#mr500

The MR500.

The first regatta of the 2015 Dragon Boat season.  

It takes place this weekend and, although I’m not paddling, I’m still going to be there captaining, scouting and managing.  It also means I’m (probably) not going into work this weekend.  Although, to be honest, going into work would  be way less stressful.

I've only managed to make it half way through my photos, but I think the events of the weekend warrant a post.

Senna -- Lisa's flatmate's dog, for those of you have forgotten -- stayed the weekend with us again.  He wasted little time worming his way back into my heart by barking and whining all Friday night long and leaving three puddles for us to clean up in the morning.  He repeated the feat the following two nights, although he managed to cut his pee puddles down from 3 to 1 per evening.  It's a good thing I didn't need my sleep to complete in a regatta this weekend...

Last year at the MR500 we didn't take home any hardware.  We didn't even make it to a single grand finals.  It wasn't a good showing for the Canadian Dragons.  This year we're rebuilding.  I wasn't holding my breath.

To make matters worse, one of our veteran paddlers decided to pull out of Saturday's events and didn't confirm his decision until Friday and Haikal, the team captain, was no where to be found leaving us with only 2 of the 5 team captains for the day.  Lisa and I had to completely re-work the lines in 20 minutes before we had to submit them to the officials.  Normally it takes us over an hour per boat.

Stressed, and worried over the un-characteristic absence of our friend, our day began.

Watching the university crews take off is something of a sight from the sidelines.  You can literally see the boats jump off the line.  By the time all the crews had hit the 50m buoy, they were a full dragon boat ahead of us.  It proved too much to recover from.  Seconds after crossing the finish line Gavyn decided he needed to take a bath and promptly fell into Kallang, almost taking the rest of the crew with him.  Unfortunately the boost the crew got from the lighter boat came too late and they failed to qualify for the reportage heats.

Rosina guided the open 12 crew across the finish much more gracefully, but despite her remaining dry we missed qualifying for the reportage by one position.

Our last race of the day was the expat mixed 20.

We were up against the Brits, Aussies, Filipino 'B' and German clubs in our first expat heat.  I was worried we were looking at a day of 3 up/3 down.  The Brits usually end up on the podium, the Germans were incredibly strong by the end of last season and the Aussies have been keeping up with the club and premiere crews for the past year now.  They're monsters.  

Shockingly we came in second.

The semis found us against the Brits and the Aussies for a second time in a row.  We shaved four seconds off our qualifying time to come in first and win the heat.

We found ourselves in lane 4 for the finals -- meaning we had the second fastest qualifying time.  The Americans were in lane 3 with the fastest and the Aussies in lane 2; the third fastest.  To our left, in lane 5, was the Filipino Dragons 'A' boat.  I can't remember which crew was in lane 1; my attention was on the finish line.  Another 2 seconds shaved off our semi final time found us finishing in second place.  We'd beat the Aussies.  The Americans were just out of reach though.  Next time.

My celebrations were short lived.  Haikal still hadn't contacted anyone -- very out of character for him; I was more than a little concerned -- and I was fielding complaints from paddlers who were unimpressed at not being on the crew of the expat mixed boat.  I was told it was an insult to have been left out of the winning boat and that I'd completely wasted people's time.  Being hard capped at 18 paddlers, with 8 of them having to be woman, meant difficult decisions had to be made, but it appeared that my best wasn't good enough.

I left the after party and went for a walk around the barrage to clear my head.  Some times when you win you still lose.

After dinner we went to Haikal's HDB flat to talk to the security guard in hopes that he'd have more information.  The last time Haikal had been seen was on Thursday.  His neighbours hadn't seen him either, his car was gone and no one answered the door when we knocked.  There were no Singaporeans on the missing Malaysian Air flight, which ruled that out, but we were no closer to finding our friend.

Haikal was still no where to be found Sunday morning.  We'd re-done the lines a 7th time Saturday night, pulling Lisa and I from our respective boats, to ensure everyone else got as many races as possible on the day.  All the men would get two races -- the open premiere and the open club -- and all the women would get at least one with a strong chance for a second.

Both our women's crew and the open premiere crew made it through to the reportage.  Singapore had other plans though, and a tradition to maintain.  The second day of the MR500 always gets rained out.

Despite us being in the midst of a drought, the rain came.  It came hard, fast and lasted for 3 hours.  We passed the time hiding from the storm under the concrete overpasses of the barrage, playing Cards Against Humanity and napping.  By the time it stopped the organizers had to cancel all the reportages, leaving us with only the open club boat to run.

At some point during the storm, Suhaimi decided it was in his best interest to leave and did so without telling anyone.  This left us scrambling to find him and meant I was back in the boat without any stretching or warmup and completely mentally unprepared to race.

Fortunately the crew was and we put up a time good enough to see us through to the semi-finals.  And in a heat where reaching the Grand finals wasn't out of reach.

We left it all on the water and finished 3rd by less than a breath.  Just barely shy of making the grand finals, but placing us either 6th or 7th overall in the open event.  For a boat that featured a crew of which 1/3rd had never raced in a 500m event, I couldn't have asked for any more.  We'd more than crushed the expectations I had for us on the weekend and had clearly grown as a team.  All that was left to do was go to Harry's and celebrate.

...and find Haikal.  

Today we learned something as a club.  We learned we do much better when we stop taking ourselves seriously and just have fun.

As mentioned last night, all of today's races were open events and, if you've never seen some of the university athletes here, they look like they eat dumbbells for breakfast.  Seriously.  They have shoulders larger than those of basketball player's and their arms are thicker than my head (insert thick headed joke here).  It can't be natural.

Against competition like this, our all girls boat finished 7th, out of a field of 27 or so, and our two boats in the Inter Club competitions finished in the top 10 in a field of over 30.  Not bad if I do say so myself.  Granted, the events were called because of lightning warnings -- so I guess things could have shifted in either direction -- but we still had a solid showing.

There was other excitement today too.  Not only did the cox of one of the Aussi boats slip -- causing them to go on a near collision course with the American boat, our boat 3 lanes over and then back again -- but one of the boats actually capsized at the start line.  it made for quite an exciting/heart stopping viewing experience.

I also learned a few things about myself today.  Firstly, I actually have the stamina to pace 3 races back to back to back.  I never would have guessed that about myself.  I still have a lot to improve upon, but I think I'm getting a good handle on seat 1.  Secondly, I discovered that I can do push up back claps in sets of 5-- explosive push up, clap your hands behind your back, recover without smashing your face into the ground.  And thirdly I discovered that I lose balance and fine motor skills when I do a ton physical activity and then don't manage eat dinner until after I leave work at 8pm.

I guess now would be a good time to mention that after the regatta, I had to leave as the after party was warming up, to go into work.

Club street, the street I now live on, is mostly made up of bars and clubs.  Fitting, no?  Today I realized the street immediately across from my condo is Mohammad Ali Lane.  So far no one has one punched me when I cut down it, but it's only a matter of time.

This weekend is the MR500.  Also known as the dragon boat regata I've been training for since the German Maneuver.  I'm not sure how confident I feel about this one.  A lot of our regulars have been sick or on vacation lately and, although we've been practicing hard, I can't remember the last time our full A boat was paddling together.  In any event, it means an early Friday night for me.