Chapter 15: The week before..

As cliche as it is.."time flies"

We began our intensive trg since May. Diz coming July Race will mark my 1 year joining OCBC Dragons. We had our final "touch up" over d wkends at Bedok Reservoir and Kallang on Sat and Sun respectively.

Some time back, I was showing Annie our NUS dragonboat ladies video tt yunshan made for us as a farewell gift. I paused at various intervals of the video to explain what exactly we were doing.

There was tiz particular pix of us facing the reservoir as we closed our eyes to pray. Both rang and I were holding on to a ba zhang each, with the words "屈原前辈 We do our best, you do the rest" written on it. D next pic was us..erm..illegally tossing the ba chang into hmm.. *shhhh*

Anw tossing dumplings is nt a tradition in this organisation tt i'm currently rowing for. However, I guess it kinda left an impression on Annie and she decided to do it too..and so we did it, as a team, on Saturday :p

We had a kee chang (屈原前辈 shd be a vegetarian..) and 2 mini chang. On each of them, Doreen wrote 华桥银行龙舟队. The changs were ltr passed to Annie cz we kinda u noe..ran out of stuff to write. Aft all its nt a "tradition" of sorts, but more like smtg meaningful we'd do as a team.

As I was sitting behind her (cz i'm d 2nd left rower), I suggested tt she cld write our race categories as well as our goal (aka g-o-l-d..) on it. There was still alot of space left on the kee chang so she passed the marker to me to 自由发挥.

Instinctively, I wrote:

"屈原前辈 We do our best, you do the rest"

*I leave it to ur vivid imagination what we did to the dumplings aft writing our wishes on them*

We did abt 4 sets of 800m to polish up d execution of our race strategy. It was abt going thru what to do during the starts, maintainence as well as charge.

For today's trg, we did very much d same as well. Going thru the 800m race sets and then doing some 500m set. It was very much tapering down and hak loon no longer scolded us like he did for d previous wks.

It has been a while since I've had this feeling before race. I like this "psyched up" feelin whereby everyone is all set and ready to go. Race is d time whereby we'd see and more importantly, hope and feel tt all our trainings and hardwork have paid off and is worth it.

The results in a race will be an indication of how hard we have been pushing ourselves over d past mths.

"Our greatest fear is nt tt we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure"

I suddenly rmb smtg Rang said during one of d debriefs in June 2007 race day:

"Starts 要起! Maintainance 要稳! Charge 要上!"

This race is also exceptionally meaningful as I kinda 擦肩而过 with diz guy called Adrian. He somehow brought me in to this amazing team through his sheer persistence and constant bugging. I nv got a chance to row with him as he departed on 1 January 2010.

There's diz saying, "when one door closes, the other door opens" or smtg like "the closing of a beautiful chapter is marked with the opening of another"

It may be the 1st race whereby the existing rowers (doreen, annie, lisa, may, rachael, selina, lynn, bryan, ethan, marvin, alvin) dont get d opportunity to row with Adrian. Yet it is also d 1st race whereby they get to row with 8 rowers (hakim, kenneth, gavino, agnes, chun ling, rosiel, xiao pei and me) who has since joined the team.

I remember all those emotions as the line up was being read out as we went down for the PM Cup race. I remember having to make tough but necessary decision on who gt to row and who didnt. After all, there's only limited seats on d boat and xx no. of rowers.

I remember why I cried or held back my tears b4 we go down. Although they cldnt get their chance to row, I'd remember each of them on d shore and row their share.

To some, it is/was their last race. To others, it is our first.

我会把你那份也带下去一起划!

NUS..whoosh!

OCBC..sha!