finish early. Calling a Finish early is risky. The cox or coach really needs to know their team well. If they call it too early, their boat can tire out too early and subsequently will have nothing left to “finish the race.” When that boat called their Finish, they started to inch up and was quickly making good ground on us. Alas, they were still no match to us. As soon as we called our Finish, our boat just surged ahead. It was absolutely fascinating to see it on the sidelines as I am usually in the boat. It wasn’t a quick surge ahead. It looked like there was a very deliberate push from the boat inching forward towards the finish line. Of course, we won that race. I was so proud. Later on, I found out that our Sponsor’s son was watching the race. He was quite cute as he was so enthusiastic about the sport. Apparently, he was running with the boat and was cheering us on and was so excited when he found out we won that race. We all felt like we were back in the game and were determined to not repeat the same mistake we did in our first race of the day.

The third and fourth race was interesting as they were the Financial Cup as well as the Out of Town Race. As I said previously, my old Corporate team was not aware that my team would be racing in the Financial Cup. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they realized they would be racing against us. Priceless.

Our Start was a little rocky. However, at some point in the race my cox yells at us to “smarten the f*!*k up” which we quickly did. One thing I haven’t mentioned are the distances of each race. Each race is 500 meters. For some races, such as the Financial Cup and Out of Town Cup, the distance is only 250 meters. There are specific strategies for each type of race. In a 250 meter race, it feels very much like sprinting the entire time as the distance is so short. So really, it feels like you are going all anaerobic (think of it as running as fast as you can, and I mean REALLY as fast as you can, for as long as possible. Yeah, that’s what it feels like.) There really isn’t much time for a Transition (the middle part of the race) and so really, you don’t feel it as much in the boat. However, in a 500 meter race you can really feel the difference between the Start, the Transition and the Finish. And yes, you are still going all anaerobic in a 500 meter race too. In the Finish, Coach SM would say to us, I want you to keep giving me everything you got when you think you have nothing left to give. Now THAT’S what I call giving it your all.

I was very happy with the result of both our races, the Financial Cup and the Out of Town Cup as we won both of them. In the Financial Cup there were actually 2 heats. We were in the first heat and we clearly won that heat. Coach SM went up to me before the race and asked me how I was feeling. I think he wanted to make sure I was OK and I wasn’t going to have another asthma attack. I told him I was good and I wanted to be in this race. It’s personal. Coach SM said he didn’t want me to do the race because I wanted to do it. He needed to know if I was able to do it. I said, oh definitely. I’ve been itching to do this race and said, the anticipation is THERE. As well, I’ve been staying cool and hydrated throughout the day. He was very happy with my response as that’s what he wants everyone to feel. In his words he said, “good, I like that!” You need to be ready physically and mentally during a race. You have to be so on edge anticipating and just itching for that gun to go off. For me, it was personal. I wanted to win this race. Specifically I wanted to beat my old Corporate team. Looking at our times you could tell there wasn’t really any competition for us. We won that race and it definitely felt good. I wanted to beat my old Corporate team so bad and now I can say I did. Actually twice since my team was also in the Out of Town race too and we just blew everyone away. I was very happy with our results during our first day of racing. To me, the goal was to race well but also to beat my old Corporate team. And that, we did. One other thing I will say is that we were also in the “bad lane”. Meaning that some lanes have more of an advantage to them because of external forces that we can’t control (ie. THE WIND). Lane 6 is apparently the bad lane. Interestingly, we still won the race even though we were in the bad lane. Guess that means we are just a pretty good team :-).

