Dragonboat: Of Lessons and Evolution
Last week, I wrote a post on Dragonboat, talking about my latest season and what I love about the sport.
This post follows it up. Over the span of time (3 years) I’ve been paddling, I learned many things. Also, some things I would see change or evolve.
Before that, Candy Eye! I highly recommend that you watch this through the end. (Those of you who know the sport may have already seen it… but you’ll watch it through anyway. I know I have!)
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Awesome eh? OK, Now let’s get to business.
Lessons and Discoveries
Dragonboat: Win as a team, Lose as a team
Let’s kick this off with some candy eye. My team, Phoenix, is Boat #3. This is the 200m Final, Division B (A being the highest-ranked), for Quebec Cup, the Provincial Championship and last competition of the season.
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Most of you know I’ve been partaking in the sport with my University’s team for a while. If you don’t, you might want to read this article I wrote a while ago, as a Guest Post on Adam’s site. At that time, I was still a young fool and speaking proudly of feeling trashed. The challenges mentioned remain, though, I just have a different approach to them now. More on that later.
This season has been great. Despite many challenges, despite the fact that we lost a third of our recruits and experienced crew members during the winter season (one of the difficulties of being a University team), and despite a couple of set-backs, we have performed very well. As a team, we have learned a lot, too.
This year, I’ve also had the chance to lead the team as Captain. It was an honor, and also a great deal of learning.
In any case, I’ve been in this sport for 3 years now. I shall share some thoughts with you.
What I Love
Above all: the Team. Of all the team sports I have tried in my life (I have tried quite a good number of them), I have never seen any other for which teamwork, and the team’s spirit, are as important as they are in Dragonboat.
If you don’t work together, you lose.
Spartan Race: How to run like a bad-ass
While many things are said to qualify for badassery, anything involving competition, mud and muscle in the same event can only reside at the top tier in the Scale of Badass ™.
On May 29th, a group of my dragonboat teammates and I participated in what’s called the Spartan Race. It was held at Mont Tremblant, QC, Canada, near Montreal. The name is suggestive enough: it sounds like dirt, blood, and stuff not made for wussies. Well, this summary is quite on par with what it was. Go here for a nice video report. You can even see my girlfriend carrying a block (and laughing like hell) near the end, at 6:09!
There are 4 classes of Spartan Race and this was the shortest one, also called the Spartan Sprint. It consists of a 5km (~3 miles) run up and down a hill in the woods and mud, with a number of obstacles to overcome trough.
It was a rainy day, coming on and off. At 10:30am here I was on the start line, with the second wave, still having no idea what I was getting myself into. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know yet what distance we had to cover.
Challenge #9 “Le Moment de Vérité”: THE TEAM
Now is the time to finally reveal who will, with me, take part in the exciting challenge participating to “Le Moment de Vérité”. For purposes practicality, let’s call it the MdV Team.
Here they are, in all their greatness! (and foolishness)
From left to right: Yannick, Myself, Jean-Luc and Marc
As it happens, they’re 3 of my dragonboat teammates. This picture was taken following our last competition, for which we’re proudly showing our gold medals!
- Jean-Luc (yes, as in ‘Jean-Luc Picard’, except he’s not a Picard) : Loud, outspoken, freakin’ strong dude. He’ll be a perfect motivation and energy booster, and I have not an ounce of doubt that if we need strength, he’ll show up.
- Marc : He’s the runner (and a damn good one at that), as well as the does-way-more-than-he-looks kind of guy. He’s always there to lend a helpful hand to everything and everyone he happens upon. Very dependable and very skilled in many fashions, albeit kinda quieter than Jean-Luc (OK, that’s not very hard to do).
- Yannick : I haven’t known him for very long yet; however he’s quickly shown as a very dependable and adaptable kind of guy who likes to have fun. He seems willing to try out anything you might dare him to, and in thus he didn’t hesitate for very long when I asked him to join the Team. I can’t wait to get to know him better.
What’s very cool with the brand new MdV Team, is that we’re all very fit enough to take on any kind of physical challenge. It also happens that we’re all studying in engineering, and very much capable of a number of mental challenges. More importantly, we’re pumped and ready to tackle anything they might throw at us.
I will soon organize with them to produce a presentation video, which we’ll be using to actually apply for the Show. Of course, when it’s done you’ll be the first to know about it!
So, all of this being said…
BRING IT ON!
Lame Excuses and New Challenges
Holà again!
So after this impromptu hiatus, I’m finally back and will hopefully start posting regularly again. What happened is I clearly underestimated the no-break pace on the weeks following my Dragonboat training camp. We’ve had competitions at Pickering, ON and Ottawa, ON, and had a blast, as well as very good results.
Lame excuses aside, I did tell you in my last post that I’d describe the latest challenges people submitted me to. So, without further ado (I’ve always wanted to write that sometime) …
Challenge #9: “Le Moment de Vérité”
Challenge #3: The Metro
Hi guys! Quick post while I’m actually (yes, yes, for real!) building the post to present the next 3 challenges. I know I could just tell you what they are and keep it at that, but I prefer to, you know, do a good job?
For one of them I actually have to select a team of friends to do it with me, so that’s also part of the process. I’ll try and take a picture of us 3 or 4 
Anyway, here’s the actual pic of THIS post:
The metro
I unfortunately didn’t catch his name, as I had barely enough time to actually take the pic; he was just getting out of the wagon. Still, thank you metro guy! Hope you get the chance to find your pic
Aside from that, I had the awesomest of awesome weekends. It was my dragonboat team’s training camp at Lac Mercier, Mont-Tremblant, and you have no idea how much fun we had. Weather was gorgeous, people were gorgeous (our girls being the gorgeous-est, of course), and we did more shenanigans than we can count.
Spending a whole weekend suffering, recovering, and having fun just glues people together. Our team is now FAMILY.
