My bones are creaky with fatigue, my beautiful face is mildly sun-toasted, and paddling gear is piled in heaps all over my house. I guess that’s how things go after a weekend of paddling 18+ miles!! Ok, I just stood there and steered, but enough about me already.
Living Root kicked butt this weekend at the Run of the Charles (as the only dragon boat in the race, we kicked our own butt). It’s the first time we’ve ever competed in a long distance race, and we did really well. Our time was a minute or two over an hour–official results are still pending. Although this is far different from our standard 500 meter races, it was great to see what we could do through an hour of hard paddling. Everyone pushed hard, and split times* kept dropping throughout the race. Timing looked outstanding!! Rounding the last buoy was a bit tough with that anchored boat right in the way, but we were able to get past him without terrifying him too greatly. The finish was really strong and it was cool to hear all those kayakers cheering for us. After we crossed the finish line, 19 out of 20 paddlers managed to hang onto their paddles while cheering. Not bad.
The paddle home was a bit more relaxing, but just as tough. We now have a few helmsfolk in training, and they all did great. Let’s hear it for our brave helmsmen and helmswomen: Roxane, Karla, and Chris. They all steered a sort-of straight course, and they didn’t fall in the water.
I want to thank Cindy for helping to organize everyone at Spaulding ensuring that they all showed up and found all the equipment they needed. I also want to thank all the people who drove back and forth between Spaulding and the race site ferrying paddlers. It was a critical component of this weekend’s work, and we couldn’t have done it without drivers.
I also want to give a warm, cyber man-hug to Evan for showing up first thing in the morning with tasty, crispy donuts!! His cheering from the shore and from the bridges as we raced by gave everyone an energy boost when it was most needed. That rocked.
Thank you to the people who jumped in to help us paddle home: Seta, Binh, Stacey, Caroline, and Cindy. It was a great help to have some fresh troops to help out the weary ones.
Good work and I’ll see you at practice.
-Captain P
* “Split Time” is a measure in minutes and seconds of how fast it will take you to travel 500 meters at your present pace. So, if you take just one feeble stroke, your split time might be a 3:05. This means if you continued to paddle feebly, you would complete 500 meters in exactly 3:05. Similarly, if you paddle with a lot of power, your split time will be nice and low, say 2:10, and if you keep that up, you’ll travel 500 meters in 2:10. Make sense?