The second day of racing we only had 2 races, a 500 meter race and a 250 meter race. Teams are seeded into the appropriate division as a result of their performance during the first day. As of the second day, my team was placed 7th overall out of about 150 teams. B Premiere Division. Not bad I would say. Interestingly, Coach SM thought we should have done better. The teams that we were racing against in our division really had “no business” racing against us since we already know that we are faster then them. Our performance in our first race the previous day really affected our ranking. That being said, I think that going in being 7th overall is still not bad. The 500 meter race felt good too. Again, I felt like we had no real competition. We won this race by at least 2 seconds. For those that are not familiar with the sport, a lot of races have teams beating others by a fraction of a second. So winning by 2 seconds is a LONG time. Our second race of the day, the 250 meter we did not perform as well as we should have. We came third in that race and so some of us were not happy that we ended the regatta on that note. Basically, what happened was that there was a delay in getting our race to start. One team had a broken boat so we were waiting for the organizers to get that sorted out. In the mean time, the organizers raced the A Division race before ours and so teams that were in our race basically had to wait until the A Division race completed. It was very frustrating since our warm up, on land and on the water was essentially wasted. By the end of the day, we were generally happy with the way we performed on the weekend. We won gold in the B Premier Division (500 meter), ranking 11th overall in the festival (out of about 150 teams), silver in the Financial Cup (but first in our heat), and gold again in the Out of Town Cup. Our sponsors were also quite happy with us as well. They made an announcement at the end of the day on Sunday that they had so much fun with us that they wanted to sponsor us again for next year. I was so excited when I heard this as this meant that I would be racing again next year in Montreal. I definitely had a fantastic time in Montreal. Both as an athlete racing as well as getting to know my team on a more personal level. This season I am really beginning to like my team as I get to know each one. Some things are surprising, in a good way, that I have learned about my team.

After Montreal, my last out of town regatta was Huntsville. This one was certainly an interesting if not fantastic story to tell. However, since I am half asleep I will have to continue on with that story another day. In the meantime, check out some of the pics that Coach SM took in Montreal as well as pics one of my teammates’ fiance took during our car ride up there.

Fluxing Daily Weight Explained

I was recently conversing with a friend the other day about fluctuating weights. We were both concerned about the weight gain we’ve experienced lately and were both trying to console ourselves that it was probably muscle and not fat that we’ve gained. I already know that when it’s that time of month, my weight will go up since I will be retaining water. I can tell you that it was most certainly true this month *insert wry smile*! For a while now, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on nutrition so it was no wonder that I stumbled upon this tidbit of information. I thought this article was interesting to share to all who, like myself, can get paranoid about weight gain. It will silence the “fat girl” in all of us, albeit a short while. I think the key thing to remember about being fit and healthy is to not focus on the number of pounds one weighs. Instead, focus more on how your body feels, the way clothes fit and, particularly in my case, how strong one feels.

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Note: Extracted from the Precision Nutrition forum at www.precisionnutrition.com

Here’s a great piece by Dr. Melina Jampolis, author of The No-Time-To-Lose Diet. Basically outlines the reasons the scale can flux so dramatically in one day, especially women:

You were thirsty
For every 16 oz of fluid you consumed, that’s an immediate gain of:
1 pound

You need to poop
Time to reintroduce your Greens+ and fibre . .but being backed up can cause a weight retention of as much as:
2 pounds

You’re on vacation or a traveling executive
Air pressure changes in flights that take 4 hours or longer will actuallly increase fluid retention typically to the tune of:
2 to 3 pounds

Pizza ? Chinese ? . . or perhaps you join the Coach in Ribfest season
Have a high sodium dinner and whoooo boy- you’ll likely find yourself waking up heavier by:
2 to 3 pounds

That time of a month ? Or are you a sympathetic expecting
Dad-to-be ?
Hormone fluctuations for up to a week leading into your period, or for the guys truly connected to their wife’s pregnancy, expect a water weight gain of up to:
5 pounds

So, if you’re a thirsty, constipated, frequent flier, with a penchant for pizza and heading to that time of month, expect a quick shift in the scale of up to:
19 pounds !!

And to all the guys that thought Micronized German Creatine was impressive for fluid retention . .HA !

