3 consecutive days of races man! My whole body is aching like shit. ARGH.
Day 1
NSDB (National Schools Dragonboat) @ Bedok Reservoir. Everyone had to reach there by 7.30am! Dominic was there too HAHA. He was the drummer, cause his light and doesn’t put much dead weight to the boat. :D We were racing with 10 crew, and got 3rd for heats, 1st for repecharge and 5th for finals. Oh well, at least we got into finals. It’s supposed to be a B div race so we were racing against guys who were between 17 and 15. But we’ve got Dominic, Jamie, Wenmin, Clement and Kyle, so almost half of the people in the boat are 14 only. We did our best! :D Ms Ng Qihui said that it’s the FIRST time NJC had ever sent a B div 10 crew dragonboat for racing because last time we didn’t have enough people. So I feel quite honoured to participate in the race hehe.
Milo truck came later in the day but Ms Tan Joe-sie didn’t allow us to take any Milo cause we were supposed to be studying! :O I brought my damn Shakespeare book there to study. Anyway I met Gideon from JYPS hehe. He’s like damn tall la! Dominic was with me too and the difference was really huge! Both of them are 14 only but Gideon is like.. 1.8m??
Then after that we had a ‘celebratory run’ around the reservoir with the seniors. It was 4.3km!! 4.3! I had never ran that long before. We were split into 3 groups. First group was those who had their 2.4km under 10 minutes, which included me and Jamie. 2nd group was the rest of the seniors, and 3rd group was the rest of the juniors. Or sth like that la, can’t remember. At first I could follow, but after about 2.4km I started dying out. But Soma was following me, pushing me, and encouraging me. I tried to go faster, but my stomach really hurts. So I told myself that I should ignore the pain and try to catch up, but I really had no energy. So I just kept running at my own pace and tried to go faster whenever possible. And soon I finished the 4.3km. At least I didn’t stop and any moment or give up.. Then immediately after the run we had to do simples! Sounds simple, but we had to keep on doing push ups, crunches, squads and heel raise until everybody was done with the run. Oh man, damn tiring I tell you.. But it was fun! :D I kind of have a sense of achievement when I finished the race and simples. :D
Day 2
PA Paddle. I came @ 12.35.. And is late for 35 minutes. But even after I had reached I had to wait for abt 1 hour too. We weren’t doing anything before that, but studying. A lot of ‘super seniors’ (ex-NJ canoeist) came HAHA. They’re like damn buff as compared to us. :( No wonder they are so pro while we’re I’m not so good bad. Some of them joined us for 20 crew dragonboat because again, we don’t have enough people. So we got 2nd for heats, and lost to Nanyang Poly by 1 sec.. wtf. (Semis will take place in Day 3). And after the race I had to stay until 6.02pm for my K2 with Samuel. But then it started to rain and our race was postponed to Day 3. :(
Day 3
Our K2 race was kind of sucky. We had a nice start, and we were behind the other boats. Then after a while Samuel could not control the direction and let the other boats pulled away. I tried to call for hard 10 but before I could even reach 5 we were always out of the lane liao. So must stop, >< Anyway, when we finished the race I turned back and realised there’s still 1 Hwa Chong advantage K2 lol. They were really far behind us, but I think it’s because they are really small and looked like sec 1. I mean they are sec 1, racing in a B div (sec3-5) race. I bet Mr Yong arranged it this way and wanted to expose them to racing and gain experience so that they can beat us in the next few years.. :’(
WTF. Our dragonboat finals was damn screwed! At first the tail couldn’t be fixed to our boat. Then during the race, the damn angmohs from singapore canoe federation crashed their dragonboat into ours! Their boat’s steering paddle wasn’t tied properly to the boat so it came off! And their boat just like 90 degrees knocked into our boat! And made us went out of lanes too! We were doing really good and I think we were the top 3. But because of the damn collision, both teams were disqualified. But still, we turned back into the lane and finished our race with heart and soul. <3 Ms Ng then asked us if we want to protest, and we agreed. So she had to sign a form and pay some money to protest. But then the officials rejected it, saying that before the collision we aren’t in top 2. But the fact is we were catching up! Sigh! nevermind, gained some new experience.
Then after everything Ms Ng had a really long talk with us. She really cared about the team and want us to improve. So after the 3 days I gained a lot of experience, and also realised my weakness. So I’ve set myself a target. I’m gonna be able to do 20 pull ups by the end of May. I hope I can achieve that..