A Smiling Coach At Last

I’m not quite sure what is wrong with me lately. I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts and can’t quite pin point it. The weather hasn’t exactly been helping either. When it gets quite hot or humid or smoggy(!), I find it quite difficult to be active in any way. I didn’t eat much before I went to practice. Just some apple caramel pie during the day and then right before practice one of my usual apples. My TCRs today felt very laboured. By the time I finished them and went to go tell Coach SM what my time was I was having trouble breathing. I had to take a minute, use my ventalin and sit for a second. I think I even sat down and cried a bit. I wasn’t sure if it was a panic attack or if it was my asthma acting up. I just felt very constricted in my chest. I was fine after a while. Coach SM went up to me before I went into the boat and asked me if I was OK. He wanted to make sure I was because he didn’t want me to do anything where I would hurt myself. I told him I’ll be fine. He was going to put me in the front but then asked me if I wanted to sit in the back instead. I asked to be sat in the back. I figured if I had to stop at some point I wouldn’t be getting in anyone’s way if I was at the back. It’s been like this for a while and I am hoping it will go away when I get to Montreal. I really don’t want to be not performing at my most optimum level.

Today we were doing the “only the good practice”. It’s not so bad now that it’s become a “regular” thing to expect every week. Basically, during this practice Coach SM wants “only” 8 minutes of good paddling. What’s good paddling you ask? Well, that would be paddling at least 14 km/hr. It’s not that we have to hit it at that speed, but we also need to maintain it for as long as we can. The clock starts when we hit 14 km/hr and ends when we drop below that speed. The amount of rest we get is the same amount of time we maintained 14 km/hr. We did a start to wake the muscles up. Every time we do a start, particularly when it’s the first piece during a practice, my arm always feels a bit tingly. Not in a bad way. Just … well tingly. Like I could feel all the blood and adrenaline rushing to my arm. It’s an amazing feeling really. Anyways, I’m starting to ramble. Where was I? Ah yes, explaining the “only but the good” practice. Our first piece was amazing. I definitely could tell that we were paddling longer and I was wondering when the heck Coach SM was going to tell us to stop. When we did, Coach SM was smiling. It must be good since he rarely smiles ;). He told us that our first piece was 1:32. Which means we paddled at least 14 km/hr for 1 minute and 32 seconds. There were even a few times where we hit 15 km/hr! He was very, very happy. When we first started doing these kinds of practices, our pieces were only about 30 seconds. As well, I noticed that we had most of our men at practice today. Not always so true in the beginning. The women on my team are known to be strong as well as very committed to coming to practices. This is not necessarily true for the men on the team. It’s usually one of the guys that are missing when we don’t have a full boat. It’s funny, I think that for the most part, we’ve had a full boat at almost every single practice if not some spares too. Now that they are maintaining 14 km/hr longer, we can all tell we are definitely getting stronger as a team. If we can paddle at least 14 km/hr for 2 minutes Coach SM would be ecstatic. Well maybe not, but he would be smiling at least. It would be amazing if we could do that and I really think we are getting close to it. 2 minutes is practically a 500m race! I can’t wait to see how fast we are by the end of the season. By then, that is when we should be our strongest.

As we continued on to practice, our pieces started to get shorter. All less than 1 minute. It’s to be expected as by now our bodies are starting to fatigue. So, it made perfect sense. One of the things Coach SM did was stop saying anything at all in our last few pieces. Since he is not actually in the boat with us when we race, we have to be prepared to race without his prompting us. Currently, he prompts us after we do our start, during the power phase when we need an extra push and then near the end to “stay on it.” It was a bit strange at first but I think it was a good exercise as it really forced everyone to deal with the race mentally and not just physically on the water. I liked how at the start, he gave us some visualization (imagine team so and so on one side and another on the other side and how bad they want to win this race), and mentioned all the different ways we could be distracted during an actual race. I’m sure it will be really bad at our next regatta in Montreal. It’s a big regatta so there will be lots of competitive teams there. A couple of times he almost caught me off guard. Usually I’m good as I tend to do my own visualization to get myself “race ready”. That’s when I zone everything out. It’s just me, my paddle, the boat and the water. There’s a book I read when I first started paddling that really helped me with my visualization. The book is called, Thinking Body, Dancing Mind by Chung Liang and Al Huang. It’s a fantastic book and I recommend it to all, athletes or not. Even now, I still refer to it. By the time we got to around 7 minutes, Coach SM said to us, “you can finish it with 2 pieces or 1. The choice is yours.” When we finished our piece, he was smiling again. He said we finished it in 1 piece which meant that we pushed ourselves enough to finish the last piece in just over a minute. In other words, we still had something left in us when we didn’t think we did. It was a great feeling finishing practice like that. Not only did we finish practice early, we finished practice off with Coach SM smiling. Now, THAT is what I hope to be seeing more of as we progress through the season.

Deciphering Numeric Codes on Fruit

A few of my friends have been changing their diet by focusing on eating more foods that are organic and pesticide free. Here is a bit of tidbit information I found on the internet.

Almost all fruit sold in grocery stores have a sticker on it stating what type of fruit it is, where it comes from (local or not) and a number.

Conventional Fruit Labels
Four digits and mostly starting with the digit 4

Organic Fruit Labels
Five digits and starts with number 9

Genetically Modified Fruits
Start with the digit 8

Let’s say you come across an apple in the store and it’s labeled 4922. That mean it’s a conventional apple grown with herbicides and harmful fertilizers. Says 99222? Then it’s organic and safe to eat. Says 89222? You can be sure it’s genetically modified.

While I can’t say for certain how accurate it is, it did make me ponder a bit. I’m not sure who thought of this numerical system, but I figured it’s pretty useful to know for everyone. Check it out next time you pick up some fruit.

Big, Black Cloud + Thunder + Lightening = Torrential Downpour/Canceled Practice

Today 18 paddlers showed up for practice. We had all finished our TCRs when a big, black cloud came rolling in. Coach SM spoke to a bunch of other teams about whether or not to go out on the water. We decided that we would wait until the cloud would pass before going out. Our plan to wait half an hour quickly changed when the thunder and lightening got louder and closer. Some of us were amused at how fast all the other teams left. By that time, we were the only team sticking around. In the end, practice was canceled and a few people took off to the local pub instead. I decided to skip the pub and go to my parents place as I was already starving for dinner. There was still no rain yet. But, by the time I got on the DVP the rain started coming down really heavy. It was a torrential downpour! I was scared as I couldn’t even see through the window and I rarely drive during bad weather. I’m pretty confident to say that I wasn’t the only one that was driving exceedingly slow on the highway.

Our TCRs have recently changed focus from increasing strength to speed. I’ve been having a bit of difficulty in this area as there are certain exercises that are generally difficult for me. With the run I generally struggle with it but I think over time I will improve. However, running during a day that has a SMOG Alert really isn’t a good idea for an asthmatic. Also, I’m still not able to do pull ups. However, I do know that I am increasing my strength in this area as I am now able to lift heavier than I did in the past (from 55 to 70 lbs; I’m currently working out with 75 lbs). Last practice, my time was 25 minutes including a 48 second penalty for not completing my pull up reps. Today, my time was 25.11 minutes including the 48 second penalty. I could tell Coach SM wasn’t happy that I didn’t beat my time as he told me that the purpose of doing this exercise is to beat your time. I told him it was because I got to practice later than I usually do (I usually try it make it there for 6:30 but got there at 7 PM which is when practice starts anyways). He listed off a bunch of things that it might be. One of them was couldn’t focus. I’m a bit discouraged about my time but know that I really shouldn’t be as there was not much difference from last practice. It was only 11 seconds longer than my last time. Still, I do want to improve and realize that in order to succeed in this I will need an action plan. I’ve decided that going forward, I will incorporate my TCRs in my general workout when I am at the gym. I will also track my time for the TCRs that are done in the gym.